The Poetic Trilogy

Mohsen Makhmalbaf, one of the most important and expressive filmmakers of the Iranian New Wave, proclaimed that his 1996 film Gabbeh was his first "poetic film," employing bold, brilliant images and saturated hues. Drawn from the folk culture of the nomadic tribes of southeastern Iran, Gabbeh is a richly textured tale of passionate forbidden love told through a narrative woven into a folkloric story carpet known as a "gabbeh." Makhmalbaf followed that film with The Silence (1998), which is about the sensory world of an impoverished blind boy (Tahmineh Normativa). Supporting his mother with a job tuning instruments in a city music shop, the boy has five days to come up with rent money before they are evicted, but he’s also just a kid who loves to get lost in the aural quilt of the city. The Silence does for sound what Gabbeh did for color: Makhmalbaf isolates and exaggerates sounds, crafting an internal symphony in an impressionistic attempt to recreate the boy's world. Over a decade later, after leaving Iran, Makhmalbaf made The Gardener (2012)—the trilogy’s final film—a documentary tracing the root of the Baha'i faith. Here, Makhmalbaf himself debates religion with his son in a vibrant production shot on location in Israel in the expressionist style of the earlier films. Extras include audio commentary on Gabbeh by critic Godfrey Cheshire, new and archival interviews with Makhmalbaf, and a stills gallery. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)