"Life is Color!"

I recently watched this beautiful Iranian movie, that I am completely in love with, Gabbeh, by Mohsen Makhmalbaf.
An old couple argue about cleaning their rug, their gabbeh, and underfoot, underwater a young woman appears magically embodying the Gabbeh. She is upset about her inability to marry her lover. I am content with being unclear about how the story unfolds. Each scene, all piled together, is what I enjoy. from the script:

Allahdad’s daughter: (stops washing things.) If I marry you, how violent would you go when you get cross with me?

Uncle: I won’t get violent. When and if I’m sore at you, I get depressed and recite poems.

Allahdad’s daughter: What sort of poems?

Uncle: (Puts his hand in hand out of the water, drops dripping from it.) I’ll recite:

I am the thirsty one, you are the running water.

I am fatigued, you are full of strength and energy.

I am aged, old and emaciated,

You are a flourishing branch on a tree.

Allahdad’s daughter: I accept to marry you, because I liked your poem.

I love that there is no clear distinction between past and present, or memory and reality, like in a dream. The colors and sounds are what make the movie: somewhere inbetween abstraction and reality (my favorite place) , the language and rhythmic visuals are like a visual song. There are strange occurrences that you can take as they are, accept them as a strange translation or just an abstraction, like the way in which her lovers voice is a distant howling wolf, and this is her explination, (rough translation):"Why does his voice sound like a howling wolf?"
"It's just a secret between he and I."






from the script:

(A small girl shakes a bell hanging from the neck of a goat. The pupils rush out of the tent. Now the uncle is standing before the blackboard, facing the class.) Uncle: What’s this colour?

(He stretches his right hand out of the frame. Insert of tulips. His hand enters the frame.)

Children’s voice: Red.

(The uncle’s hand grabs as though the red flowers in the tulip prairie. Cut to the blackboard. A bunch of red flowers is in his hand.)

Uncle: The redness of the tulips. Now, what’s this colour?

Children’s voice: Yellow.

(Insert. His hand grabs as though the yellow flowers in the prairie. Cut to the blackboard. A bunch of yellow flowers is in his hand.)

Uncle: The yellowness of the wheat farm. And what’s this colour? (Stretches his arm towards the blue sky.)

Children’s voice: Blue.

(His hand. Blue to the wrist, returns to the frame of the blackboard.)

Uncle: The blueness of the clear sky of God.

(Puts his hand down and out of the frame. Insert. A blue sea with his hand in foreground pointing at it.)

Uncle: What’s this colour?

Children’s voice: Blue.

(His hand, drops dripping from it, returns to the frame of the blackboard.)

Uncle: The serene blue of the seas. Now, tell me what this colour is.

(Stretches his arm towards the sun.)

Children’s voice: Yellow.

Uncle: the yellowness of the shining sun. The yellowness of the sun and the blueness of the water turn into the exquisite greenness of the grass.

(Puts his yellow and blue hands above his head. Cut to a green prairi, with his hand entering the frame.)

Children’s voice: Green.

(Back to the frame of the blackboard. There is some green grass in his hand.)

Uncle: Exquisite green. (Puts his yellow hand, with the bunch of red flowers in it, above his head. Cut to sunset.) The yellowness and the redness of the sun are orange at the sunrise and sunset.

(images from Google images)