As can be determined by the almost unbelievably coarse
and heartless "reviews" of A TIME FOR DRUNKEN HORSES seen here on the IMDB's "external reviews," the
Shooting Gallery had quite a task on their hands in selling
Americans on an Iranian film about a Kurdish brother and
sister smuggling contraband on mules to pay for their crippled sibling's life-saving operation. The tony, elderly
Westwood audience I saw HORSES with seemed put out that such an unpleasant experience interrupted their usual
flow of Landmark Cinema Cultural Time-Outs; those with
stronger constitutions will be offered as compensation
images that will stay seared in your heart for the rest of your
life.
A scene in the snow, in which an extended family decides
the fate of the dwarfish younger brother, has an operatic
severity that suggests a closer approximation of the dramatic quality of the Old Testament than any movie based on the Bible. The ending is so amazingly courageous one cannot imagine a brace of dentist-investors, much less an American studio, standing
for its effrontery.
The Iranian cinema is not just reinventing the experience of
movies; it is rediscovering the moral dimension of telling
stories.
