How much of Gabbeh is memory and dream? It’s hard to say;
what is certain is that a young woman, named Gabbeh, is looking to marry a man
who her father does not approve of. But it really isn’t about this because these
events happened many years before, and Gabbeh, whose story is now woven into an
old rug, suddenly appears and recounts this story to an elderly couple washing
the carpet. This is a simple, what might be called magical realist, story but director
Mohsen Makhmalbaf tells it in atypical ways. The film lacks really anything
resembling a typical narrative structure. The old couple interacts with the
people of the past, and they watch, almost as if watching a film or a theater
performance, these memories, these parable-like stories, just off screen. Makhmalbaf
will then intercut the story with digressions about life. And the film is
ultimately about, nothing short of, life. The film tells its story in
fragments, stops and stutters, and slowly accumulates meaning. Under what
appears to be abstraction is a story of fable-like transparency. Memories do
not flow out of us in nice, straight-forward packages but in shapeless,
formless staccatos, and fables may resemble fairy tales but they are rooted in
a much harsher reality.
Grade: B+
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