Cheap Time for Drunken Horses (Video) (Bahman Ghobadi) Price

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Customer Reviews of Time for Drunken Horses

Iranian Formula - Kurdish Faces
This film garners a lot of praise in film circles, but I wonder if it isn't more a result of its novelty as the first Kurdish feature film than of anything that actually happens on screen.
Though a decent depiction and sympathetic portrayal of the bleak surroundings and life of a community of Iranian Kurds, the film is essentially similar to a lot of work that Majid Majidi has done, though it lacks his cinematic flair and storytelling skill. Surprisingly, for an amateur cast, the acting is pretty good (compare this with the abysmal acting in the vastly overrated film "Kandahar" by Mohsen Makhmalbaf), and the camera work is not bad, but again, there is nothing particularly novel or interesting about this film other than that is Kurdish. There is something almost patronizing about the praise that has been heaped on this film. It is as if no matter what a Kurdish director produces, it is going to be praised for its very existence, not as a work of cinema in and of itself. I personally think Bahman Ghobadi could have done a better job, and hopefully he will attempt to depict Kurdish life in a more dynamic and unique way in his next film.

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For a story of REAL life for the world's poor...
This is a film with no noticable special effects, just people, places, and cameras. Basically, a two brothers and two sisters are left orphaned when their father dies in a smuggling incident (their mother died before the film began). Their aunt and uncle help arrange a marriage for the oldest sister, with a Kurdish family across the border in Iraq. They assume that this family will take the oldest brother, who is severely mentally and physically disabled. They don't, and the younger brother and sister try to scrape and save money to get him an operation so that he will live a little longer.

The name of the film comes from the fact that the conditions in the mountains are so bad that the smugglers have to get the mules drunk so they'll go.

This movie ends in uncertainty, rather than having the tidy plot and finish so common in American movies. I highly recommend it.