I found "Gabbeh" boring. It was nearly impossible for me to sit through. There was no excitement. In this film, the director is an artist. Mosen Makhmalbaf does a great job on using colors throughout the movie, but that's the only good thing that I saw. The costumes, the Persian carpet, the sky and landscape vividly show Mosen Makhmalbaf's use of color. I didn't really understand the story at all. Other than the colors, the movie has nothing going for itself. The story wasn't interesting and I didn't feel engaged at all. I will never watch this film again. I get that Mosen Makhmalbaf wanted to display a work of art, but when half of the class is completely clueless there is confusion behind the meaning of the story, don't you think something is wrong?

I'm giving this movie a 3 because, despite its esthetic strengths, it's a movie that indulges in self-folklorization and self-orientalism, a movie that depicts a journey by an Iranian nomadic tribe, or rather family, in a folklorizing and essentializing manner: the nomadic tribe is portrayed as an essentially primitive, unemotional, animal-like group of colorful heaps of clothes who don't have a human-like notion of time or space or even a decent grip on reality, who act, sound and move like goats, chicken and wolves. The pseudo- spontaneous esthetics on which this movie relies emphasizes this point by sneaking in convoluted similarities between the nomads and those animals.The esthetics of the movie is so intricately designed and so contrived, but deceitfully left to be seen as 'spontaneous' in order to quench what the filmmakers take to be an unquenchable thirst of European viewers for 'exotic beauty and oriental esthetics', which the movie relatively succeeded in doing, seeing the acclaim it received in European countries.The visual symbolism in the movie is so stark that it borders on being unartistic. The depiction of the landscape is beautiful, but this is something you can get if you watch a NatGeo reportage on 'Peoples and Cultures', and not something you would necessarily demand of a cinematic movie. The movie, to me, was emotionless. It did not harbor any kind of emotion towards the subjects of the movie: hatred, love, empathy, nothing, except probably some curiosity towards those 'cinematically bizarre creatures'.The soundtrack in the movie was boring, sometimes inappropriate and sometimes utterly annoying because of the constant bleats of goats and the irksome inexplicable howls of one of the heroes. Besides, the movie is unbearably boring. The contrived esthetics and breathtaking landscape did not prevent me from feeling utterly bored. I had to resist sleep several times during its relatively short runtime of 75 minutes.I don't recommend watching this movie, unless there's no NatGeo reportage on nomadic tribes in Iran, or you're doing graduate studies on self-orientalism in cinema...

The most enchanting movie I have seen in a long time. Visually stunning and breathtaking, like a trip to a museum that is rich with colorful paintings. Many beautifully chanted songs and little dialog. The best Iranian movie I have seen. And on an international level, it's the most artistic, yet not boring. The story comes out in colors, songs, and little dialog (suitable for those who don't like reading sub-titles).This movie marries a fiction story with a documentary about a tribe and their tradition to make Gabbeh, a hand-woven carpet. The screenplay is very original and unusual -- in a good way. It definitely does not follow the clear-cut Hollywood recipe. This might confuse some viewers but this movie would be seen as a gem by other viewers who enjoy creativity.

Mystic Iranian pic is at once a treat and an elusive puzzle. Just what writer/director Makhmalbaf was trying to say here is a complete mystery to me, such is his intricate use of symbolism and suggestion. Perhaps this is a reflection of age old Iranian culture, but it is a culture I have precious little understanding of.Our director has woven a tale as tightly as the Gabbehs the film seems to be about. Occassinally fascination draws you in, but mostly one is left admiring the scenery and the unusual style.Cameraman Mahmoud Kalri captures the attention, and Hossein Maharami's turn as a lovelorn old man is a most amusing one.Monday, June 1, 1998 - Hoyts Croydon