According to film critic Joe Baltake, the film's director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, was "originally commissioned by Iran's handicraft industry to make a documentary about [the Ghashghai], those southeastern nomadic tribes [whose women] specialize in weaving carpets called 'gabbeh,' that tell a story, full of ritual and folklore. Makhmalbaf took his footage about the making of the carpets and wove it into a fable of thwarted love and yearning" (The Sacramento Bee, Nov. 7, 1997).

The world of the film is a kaleidoscope of color. Exotic birds appear from nowhere like bursts of sunset. Young women dress in native Iranian costumes of reds, golds, blues, and greens. And through it all, the sounds of flowing water, like little bells or delicate wind chimes, is given a palpable presence.

The magical and surrealistic elements of the peasant girl’s story weave themselves into a fairy-tale. What enchantment there is in a young woman’s quest for love and continuity. The very air is rich with the colors, sights, and sounds—the spices and incense of the Near East.

The colors of the carpet—deep, bold, rich indigo—and the dresses of the maidens create an atmosphere of color that ignites in constantly varying, constantly changing hues. Life is flux—ceaseless change, as Heracleitus would have it. And yet sacred patterns emerge in the flowing pools.

The age-old story of love is reenacted, given immense scope and vigor through these ritualistic acts and delicate movements of hands and eyes, the tinkling laughter of children, and the flowing of water. In the film, water is forever developing its charmed paths, delivering its life-giving potency.

In the world of Gabbeh youth and age, male and female, dream and reality—all combine and then separate and then coalesce finally in rare tapestries of color and scenery. There is a long view of golden wheat fields swaying in the wind, and this scene is reminiscent of the light on water of Potemkin. In this world, the peasants lead a simple, nomadic life of sheep tending and sheep-shearing. But the dying of wool becomes a thing of rare beauty and art when subject to the laws of heaven.

We fall quietly under the film’s spell and accept its belief in the magic and simple dignity of ordinary lives. "Life is color," someone cries, and the film embodies this truth. "Behind every cradle hides a tomb," another says, sounding like Dylan Thomas, and the film captures the fast-fading ecstasies of peasant life that has changed little in several millennia. "My heart is like a happy child," says a middle-aged man to his much younger bride, and the film presents with purity and dignity the call to love of youth and the cries of age.