[A still from Земля]
Chinese National Symphony Orchestra at Boston’s Symphony Hall.
Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry and Dovzhenko’s Земля [Earth] at the Harvard Film Archive. Labor and land preoccupy both; and in each, a visual symphony of tractors. One is reminded of Russian cinema’s obsession with the sun-baked, dirt-caked, beard-bristling face — eyes always squinting at sun, faces yanked every which way in a primitive yawp, self-torn, encrusted with tears.