Original subtitles

An encounter with the anguishes of Hedayat

The Blind Owl

script: Kiyomars Darambakhsh

actors: Parviz Fannizadeh , Parvin Soleymani

Farshid Farshoud Naser Nasiri

and Novin Qobasi Music: Ali Akbarkhan

Camera: Jamshid Farahi, Iran Azim Javanrouh, Grand Mosque of Paris

editor: Manouchehr Olayi Make-up: Akbar Namini

post-synchronization: National Radio and TV corp. Iran Dialog director: Saeed Sherafat participants: Manouchehr Esmaili, Shahla Nazeriyan, Azar Daneshi, Ahmad Rasoulzadeh

sound: Mostafa Mostafazadeh, Ali Asghari, Valoud Aghajannian, Yadollah Askari, Esmail Heydari Technic: Mahmoud Tabrizi, Kourosh Shitzad, Hoseyn Hoseyni Produktion Management: Mansour Tehrani

director: Kiyomars Darambakhsh 1353 (1974) Produced by the National Radio and TV corp., Iran

Titels: Kambiz Darambakhsh, Kost�m: Leyla Taqian, Stills: Koupal Shekveh assistant directors: Kiyanoush Arfi'i-Latiyani, Ahmad Soleymani

print: Nationale Radio and TV corp., Iran

Only death never tells a lie.

The presence of death destroys all creatures.

We are death's children ...

who frees us from our illusive lives.

And at the end of our lives he calls us.

At an age when you don't understand people's speech,

when you suddenly stop playing games,

it is important to be able to listen to the voice of death.

Death beckons us throughout our life.

Hasn't it happened to everybody,

that you suddenly and without a reason start to brood,

and your brooding is so deep ...

that you forget time and place ...

and forget even what you were brooding about?

After that, let him try and perceive again the outside world.

This is the voice of death.

Who are you?

Your uncle.

The former naval captain?

You must be thirsty?

Run along �

For the first time I thought ...

that a ray of sunlight has entered my life.

What a pity that it wasn't a ray of sunlight,

only a trasient flashing, a comet,

appearing in the shape of a woman or an angel.

In its light I saw all the misery of my own life.

I wonder if I could renounce it all?

Well, it's not in my power.

Each evening, at sunset, I ran around our house like a beheaded chicken,

soon I knew every pebble and stone.

But I found no trace of the cypress and of the old man ...

and of the brook and the girl I used to see there.

Have you lost your way?

Well?

Your eyes are huge and black.

As black as your own life.

Life?

Black?

Are you hungry?

Are you thirsty?

She's cold.

She's dead.

No ... I don't want a stranger to look at her.

If you need help, I could be of service ...

with this cart I could even bring your corpse to the funeral place.

Each evening at sunset I take the dead to Shah-Abdol-Azim and bury them there.

I always do. I also make coffins for them.

I have coffins for every size,

small and big ones, they fit perfectly.

Get up ...

right now ...

Come on, get up ...

Put it on there, on the back ...

Run along ...

run along ...

We've arrived.

We're near Shah-Abdol-Azim.

You cannot find a better place around here.

Not even a bird comes here ...

Walk down there ...

I'm an expert with burials.

Don't be shy. Let's go.

Right here, below the bridge, near the brook and the cypress, I'll dig a hole for your suitcase.

Go now.

Here's the place.

And there's the cypress and there's melancholy.

You won't have to do anything now.

And here's the hole ... Looks quite deserted, doesn't it?

In winter there are a lot of lotus flowers.

Take your pay ...

From you I won't take any payment.

While digging the hole I found an amphora.

An ensorcelled ampohra from the old city of REY.

Run along!

You're on your way to town and you got lost, right?

It's dark everywhere ...

I'm a vagabond ...

I cannot arrive.

Who are you?

You surely want to know what business I have on the cemetary at this nightly hour?

I'm a grave-digger.

I work for the dead.

A bad job?

I'm an expert.

While I was digging a grave today I found this ...

From the old city of REY. An ensorcelled vase.

Keep it as a souvenir.

I want you to have a souvenir from me.

Take it.

No, never!

I want you to. I know you ... I even know where you live, right below ...

a house surrounded by ruins.

I have a cart for the dead ...

I'll take you home. Yes?

Get up. Come with me. Time's up.

It's getting late ... come on ...

get up ... come along ...

get going ...

We've arrived ...

here we are ... get out

run along ...

I would never have thought I'd be so pitiful and cursed.

But the secret knowledge of a crime committed gave be a strange pleasure.

Because I know that there used to be another sufferer who also got burned by the glance of a pair of huge black eyes.

Wasn't the man who painted this amphora 100 or 1000 years ago, this same sufferer?

Hasn't he lived through the same as I have?

Among the people living in those mountains, in those houses and destroyed villages,

built with heavy bricks...

and whose rotting flesh and bones are living on in the lotus flowers...

among those people there wasn't a single painter as miserable as I am?

Exactly as I am. And that thought comforted me ...

Come on, you're no use for living at all

Come on, I'll have you hanged ...

come on, you're no use

come on, let him hang you

take him ... hang him ...

kill him ... hang him

kill him ... hang him

kill him ... hang him

just like that hanged man over there ...

hang him ... kill him

hurry up ... kill him

cut off his head with this axe ...

with this axe ...

you're no good ... kill him

If a man's head doesn't throw a shadow, he'll die before the end of the year.

The world I awoke in seemed familiar to me.

I felt sheltered.

As if it reflected my own life.

Another world ...

But it was so close to me that it seemed I had returned to my old surroundings.

I was born into an old workd, but much closer and more natural.

The world seemed to me like an empty and sad house.

In my breast I felt an uncomfortable tearing ...

as if I was being forced to inspect barefoot all the rooms in this house.

I walked across the connecting rooms.

When I came to the last room the doors closed behind me on their own.

While his body lay there numb and stiff, while his veins and bones started to rot,

he had given me his body and soul.

I wanted to warm him with my body,

to give him warmth and help him over death's chill.

Perhaps I could thus fill his body with my soul.

His mouth tasted bitter, like the tip of a cucumber.

His body was as cold as hailstones.

I even felt my own blood freezing in my veins and the chill penetrating to my heart.

All my efforts were in vain.

His fragile and transient soul, not having any connection to earthly things,

crosses the body which tortures it, and enters the world of roaming shadowns.

And now a new soul was born in me.

Even my way of thinking was changed.

I felt differently.

And I couldn't free myself of that new soul which had awoken in me.

Suddenly I had to laugh ...

a forced laugh making my whole being tremble...

a deep laugh, rising from a hidden crevice of my body ...

an empty laugh just ringing in my throat...

and breaking out of the emptiness ...

I had become a miserable old man.

subtitles: Max&serdar202