Because this is such a minimalist film, every detail matters, which isn't the same as saying that every detail has precise symbolic significance.

But like, it matters that in this exurban landscape, you see some greenery, you see apartment buildings in the background, you also see laborers. There are laborers everywhere.

It matters that, you know, when he's driving and

Kyrostami pulls the camera back, you see, you know, a woman on the top of a building collecting her

laundry, or you see soldiers doing a drill, or you see, you know, kids going to school. Or at one point,

you know, his car gets slightly off-roaded and a bunch of migrant

workers come over and they don't even need to say anything. They can see like someone's in trouble. His car's going off the road. So they help lift the car off the road and then they wave him away. This second guy, the guy who's in the seminary, for the summer, he's doing manual labor. because, you know, he comes, he's an immigrant.

His dad is back in Kabul or something, back at home, and he's working between his studies, doing manual labor to send money home to his family. And what all of these details add up to, I think, is an unsentimental portrait of what life is. There's a lot of beauty. There's also a lot of toil. There's a lot of just muddling through. I have kind of an innate sympathy with all of the points of view in this movie because, you know, Body talks to a number of people who say, listen, things are hard, but come on, you can't kill yourself. Come on, there's got to be a better way. And body says, no, life is too difficult. I have to kill myself. And on some level, I, I sympathize

with both of these points of view. Life is hard. Like, I don't want body to kill himself,

but I don't need to know why he wants to. Like, life is difficult. Now, Body has another

encounter on a construction site where the whole movie doesn't consist

in its entirety of him having these conversations about the job with the people he picks up.

There are these little interludes, one of which is, you know, he goes to this construction

site and there's this long take as he watches dirt and rocks falling into a crusher or a compacting machine of some kind.

And he just kind of waits there, possibly wanting to die. And, you know, a worker comes

over and says, Mr. You need to move. You know, the digger can't put down its dirt. Move your car.

And then when he doesn't reply, the guy starts saying, are you sick? Do you want some tea?

And then eventually he just gets up and walks away. And one of the things I really appreciated about this movie is that, yeah, in all these encounters, the people he meets, both those who enter the car and those who don't, they all seem very human in the sense that, you know, you just described Will. You know, they're making their way through life, in some cases, muddling their way through life. But they're all fundamentally pretty kind, you know, this worker who's doing his job on the construction site, the body is making more difficult, kind of begins to register, there's something not right here. And, you know, are you sick? Do you want tea? You know, later, there's another random encounter as he's leaving the museum, and we'll get to that scene, but as he's leaving the museum, you know, the car is kind of crawling away. And a young woman comes over and says, you know, will you take our picture? You know, she and her boyfriend or her husband are at the Natural History Museum for the day, and they're clearly enjoying themselves. Or actually, you know what is another touch I really liked, Will, when he's in line at the museum, and he has to go to the museum, and he has to buy a ticket, even though he doesn't actually want to go to the museum, jumping ahead a little bit. But Kyristami makes a really interesting choice there, where you get to see the next person in line buy her ticket. And she's just a regular visitor to the museum.

And, you know, it's pretty prosaic. A lesser filmmaker would not include a detail like that. But in this film, Kyristami wants to show us that whatever is happening and whatever might be

happening with, you know, any one of us as individuals, life goes on all around us. And some of it is

quite beautiful and you wouldn't want to miss it.