‘Monte’: One Man Confronts a Mountain

The globe-trotting, stylistically varied career of Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi resists easy comparison. His terrific “The Runner,” an exemplar of neorealist-style storytelling first shown in the 1980s, should be more widely available. “A, B, C ... Manhattan,” part of a trilogy inspired by his life in New York, experiments with lengthy Steadicam shots in a wandering, day-spanning narrative. You would never identify it as the work of the same filmmaker.

A current retrospective of Naderi’s movies at the Museum of Modern Art in New York includes a run of his latest film, “Monte” — which again tries something totally different. Set in the Middle Ages, this Italian-language feature opens with a funeral. After the protagonist, Agostino (Andrea Sartoretti), a farmer, and his wife, Nina (Claudia Potenza), bury their daughter, his cousins soon depart the settlement. But Agostino wishes to remain where his ancestors lived, and Nina won’t leave their daughter’s grave.

Like Albert Serra’s “Quixotic/Honor de Cavalleria,” “Monte” demonstrates how to suggest an epic scale without the means of a Hollywood production. The natural scenery becomes a character. The howl of the wind (and in one brief moment, what sounds jarringly like air traffic) stands in place of a score. “Monte” weds these straightforward elements to a fittingly stark narrative: Agostino sets out to conquer the mountain that keeps his farm barren by chipping away at it bit by bit.

The film is limited by its central metaphor, but it is never less than absorbing or original.

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