As a lyrical avant-garde work, the body of the filmic text in The House Is Black is also a ruin. It is as though the filmic text itself, like the bodies inhabiting it, is constantly on the verge of overspill and breakage. Passing glimpses of people, body parts (or their absence), trees, water, and animals seem to have been amassed free of narrative considerations and more for rhythmic and affective impact. The sound and Farrokhzad’s voice-over contribute to the rhythm but seldom, if at all, coincide with the diegetic space. In one of the earliest scenes in The House, a man dressed in rags is shown walking back and forth in front of a building, at every few steps, reaching and touching ever so lightly the brick wall of the dilapidated structure.