Director Majid Majidi was not a complete unknown to me. I liked Children of Heaven pretty well. IMDb confirms that I saw Baran, but I don't remember what happens in it. TCoP was his one movie made in between those two.
Eight-year-old Mohammad is blind, as is his actor. His sisters and grandmother love him no less for that, but widowed father Hashem's love is less certain. Not knowing how to raise such a family in poverty, especially when hoping to win a new bride, Hashem keeps trying to make Mohammad someone else's problem, as by leaving him at a boarding school or apprenticing him to a carpenter. (Iran, or at least that area of it, must not have had great child support services at the time.) Only a crisis near the end affirms Hashem's positive feelings.
I'm undecided on how harshly to judge Hashem. He's more desperate than negligent. His life has felt like one woe after another lately, which has the all too common effect of, well, blinding him to the woes of others.
Mohammad seems to project his father's semi-abandonment onto everyone else, declaring himself universally unwanted. His belief that God doesn't love him, of course, stems more from the mere fact of his disability. Majidi is too responsible a filmmaker to endorse this view.
Thankfully, Mohammad doesn't feel unhappy all the time. He expresses a lot of oneness with nature, perhaps most of all in his rural home vicinity. It's too bad he can't fully appreciate the considerable beauty that viewers can, but at least it's rich with sounds (and he has the advantage for scents and textures). At one point, he helps a baby bird reenter a nest, no doubt out of a kindred spirit.
Beyond that, whatever Mohammad's overall intellect, he certainly has a knack for Braille or the Farsi equivalent. Not only does he impress his teacher and peers at a regular school, but he "reads" many things not normally viewed as writings. I don't take that as a vain attempt to understand the world, nor as a mere pastime, so much as a unique way to reach out to the Creator.
What TCoP lacks in plot complexity, it makes up for in 90 minutes of strong sentimentality. Artistically, this may well be Majidi's masterpiece. Entertainment-wise, I might still give the edge to CoH, but by all means, check out both.
No comments:
Post a Comment