Song of Sparrows-penchant for a life with dignity...

THE SONG of SPARROWS
Directed by Majid Majidi
City life offers opportunities undoubtedly. But it also steals from you the basic right of human dignity. Living is Mumbai for the last 1.5 years and often awed by the opportunities and luxuries, the colors and glamour the city offers, I would still agree with this view. Every morning when I see myself struggling through the crowded trains, wiping off the grim and dirt accrued through the long hours of travel through the dusty streets The frown I have started wearing through by constant argument with the public vehicles, unscrupulous rickshaw drivers and roadside lumpens is almost permanent. Late in the evening when I return back to my small apartment burdened by the responsibility of paying its rent, I and left with an exhausted body and a fumed and dusty soul. Still I donot want to leave Mumbai and frankly I cannot leave it. The city has got me anchored. And my struggle is not for bread, food or water, but for human dignity. To have a life of “Less Struggle”.
Majidi’s Song of Sparrows brings forth this struggle. Hence Song of Sparrows is not merely a movie showing the urban impurity against the rural purity of a simple conscientious life, often mistaken as an Islamic thought.
The poor, who are looking not just to survive but survive with dignity is often the theme of Majidi’s movie. Hence we find Razieh (of White Balloon) not backing off crying and begging for her lost 500 tomans, rather being stalwart and brave, trying to retrieve her money from the sewer. Similarly Ali from Children of Heaven, never even tries to gather sympathy by confiding in the teacher, his plight of show-swapping. Sympathy somehow would then bereave him of any dignity. However in all these cases, material world and loss is always failing the human one, and human(especially adults) are always often feel helpless in Majidi’s films, rendered impotent by poverty or social rules. Colors of paradise showed physically impaired (blind) boy at the centre of the drama and as a source of trauma for the parent. In the Children of Heaven, it was a pair of shoes that set the misadventures underway.
At his best Majidi captures the desperate vulnerability of poverty. He shows that how easily plans for a better future gets thwarted and how happenstance can tip the poor into destitution stealing from him the basic dignity of living a soulful life and putting forth constantly a binary life of choosing between the conscience and material benefits. Choosing one without the other is a huge trade off though.
In Song of Sparrows, Karim by a quirk of fate loses his job and is confronted with the challenge of buying a hearing aid for his deaf daughter whose exams are approaching. His desperation leads him to Tehran, where he accidentally falls into work as a motorcycle courier and livery driver. It is humiliating and exhausting work, but it earns him well. By the standards of the country village where he stays, this amount is Godsend.
However his life slowly loses the dignity of having a soul. A person who was sharing, loved his neighbours, is suddenly found crumbled with the burden of insecurity. He hoarded the junk, scavenged from the city. Through the junk which he now holds close, is also shown apparently the constant decadence of his soul. Such decay is often an outcome when one faces a struggle to choose between dignity and survival. The former is often compromised for the latter by the adult in Majidi’s movie. The decline and the immateriality is also beautifully shown through the small blue door, which Karim is busy retrieving back from his neighbour, amidst the vastness of the country tapestry.
Majidi always tried to show the children being more conscientious and humane, prioritising human values more than anything else. Hence Karim ‘s son, although finding his dream of gold-fishes scattered before him, chooses to save the fishes first rather than still trying to stick on to his dream of carrying them home through some means.
The ostrich here is almost symbolic of the Karim‘s soul. Betraying him accidentally, and then going further away, when Karim loses himself in the city and eventually coming closer, when Karim again finally (betrayed by fate) gets back his happiness amidst the simpler pleasures at home. The sparrows’ chirp lull his soul to a better soulful life.
Another interesting fact behind Majidi might also speak for the belief that Song of the Sparrows is more a movie screaming for the rights of human dignity.
The BBC reports that film maker Majid Majidi is the producer of a 30-minute campaign film supporting the candidacy of Mir Hossein Mousavi in the upcoming Iranian presidential elections. Artists and film makers have thrown their weight behind Mousavi, a moderate opposing hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the closely watched and fiercely contested elections–a contest in which, according to 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, “human rights in Iran are at stake.” The political film includes archival footage, scenes from the campaign (Mousavi visiting a hospital), excerpts of speeches and statements from ordinary people, including one woman who says: “Our people are not looking for bread, water …Our people are looking for human dignity.”
Usually during elections, the general practice is to divide people along rural and urban lines, showing the urban stress as opposed to the rural bliss in simplicity. This movie through certain scenes, by showing Tehran as a concrete cluster may appear to be straightforward critique of urban life. However that is definitely not the case. Majidi’s background of supporting Mousavi, just explains this. In fact in a country like Iran, which strongly controls cinema, Majidi brings forth the loop-holes of the state through playing subtly the urban-rural divide. What he is showing here the struggle of leading a dignified life with liberated souls that the Iranians are asking for- a life where every moment you have to make compromise between free expressions of the soul and surviving a material life. Majidi’s frustration as an artist often deprived of the freedom of expression can be a reason for this and his support for Masouvi-an artist.
Hence the city is not a sole demon bereaving Karim of his sole. Tehran may be cruel, but it is also where the hearing aid comes from. Its wealth if carefully trapped and transported can help the poor. Rather the conditions which take Karim to the city demands more concentration. Although hard-working Karim does a job which does not provide him medical insurance. In spite of his back-breaking work for years, for now mistake of his own, he is fired. This is what the condition of many Iranians are and they are unheard. They are literally not starving for food, rather of social dignity. The pressure of patriarchy is already a burden enough. When an accident renders Karim bedridden for a few weeks, Majidi shows the rough edges of patriarchal society, not by focusing on the humiliation of women, but on the shame of men when displaced from their role as sole provider, arbiter and emotional locus of family life.
Thus very cleverly rooting the movie in anti-urbanization and anti-western progressive overtones, Majidi somehow provides a completely contrasting view of vying of an all-inclusive progress. The progress need not be limited and conditional. Rather it should be liberal and provide everyone with the freedom of mind.
In the end, Majidi seems to come down on the side of village life if only because there is a greater fund of dignity there. It is a hard won dignity, and it comes more through acceptance of one’s weakness than through struggle or toil or success in life.
“In the midst of a combative election, with Majidi’s man vying to unseat a combative man, Song of Sparrows is a film that quietly celebrates a life of less struggle. ”