The Secret Ballot

Secret Ballot
Directed by Babak Payami
How important are elections for us? Theoretically elections are the most important ingredient in a democracy. It gives you the power to elect your own government. In India election times are the most interesting times where everyone cashes in. For the media houses this is “dance of democracy” and they take it upon themselves to educate the readers about their democratic rights, candidates, the predictions, the trends and everything you never wanted to know. You have exit polls, public opinions everything all going into extreme measures to make you aware of your elected government. However do things change at your end? Or it is merely a quarterly affair? Half of the times, you struggle to decide, whom to vote for amidst the list of goons who are representing your constituency. Often some courageous journalists do react in strong ways of throwing shoes at the defence minister and manage to evict a few rotten eggs from the basket. But more or less elections are just a matter of fact for many of us.
How important can democracy and elections be at Iran? We all know that true liberal democracy did come to Iran for a short while through Mossadeq and then the saga of how U.S had played against this democracy, wary of losing its exploitative power over Iran’s resources. After that, post revolution, Iran never got back democracy in true sense. However in the Islamic republic of Iran, elections do preside as universal suffrage where you can vote above the age of 16. The supreme leader selects the representatives and the citizens vote to select their candidate. However, a theocratic nation, Iran’s government runs with the Islamic principle of “Presiding in righteousness and Prohibiting the wrong”. Hence how do they make sure that everyone makes the right choice? Simple enough, even if the candidate is selected, it’s finally the supreme leader who decides the right candidate and millions of papers and Secret Ballots are then discarded. (The recent precision of Ahmedinijad as the president over Masoudeh showed that) How are then elections treated in Iran? Do people still rest their hopes on suffrage? The supreme leader is extremely keen to maintain the sanctity of the process, to make sure that elections are held and everyone gets the right to vote.
Babak Payami’s Secret Ballot shows such an election day in a small Iranian island (actually the film was shot in the Kish island on the Persian Gulf)
It was just another day for the army guards in this remote sleepy island, till a white ballot box falls from a flying aircraft. This new artefact leaves them perplexed. Soon arrives a young girl as an election agent who has been sent to collect votes from the people on this island through the secret ballot. Initially reluctant to take orders from a girl, even if she is a government officer and later unfazed by her constant lectures about everyone should vote, the soldier still takes her around the island to collect votes. She has the ballot papers and photographs of the candidates.
The vote collection process seems to be arduous for the agent. She meets a truck full of people who have come to vote including a 12 year old girl. The girl’s mother disagrees to her rejection of the girl’s right to vote. This is because she believes that if a girl can get married at the age of 12, then how incomprehensible can voting be for her. She meets a man working on a solar energy sector, who denied to vote. He is of the opinion that only God is his saviour and he does not want to rest his beliefs of being served by any mortal being. Then there was one woman mourning her husband’s death, who retorts back saying that she is deprived of her basic right to join her husband’s funeral processing at the cemetery, voting rights mean nothing for her. Few in fact refuse to vote for the candidates, saying they donot know the candidates, have never even met them. Through these pieces of images shot in minimalistic styles in long takes, Payami wants to build a Kafkaesque notion of the election for the commoners. Through the desperate stubbornness of the election agent it seems that all that matters is the process to be conducted. The people are of less importance. However the sanctity of the process needs to be maintained, no guns should be shown to the people, they should not be bribed to vote, they should not be of a different nationality; however all these hurdles do occur at different points in time.
Conducting the elections seems to an arrogance of “doing things the right way”, one of those soul-less mechanised must dos by the government. Hence nobody seems to be concerned about what happens to this adobe hut adorned remote island and its people for the rest of the year. All that is important now is they should vote. The only logic offered by the agent that “voting is right and good for people” like so many other rules, which have been drawn since they are “right and good for people” and almost all drawn without consulting them. In fact it seems she has been conditioned to believe in that idea.
The absurdity of the whole process is revealed to the agent through a wonderful metaphor. At one point, when the agent is on her way to catch the ferry back to the city, the soldier stalls his car indefinitely seeing a red light in the middle of a desert. The agent asks him to ignore the light, since it is an fault in the system. There is no need for a signal in a desert. However the soldier is adamant that he would not violate the rule although the rule itself here is complete absurd without any traffic. This is almost indexical of the whole rule game to be a complete farce.
However still out of this whole game, the ballot box still is the most coveted fact, an outcome of the crafted process for practising democratic right justly and correctly. Hence we find that instead of the ferry, the anxious government sends for an aircraft to transport the ballot box to safe hands, where based upon the “rightly executed process”, further new rules and laws will be crafted for the people.

Colors of Paradise

COLORS of PARADISE
Directed by Majid Majidi
Journey through darkness need not always be a hopeless saga of despair. Neither can it be morbid, dissociated from all the warmth and candour of this earth. Not necessarily, your sense of the world around is lost, if your vision fails you. May be, eyes are just one link to make sense of the surrounding world. But the decoding of these senses happens in your soul. Hence if the soul gets connected with the world around, a wonderful tuning is established. You and world then together can set out to play your own duet. And all the dull and darkness of a hopelessly visionless world gets drowned in the colours and rhythm your heart can sense. It seems that with your eyes open, things you had tried hard to sense, to feel, suddenly appears near to you through your heart amidst darkness. Hence darkness is not necessarily an impairment, but a chosen quality given to you to be closer to your search. May be that’s why the dervishes close their eyes and lose themselves, in a trance which takes them closer to their “god”, one whom they frantically keep on searching. The journey without light in your eyes, but with an enlightened heart is the only way to be one with “him”. Visually sumptuous, Majidi’s Colors of Paradise seem to bring forth this feeling.
Mohammad a 7 year old blind boy is exceptionally gifted in spite of his visual impairment. Mohammad, has a capability of forging a strong relationship with nature. Majidi has flooded the movie with almost aural visuals, to establish Mohammad’s waltz with the nature. Mohammad is sensitive to the natural presence around him. Earlier, in the scene, we find him, gently with immense love and tenderness saving the life of a small baby bird. All throughout though, Mohammad’s cues are through sounds. It seems, as the dervish frantically tries to find “him” amidst everything he sees, Mohammad tries to feel God through everything he cannot see- be it the cooing small birds, or the soft murmur of the breeze passing through his small hands.
The small impoverished village Mohammad comes back during his school vacation hence gets vibrant with sounds and colors. He tries reading everything with his small fingers. Glad to be re-united with his loving sisters and doting grandmother, love-lorn Mohammad seems to be at peace with himself for a short while. His nimble small fingers tireless move through everything. He caresses the eggs softly, then passes on to dis-entangle the threads dyed in the wildflower dipped colors. Throughout these feelings he perceives a sense of meditative peace. Mohammad is happy to be with his surroundings. He senses a feeling of wantedness and security. Being loved and cared for is a deep longing by this motherless boy. That is expressed through the way he gently cuddles and caresses everything that comes across his way, everything he cares for. However, his search to make a sense of the world around, does not stop. This continuous search through his fingers is Mohammad’s only way to reach and get united with his own soul and with “him”, since he had known this at school- a blind is closer to “god” since he can see God through his fingers.
Quite opposed to the calm peace which Mohammad feels within are the feelings of his father. Mohammad’s father a widower is burdened by the responsibility of caring for his two daughters, an age-ing mother and a blind son. He wants to get re-married. And think Mohammad an impediment in his way of new settlement. Throughout Hashem is troubled by the dilemma of being selfish father or choosing a supposedly better life. A poor coal-man, burdened with responsibility, Hashem too is frantically in search of his soul, to get hold of himself. His deep set dark eyes, furrowed face all tell of his tiresome efforts to get recluse in his soul. He sends Mohammad away, in order to get married. Mohammad, now is an apprentice to a blind craftsman of woodwork. Still Hashem does not get rid of his dilemma and guilt. He tries to deal with it by arguing loud with others about his right to be happy, which is extremely ill-tuned and fails to convince even himself.
At work, far away from home, Mohammad is still sensitive to the nature. In fact this time, the mournful boy seems to have set himself in complete harmony with the universe. A small disruption and he is able to sense it. His grandmother’s death therefore unites her with him. Mohammad’s father rejected by the bride’s family, finally decides to bring him back. On the way however Mohammad meets with an accident. His father for the first time, seems to find himself back and plunges into the whirlpool to save Mohammad.
The final scene shows Mohammad, in his father’s lap, his clasped fingers slowly opening the sunlight reflecting trough them. Majidi is an expert when it comes to playing with sunlight. He fins sunlight to be the most important symbol of conveying hope. We donot know of Mohammad’s fate. His death and his small clasp capturing sunlight, might symbolise his one-ness finally with the almighty. Otherwise, his father’s love, also is a beginning of a new hope for him.
This movie is deeply spiritual in nature and speaks of hope. Earlier also we have seen another beautiful, Iranian movie on a blind boy by Mohsen Makhmalbaf- Silence also shows the musical soul of a blind boy, whose sense of the world is through sounds. Colors of Paradise is a similar lyrical yet soulful journey, almost similar to a Sufi mystic’s journey to eternal enlightenment. The mystic throughout his life is in search of the route to get rid of the darkness; whereas Mohammad’s whole life was in the eternal sunshine, amidst this darkness.

At five in the Afternoon

At Five in the Afternoon
Directed by Samira Makhmalbaf

At five in the Afternoon
And the bull alone with a
High heart!
At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of the snow
Was coming
At five in the afternoon
When the bull ring was
Covered in iodine
At five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Exactly at five o clock in
The afternoon.
--- from Cogida and Death, by Federico Garcia Lorca
These were the exact words which appear as subtitles, while on the screen we see fast stretches of dull yellow sand and a blue burkha slowly appearing from nowhere. At the background of course Lorca’s poem being recited in a hushed whispering tone. This sets the morbid, hopeless tone of the movie. The sorrowful Lorca poem is about a bullfight and signifies gradual physical and moral degeneration. Throughout the movie that is exactly what Samira wanted to portray about the lives in post war Afghanistan, even without the Taliban regime.
Slowly the blue burkha takes the shape of a girl trudging her way amidst the sands balancing heavy pictures of water on her shoulders. It is evident that Nogreh had travelled miles to fetch these two pails of water. Just through the opening scene, Samira sets the morbid mood of the movie. The girls face bears no expression, as if such hardships are a part of her daily routine. Nogreh the protagonist, a 21 year young Afghan girl is one of the many girls struggling for survival in Afghanistan post Taliban regime.
Nogreh has learnt to take struggle in her stride. Nogreh’s father is a follower of stringent Islamic rule, who finds viewing women’s face would send him to hell. He makes a living driving a horse cart. He is against Nogreh’s wish to study in a school. However Nogreh is ambitious. She slips out of the seminary her father believes her to be attending to a school. The little distance from the seminary by-lanes to the school, Nogreh puts on high heels (banned in the Taliban regime) and clatters along the way to attend her class. In the school, Nogreh dreams of becoming the president of Afghanistan. School as in other movies by Samira viz. Blackboard or Apple is a democratic place. Girls are here allowed to speak their own mind. Therefore, on an impromptu speech when asked why Nogreh wants to become the president, she delves into her limited knowledge and gathers enough substance from her surroundings, to express her desire to improve the conditions of the women in Afghanistan. She says that at least she would make sure that there are schools for girls to study, and a 21 year old never needs to attend class with a 12 year old girl. Even the other girls in her school are equally courageous in openly discussing their views. 12 year old Mina who had lost her parents in the Taliban oppression, wants to become a president to make sure that no such atrocity ever occur to children.
However Nogreh’s life is full of struggles. Nogreh, her sister-in-law, her sick infant and Nogreh’s father are frantically in search of a place to stay. The bombed ghostly buildings, the broken aircraft hatchets, everywhere they find an abode, they are displaced by a larger crowd of migrant refugees from Pakistan and other places. Nogreh’s brother a truck driver is missing. The never-ending trail of refugees crowding the left-over buildings and shafts, makes water and food scarce. Amidst all these Nogreh still dreams of becoming the president. Slowly coming out of the cluster of bans and prohibitions Nogreh befriends a refugee young boy, who encourages her to pursue her dreams. For her school elections, Nogreh gets her photographs and practices her speech, on her white high-heels. Nogreh gets eager to know about the women politicians of her neighbouring countries. She wants to know about Benazir Bhutto from the refugees arriving from Pakistan. Even the French soldier of the retreating troupe seems to be oblivious of the political happenings around, which baffles Nogreh. She never expected the foreign militia, the apparent peace-keepers of her country to live in such abject political ignorance.
However it seems there is no hope for her. Inspite of her courage of defying norms, her destiny slowly pushes her towards hopelessness. Once again displaced from their make-shift abode, Nogreh with her family travels the cold, rugged, barren mountainous terrains of Afghanistan. Nogreh and her likes despite their sheer optimism still cannot defy the ill-fate of her country. To save her nephew from cold, her father burns down his horse carriage-a ghastly wooden skeleton. However the child dies. A sense of despair settles upon them. It seems that hope is like a mirage in this land torn with years of war and oppression.
The poem is recited slowly with deep struggled breaths as if to pronounce the slow decay that has set upon the country. A girl’s dream about a career is a complete absurd thought, where living through another day is the biggest struggle.
The movie has stunning visuals with blue veiled girls with blue parasols amidst the vast yellow stretches of sand. It seemed that after years of lives within the closed corridors, the women of Afghanistan are finally out in search of hope, if not life, but tragically this weary country is too feeble to offer even that.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar had shown Afghanistan under the Taliban regime and the desperate attempts of the girl to hold close the strains of hope from disappearing to survive. Post Taliban, we find, in the same land, a girl relinquishing her hopes again to survive.

Turtles Can fly

TURTLES CAN FLY
Written and Directed by Bahman Ghobadi.
Music: - Hossein Alizadeh

Often I wonder, what goes into the mind of those who run the countries when they make certain political, geo-political decisions. Of course all these decisions are in the favour of the nation they represent. And most and all time “only their nation”. Hence no qualms are made to obliterate any feeling or sentiment or action which means harms against the nation state. We proudly lead wars against other nations, we even try and silence those voices even within the nation who ever try to question the sanctity of the nation state be it in the form of violent Maoists or the oppressed minorities. But by that time the nation-state is no longer a geographical territory or a demographical entity lined by people of different caste, colour and creed. The Nation state which the statesman leads to war is now symbolic with our own chauvinism-whose claim to power and pride only lies in negating the enemy’s being. And once won, we can then bask in the glory of being a dominant prime power in the world scenario.
Well the above paragraph by this point in time must have established me as the much clichéd anti-war socialist and hence the reader might not pay any further interest to my further writings. In that case, I would request him to leave this article immediately and watch the movie “Turtles Can Fly”. Well of course it is not in true sense an Anti-war film but just brings affront the profanity and ridicules of a war through the different interplays of human emotions and their struggle for existence.
A nation state indeed depends upon its citizens. Hence from the very beginning the nation state invests all its efforts in shaping up the minds of the citizen so that this programmed might of the whole nation can work towards implementation of its pride and glory. Indeed then the children are the most important ingredient for a country to carry on the legacy of a proud nation and thereby shaping a better tomorrow.
And this is exactly where “Turtles Can Fly” strikes you a hard blow. All the protagonists of this movie are children, many even deformed physically and are seen doing stuff, frightening enough to shudder you off your sweet slumber of bright future and proud nation.
This 2004 movie is the first movie shot after the Iraq-U.S war in a refugee camp in Turkistan, in the Iraq-Turkey border. The first scene of the movie sets an extremely melancholic tone showing a teenage girl slowly walking to the tip edge of a cliff (as if to jump off). The next scene is one of the most delightful in the movie showing people in the village standing in rows up on the hill with ropes and trying to fix their television antennae there, while them at the bottom shouting left and right guiding them as to how to fix the antennae to get the clear picture. Amidst these an old man in the village, Ismaeel laments cursing Saddam that in addition to depriving them of water and electricity, now the dictator is stealing them off their skies, by shutting them off to hearing what is happening in the war. This sets the first perspective of the movie. Immediately you sense the tensions and apprehensions of the war. However the tone presenting these acts is in complete contradiction to the grave mood of the people in a refugee camp waiting for news of the war. This is done by the casual and easy-going demeanour of the teenage Satellite. Satellite nick-names so for his acumen in fixing TV satellites in the nearby villages. In fact he also coaxes Ismaeel and his fellow villagers to install a dish antenna at their village. With his limited knowledge and extreme confidence, Satellite is a leader of the children in that village. He is a self-acclaimed guardian of the children, providing them employment, bartering and trading their collective produce and thus fending off for himself and the kids. This apparent light-hearted mood is visibly terrifying when we see young children working to get the land-mines off the fields and Satellite easily selling them in the market. Satellite is their local hero who dreams about America invading into Iraq and ending their woes. The be-spectacled young Satellite leads the young children to the mine-fields to procure mines in a matter-of- fact way. Moreover the children almost die to work for him. This leaves you shocked, questioning whether Satellite is a manipulative youth alluring the children to risk their lives, quite contrary, this is a collusion of all the children in a struggle to live their lives, to sustain themselves, something which is almost forbidden to them in this war-torn territory. Hence we watch in wary young children transacting over mines and guns in the market as easily as over vegetables. The U.N representative in the village has no problems in buying mines procured by young children, however as a lower rate (since these will be de-armed and hence lesser market value). Satellite’s close friend Pashou who has lost one leg in such a venture of finding mines, uses his deformed leg dangling below his torso as a gun and poses to fire the tower guard soldier all in amusement. Their sense of humour leaves you numb. And then you start questioning what war has done to the future stealing them off their innocence, their dreams and thereby rendering the world numb and impotent.
Amidst this light mood are thick dark brush strokes of melancholy and repression brought into the movie through the silence of Agrin and her deep blue eyes. Agrin is the refugee girl from Halabcheh. Halabcheh a village in Iraqi Kurdistan, quite a significant name, reminding of the atrocities and genocide in form chemical attack hailed by Saddam earlier during the Iran-Iraq war. Agrin is living example of such atrocities who wants to get rid of Risa, her blind toddler child she bore due to the rape by the Iraqi soldiers. Her brother Hengov gifted with a power of clairvoyance has lost his both hands due to a mine explosion. Agrin constantly tries to get rid of the child, since the child is an extended part of her insidious bruised, bleeding ulcerous wound and only amputation of the wound would relieve her of her baggage of shame and pain. She denies the child and is almost cruel in her methods of getting rid of her. Agrin who herself is a child, is burdened by her past which lives in Risa and tries to bury that past. Once again, your own dreams and plans of days ahead, of a better future seems to vanish, seeing children brute and cruel in obliterating infants in ingenious ways. Yet amidst the cruelty, the tragedy leaves you with an impending pain, when you weep bitterly, when Agrin leaves the young infant in the mine-field and lightly kissed him before leaving. Your faith on the world and humanity just hits rock bottom.
It is Agrin; Satellite is smitten by and tries to please her in all sorts of way. No wonder he grows wary of Agrin’s brother Hengov who has lost both his hands in a mine explosion. Hengov on the other hand disagrees in conforming to Agrin’s denial of the child and takes it upon himself to protect the child. He in spite of being physically challenged is unable to get rid of his patriarchal ideology and hence thinks Risa as a part of his own family. In these actions he is almost oblivious to Agrin’s sufferings. Hence he is silent to Agrin’s questions about her future being threatened due to Risa. In fact the visual connection of the title “Turtles Can Fly” is connection the blind toddler, his pet turtles and Hengov. Ghobadi himself stated that when he was filming near the water the boy without arms reminded him of the turtles visually. In one scene Hengov, is seen, pulling off a landmine with his mouth, is almost presented as an irony, since though rendered arm-less due to a mine explosion, he needs food for his mouth and hence such risk bearing is necessary to sustain him. This sets Hengov’s attitude as a strong patriarch, who is hell bent to carry on, inspite of the atrocities he is subjected to, almost singing the Kurdish might like a turtle, slow but steady facing all the highs and lows.
On the contrary, hopelessness slowly grows over Agrin. So much so that she could hardly react to the light, fleeting colourful moments that Satellite tried to bring to her through his constant banter. She walks like a zombie through this landscape of poverty, helplessness, and hopelessness.
In the same speed the fate of the war was also coming to a close. Slowly the movie also approaches a tone of greater momentum and fatefulness. In a bid to save Risa (whom the village understands to be Agrin’s toddler blind brother), from a mine field Satellite gets injured. On that very day U.S defeats Iraq. People and children from the village keep on flocking to the city. Little Shirkooh who was a loyal follower of Satellite awed by his knowledge and confidence now leaves for the city with his uncle leaving injured satellite behind. He gifts Satellite a very expensive gift “Broken hand from the fallen statue of Saddam”. This was another striking moment of the movie where much was said without pronouncing anything. Shirkooh also states that now children need not pick up mines. Rather the American soldiers would pay them for handing over and procuring their own rubbles of artefacts and wealth, the crumbling leftovers of the war-worn territory. Saddam’s hand therefore would help Satellite later in realising a good price against it from the Americans. On the same night Agrin drowns Risa and also kills herself, leaving behind a tearful Hengov. At the background the American soldiers as well as the villagers all can now watch the “forbidden” channels brought to the impoverished refugee camp through satellite.
Now rendered lame, Satellite standing at one corner of the road watches in despair advent of the American soldiers and turns away his face from them. The earlier hopes are vanquished. This is beautifully presented through the use of “red fish myth”.
The red fish seem to be a sort of mythical creature for these children. In his efforts to win Agrin’s heart, Satellite tells Agrin he will catch one for her in the sinkhole nearby. When the Americans come, Shirkooh brings him some red fish purchased from the Americans. Satellite is thrilled and amazed. He stares in wonderment and pokes the bag a little, asking "what makes them red?" Perhaps he is thinking more is possible in a world with Americans, after all. But only a moment passes before the water in the bag turns red as well. Then, his hope in the Americans is completely destroyed. It would have been one thing for Satellite to gradually learn his dreams were unrealistic (there's no such thing as red fish), but he had just started to believe his dreams could come true. And then the symbol of these dreams weren't just proven to be a hoax, but they seemed dead. Satellite was mortified and devastated later to find in his pond of red fish, Risa drowned.

The movie seems to me as a catharsis to cure us. After this movie I suddenly became aware of the futility of boundaries and borders. The whole idea of triumph of one nation and the failure of another is similarly meaningless. All throughout our life, in spite of our beliefs in personal gain or loss, in spite of our attempts to holding to our own possessions, we all justify our activities as a way to secure the future of our progenies. We are not fools to think they would not act the way we do, but this is because, in spite of our own small betrayals and selfishness we all believe truly of seamless happy world and
“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace”
----------------- (John Lennon-Imagine)
Honestly this is due to our imagination of such a borderless world that we live today true to the human spirit. That we would live through our progenies in such a world which will celebrate the true spirit of universal brotherhood may sound to us as undoubtedly utopia, yet food for us to drive us through our daily dull and drudgery with hopes. However this movie starkly reminds you that through your activities of winning and harming, making ourselves powerful and others weak, you make yourself incapable of such hopes. Seeing children deprived of innocence, manipulative, self destructive, infants being murdered, shudders you, sends a chill through your spine. You suddenly realise that if this is the fate of the world for all the decisions that you are taking today, you might re-think what you are doing today.
Lastly about the title, Bahman Ghobadi as quoted in “The Progressive” in an interview by Maria Garcia stated that the title is of immense importance to him. The turtles live a very long life and in that whole life they live half in water and half in land. This according to Ghobadi is similar to the lives of the Kurds who live their life partly amidst anguish and partly amidst Joy and like the slow moving turtle still manage to move forward balancing their crustacean burden at the top of their backs.

The Children of Heaven

CHILDREN of HEAVEN
Directed by Majid Majidi

Years before when I had first read Pather Panchali what had appealed to me was a wonderful chemistry between the two siblings-Apu and Durga. Theirs was a world quite different to the one I was living. They stayed in a dull, sleeping village viz. Nischindipur, (like several others in West Bengal) and not to forget the harsh realities of their impoverished household, a constantly lonely and embittered mother struggling to save her children from the wicked clutches of poverty. Pather Panchali was all these. But inspite of that Durga and Apu’s world in an apparently dull village made me envious. I often longed for the fun and enjoyment these two little children managed to have inspite of the impending gloom their household was facing. It was a remarkable relationship between the two, a pair of doe-eyes simple village children-a doting sister and a loyal brother. Till then, I could never imagine that simple things like sitting quietly under a tree, running after a candy man who passes by ringing bells, viewing pictures in a bioscope shown by a travelling vendor, travelling through the lust green fields to have a fleeting glance of the whistling train, all these and more can be so joyful. The young children amused themselves with such simple joys from their surroundings. The immense simplicity of their hearts and the endearing bondage of love that they shared was enough to send the drudgery of their impoverished struggling life to a back-seat.
Years later, when I watched “Children of Heaven”, I was reminded instantly of Pather Panchali and definitely about Apu and Durga.
Indeed Ali and Zahra and the immense bondage of affection, these two kids of the impoverished Mandegar family share with each other bring forth the message of real happiness in life lies in the humane virtues of love and honesty.
Ali loses the only pair of shoes Zahra could wear at school. The children are aware of the fact that their father will be unable to buy another pair. Hence they devise a plot. Zahra would wear Ali’s sneakers to school and Ali’s school being in the afternoon, would retrieve the pair of Zahra’s return and wear the same to school. The film beautifully captures this race for time-management and how these two children cope up. Ali is often late at school and Zahra is often shy and conscious on these large, ill-fitting dirty pair of sneakers. However, their indomitable spirit never makes them disappointed for a long time. They constantly find out ways to come over the difficulties if any. They wash their shoes and find simple pleasures in doing such activities. Their ploy is completely hidden from their parents. There are remarkable ways in the movie, where they concoct the entire plan in the presence of their presence, by exchanging notes on their note-book. However Ali never uses his poverty to wage sympathy. When reprimanded for being late, he never cites his saga of lost shoes and delay due to shoe-swap. The Children of Heaven focuses on the relationship between the two children, their absolute determination to help one another, and their unquestioning assumption that whatever they do they must do it honestly and in a manner that is fair to others. At one point, for example, when they actually locate the missing shoes, they remain silent when they see that the girl now wearing them is the daughter of a blind street peddler.
The doting brother does not hesitate to give his prized gift from his teacher to make his sister happy. Zahra also at the same time is constantly loyal to her brother and never reveals the loss of shoes to her parents. Their simple joys in life come from their share of deep love and affection for each other.
The love leads to commit Ali to win a race to secure the 3rd position in an inter-country school race since the 3rd and not the 1st or 2nd, guarantees a pair of shoes as gift. Evidently Ali is disappointed when he discovers that he has come first.
It seems that their happiness depends more on the ushering of hopes each one has culminated for the other. The movie is resplendent with images of the warmth and candor they have for one other.
In spite of that, these children are very much children and Majidi never wanted to make them behave like adults. Hence Zahra suffers from pangs of jealousy seeing the other girl wearing her shoes and is also thankful to her, for retrieving her pen she had lost. These are the dilemmas we as children also face. However, with lesser baggage, children make decisions much easily. Hence Zahra has no problem to befriend this smaller girl once she finds out about her blind peddler father and let relinquish her bitterness. Indeed children are closer to “heaven”.
The final scene of the movie is beautiful and once again, I am reminded of one of the most poignant and memorable scenes of Pather Panchali which also involves water-Apu throwing away Durga’s stolen beads into the pond.
Majidi’s imagery here is even stronger and more beatific. In the film's final scene, Ali removes his sneakers and puts his blistered feet into a pond in which goldfish are swimming. The fish, a clear symbol of hope, nibble on his toes. Ali doesn't know what the film viewer has just seen: the father parking his bicycle, which has in the basket two new pairs of sneakers, shoes he was able to buy because he has a new job as a gardener.
Iranian movies seem to be resplendent with colors. The Persian carpets, the glazed pieces of baked bricks in colors of green, red, turquoise arranged in patterns giving forms to beautiful tile-works, the small tanks in the house compounds with schools of gold-fishes dancing and waving through form the usual imageries of the Iranian movies. They also make these movies a spectacular feast, apart from creating through images a cultural tapestry of Iran to the rest of the world. It is therefore quite understandable why most of the time, turquoise is a predominant color through these images symbolic of the national gemstone of Iran, the “turquoise”
Majidi’s view of Iran is also a state where citizens imbibe the basic virtues of humanity and love. And that is represented through Ali, Zahra and their family. The Children of Heaven offers a rare look at Islamic culture, which is often seriously misrepresented in the West. We see into Muslim schools, shops, a family's home, a mosque, and a wealthy neighborhood of Tehran. We sense a culture that stresses honesty, loyalty, responsibility, respect, fairness and trust in God.

The circle-dayereh

THE CIRCLE (Dayereh)
Directed by Jafar Panahi
Script by Kambozia Partovi
Plot Summary:-
The movie starts with the opening of a hatchet shutter in a maternity ward announcing the birth of a baby girl born to a woman called Solmaz Gholami. Solmaz’ mother is utterly disappointed hearing the birth of a girl child and has problems in accepting the birth, since earlier sonography have confirmed the foetus to be a boy. She is worried about her daughter’s fate with her in-laws and apprehends a divorce. She leaves the place without announcing the news of the girl child to her daughter’s in-laws and asks another girl related to her to call her uncle.
This girl rushes to the phone booth where she meets a group of three girls. The story then focuses on these three girls. The girls Nargesse, Arzou and a third one, were frantically trying to make a call. In the meantime, one of girls goes off to sell a gold chain and gets arrested. Nargesse and Arzou flee from that spot. These three girls were prisoners released on that very day, who were trying to collect money to travel to Rizalq, Nargesse village. Finally Arzou manages to collect some money and sends Nargesse off to her home-town. However Nargesse although manages to get a ticket without an I.D card by lying to be a college student, she has to abandon her journey plan, finding the bus being searched by police. She escapes and come to find Pari, another girl who had sneaked out of the prison with them.
Pari’s father refuses to allow her to meet Pari. Now the story once again leaves the track of Nargesse and takes up that of Pari, who leaves her house in a bid to escape the tyranny in the hands of her two brothers and her father. She first meets an old friend, who works behind a Cinema ticket counter and then goes on to meet Elham, an old friend she had met at the prison. Pari needs Elham to help her terminate her pregnancy. With her boyfriend getting executed at the prison Pari hardly has a choice but to secretly abort her child. Elham is now married to a doctor and is too worried to help Pari, lest her husband finds out about her past. Pari leaves the hospital and wanders onto the streets of Teheran, unable to move into a guest house or a hotel without an I.D card.
It is then when she traces a little girl being abandoned by her mother on the street. Pari gets hold of the fleeing mother and then again the story abandons Pari and focuses on the mother. She leaves her child thinking she will have a better future getting picked up by some other family or the welfare. The mother is first caught as a prostitute, but she later manages to escape. Then another woman who was picked up as a prostitute is taken to prison. She is placed in a cell with other women we met so far in the movie, and the phone rings outside the metal door. A guard answers and comes to the window, calling for Solmaz Gholami, the woman with a girl baby in the first scene. So is the circle closed. Hence the movie too ends showing the hatchet, (this time of the prison cell) being pulled down.

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Constant visuals showing railings, iron hatchets, closed doors of small cramped rooms, bodies cordoned with meters of flowing garment aka “chador”, bars, rods etc. everything which gives a feeling of claustrophobia and repression. Shot with a hand-held camera, following a technique of plan-sequence, Jafar Panahi’ s “The Circle” tells a poignant tale of the constant claustrophobia and suppression that Iranian women face throughout their lives. The use of such items and visuals in the movie therefore add special contours to the plot.
The story-telling is unique. It starts with one character with a story and jumps on to another with another story. None of the stories are started or ended. What we get are passing glimpses, which are powerful enough to give you a true sense of the impending threat these women are living in and their daily transactions with life and others amidst this constant state.
The film starts with a stark black screen, with sounds of a mother screaming in labor pain. The first shot is the glimpse of white when a hatchet shutter opens and the nurse declares the birth of a baby girl born to Solmaz Gholami. The next few scenes make it clear how un-welcome the birth of the girl is.
This story moves on to capture the goings-ons of lives of three girls, just relieved from prison. The youngest one, Nargesse is still shown to be vulnerable and has not lost all dreams of a better life in her village Rizalq. So much so, that a Van-Gough landscape painting reminds her of her village at Rizalq. In fact when the elder Arzou was busy managing money for her travel back home, Nargesse seemed busy to drown herself in the bits and pieces of the Teheran city life be it in the form of road-side cosmetic shops, a nervous groom or Music played by three girls. In one interview Panahi mentioned that those of us who watch movies in subtitles obviously cannot make out the different tunes and accents. That music was Azerbaijani in origin; Nargesse speaks in an Azerbaijani accent as well. So the music attracts her as reminiscence from her hometown which she thinks is a place away from her daily woes. Arzou is too matured to get lured by any such dreams or beliefs. Her only constant struggle seems to be to have a smoke, which she is unable to do due to the constant bans issued to single woman. Nargesse although coaxes a ticket out of the ticket counter, but her travel is halted due to police check-ups in the bus. Here Nargesse’s story gives way to that of Pari’s.
Pari’s house is shown to have an extremely narrow door, giving a feel of the cramped-ness and claustrophobia. The more vocal her brothers’ abuses seem to grow the more burgeoning becomes the sense of suppression over Pari which eventually leaves her in abandoning the house with her purse and a packet of cigarettes.
Pari is pregnant and her boy-friend has been executed few months back. She cannot have the child and needs a secret abortion. She reaches out to an ex-prison mate Elham. Elham, settled in a new life post marriage to a Pakistani doctor is too wary to help her friend lest she arouses any doubt in the minds of her husband, who is oblivious of her past. Elham is too afraid to get out of this secure life she has bargained for herself. This seems to be her only way to survive. Monir, Pari’s other friend has also accepted her husband’s second marriage while she was in prison. She in fact is sympathetic to the other woman, who inspite of quitting her career and taking care of her house and children would still be called “second” socially.
These are some stark bold moments in the movie which shows that in spite the constant threats and tyranny the indomitable spirit of these women and they draw their courage from within their own circle of other empathetic women friends.
Pari’s story gives way to the story of a single mother, who abandons her girl child and then to another woman, who is imprisoned as a prostitute. Finally she ends up at the prison where all the other characters are already present and the search of Solmaz Gholami is on and the hatchet shutter closes.
The ending note is that of inside or outside the lives of all these women is like living in a prison cell.
All these women at some points are seen to covet for one chance of smoking a cigarette which is prohibited. Smoking here refers to all those small chances of a free life without male intervention, the women dream to live and are constantly denied.
Also it’s the story of one single day which seems to be a day of wedding at Teheran. The last woman, who was taken into the van, gives one contemptuous yet sarcastic look at the blushing veiled bride, thinking of her entry into this circle to bargain a life out of one prison and inside another.
No-where in the movie one gets to know why the women have been jailed, what happens to them, and somehow that becomes irrelevant. The continuous sense of insecurity and threat, and the constant seizure of any sort of liberty to their spirit is what come across and that is what the director also wanted to reach the audience.
The ending scene seems to be the signature shot where the camera pans the whole room showing all the faces you have seen, in a circular view and the iron hatchet shuts down with a bang closing their world into darkness.

Baran-rain of love beyong boundaries

BARAN
Directed by Majid Majidi
Love transcends and transforms. Love has the capacity to metamorphose the grim and dirt to precious pearls. Love turns the most selfish of all to become the most selfless, capable of sacrificing one’s own self for love. Love makes you one with your loved one. You lose your identity and get enmeshed in a soulful union with the one you love. Love in a sense frees you from your tiny self. For ages Sufi mysticism has centred its locus on such feelings. The feelings of the dervish, with the penchant of losing himself in the love of the “great.” This love is that of universal brotherhood, that of humanity. This unfathomable love is determined to immerse and entwine the entire universe into one soul. There is no “other”. You become the same as the “other” losing yourself in true selfless love.
For ages, Persian poetry, imbibed from the deep mystic Sufism lyrically translates these feelings through words. One of the greatest Persian Sufi poets Jelaluddin Rumi in the below mentioned poem sort of crystallises this call of the inner self to liberate itself from its own tiny-self and become one with the universe.

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

Majidi’s Baran this time is almost like a call by the Sufi dervish to lose yourself in the love for humanity. Throughout the movie, we see the protagonist Lateef’s slow transformation from a mean, all-self young boy to a lover who sacrifices everything he has for his loved one, without even the expectation of reciprocation. We find Lateef’s tiny soul almost becoming buoyant in love and taking a flight to reach the firmament.
And as suggested by the above poem, almost lyrically the “silence” (as a signifier of your complete immersion in love) has been used throughout. The doe-eyed loved one of Lateef is silent throughout the movie, yet with an inviting gaze luring Lateef to drown himself in this silence and quietude. Lateef literally gets “born in the colors”, escaping from the ghetto like darkness of the construction site, following Baran in the pastel shaded village by lanes and the green draped girls.
Yet this is not merely a love story. Lateef here is just not a young boy, falling in love with the sorrowful Baran disguising herself as a worker boy. He is in form of Majidi’s appeal to the world, to reach out and love the “other” human, who might be from a different geography labelled as a “separate nation”. Throughout this subtle love story, Majidi has very carefully stitched in small elements the plight of the Afghan refugees working illegally at Iran. They get exploited by people like Memar who employ them at cheaper rates but also is their protector. In fact the movie starts with a tag-line showing in 2001 there are almost 1.4 million Afghan refugees in Iran. However they are unwanted. Hence quite expectedly, Majidi makes Lateef fall in love with such an “unwanted” Afghan refugee girl. His initial disgust and anguish for the refugee having made a dent at his easy-going job is relinquished. And this is not mere adolescence infatuation. He truly sacrifices everything to help her out to go back to Afghanistan, without ever thinking of losing her forever. He sells his identity card, thereby almost losing his identity in love
Also throughout, the reticent Baran has been presented as a mystical figure sometimes disappearing behind the curtains, the thick mist and the turquoise veils. And Lateef like a dervish running to and fro pursuing her. At the end of the movie, Baran goes away amidst the rains. However Lateef, it seems gets her truly to himself carrying her impressions in his soul forever.
Very intelligently certain elements of a love-story fable have been used by Majidi. Hence the shoe appears. While leaving for Afghanistan on a rain clad day, Baran’s shoe gets stuck in the mud. Lateef gently retrieves it for Baran’s tiny feet to slip into it. Apparently, this Cinderella like folklorish scene does not seem like culmination of a physical union. Rather it is a spiritual union, transcending beyond borders and boundaries, space and time. It is almost a hope of humanity being restored in the souls of all forever.
The rain-water washes away the thick imprint of Baran’s foot from the mud while Lateef drenches himself in the endless rain. By that time, Lateef has already lost his identity in love (sold his identity card) and hence he needs no Baran by his side. He has become one with her and inseparable thereby.
Rainwater appears at the end of the movie and almost appears as a cleanser. May be Majidi wanted to end the movie, with a hope of cleansing our dusty, captivated souls and fill them with the spirit of love and humanity. May be such movies would eventually cure the earth of the problems of hating other men and discarding them on the base of their race, class, caste and identity.
I can wait a lifetime for such Rains.