The Song of Sparrows

Imagine an Islamic Serious Man with some Bicycle Thief thrown in, and you’ll have an impression of this Iranian film by Majid Majidi. A middle-aged man works on an ostrich farm deep in the steppe-like countryside and lives in a rural village with his wife and three children. A mishap gets him fired from the ostrich farm, his lovely teenage daughter breaks her hearing aid right on the verge of school examinations, and other misfortunes soon pile up, some of which look like lucky breaks at first. Going into Tehran to seek a new hearing aid, he is staggered by the cost, but surprised when someone hops on his motorbike and gives him directions, with a cash payment at the destination. Soon he is carrying passengers and merchandise all over the city, and scavenging discarded stuff for a huge pile growing next to his house. There are some abrupt and inexplicable shifts in the story, but the arc is clear enough. There was a moment that worked exactly like the one when the Serious Man physics professor erased the “F” and wrote in “C,” as the trying of a man’s soul, with inevitable and immediate consequences. In this film the piety may finally outweigh the satire, and the pretty may outshine the dark, but I am stuck on the unexpected similarity between Majidi and the Coen brothers. (2008, dvd) *7* (MRQE-80.)

Having reminded myself just how good a director Majid Majidi is (I also recommend his Oscar-nominated Children of Heaven (1997), and Baran (2001) too), I filled in his filmography by watching The Willow Tree of 2005, which revisits the theme of blindness that he explored in the sublime Colors of Paradise (1999). In this film a university professor is miraculously restored to sight, but in the process loses the light of the divine. As usual in Iranian film, a strong simple idea is explored with visual and moral depth, like a parable or folktale. This one is perhaps too pious, and the protagonist not sympathetic enough, but after seeing Majidi's other films, you might want to watch The Willow Tree as well.