279. Iranian film director Mohammad Rasoulof’s second feature film “Jazireh Ahani “ (Iron Island) (2005), based on his original screenplay: Brave cinema focusing on the travails faced by the common citizen, using allegory to bypass hawkish national censors

Mohammad Rasoulof is different from most filmmakers. He does not adapt written works—he writes his own original screenplays stitched together from what he observes and hears from Iranian compatriots. He has made a modest tally of seven fictional feature films to date and these have picked up a Golden Bear at Berlin, a Golden Peacock in India, a Gold and a Silver Hugo at Chicago and three major awards at Cannes’ important  Un Certain Regard section, among 36 prestigious awards and prizes won globally. The seven feature films do not include his two feature-length docu-dramas/documentaries—Intentional Crime (2022) and Head Wind (2008).

Rasoulof loves to encapsulate the human condition of present day life in Iran and the aspirations of its population in realistic tales that avoids direct criticism of the Iranian government. Unlike the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, who never made a film that was obviously critical of the government, Jafar Panahi  (once Kiarostami’s assistant) has evolved into an Iranian filmmaker winning praise, on his own merit, making feature films in which couched criticism of the lack of freedom in contemporary Iran is comparably more forthright. Rasoulof, in turn worked with Panahi on Panahi’s films initially, until Rasoulof, too, became an equally world-renowned filmmaker winning awards worldwide. The Iranian government has not been happy with  Rasoulof ever since he made made his second film Iron Island. Today, both Panahi and Rasoulof are in prison because of the contents of the films they made and their social activism. While Rasoulof’s first film Gagooman (2002) did not ruffle feathers, in spite of the fact that its two principal characters are prisoners serving time in an Iranian jail for minor crimes. That film was widely appreciated within Iran went on to win the Best First Film award at the Fajr Film Festival in Iran. Then came Iron Island (2005) and the spate of problems for the director from the Iranian government sprouted for each subsequent film he made.

The Captain (Ali Nasirian) warns the lad, Ahmad,
not to pursue the unmarried lass on the ship

The unmarried lass, with her face partially covered,
as per certain Muslim traditions, is living on the tanker
and shows interest in Ahmad

The film Iron Island is not about a real island; it is merely a description of a disused oil tanker anchored off-shore, a vessel that is gradually sinking. Rasoulof transforms the disused tanker, awaiting eventual shipbreaking, into a contemporary Noah's ark, providing refuge for homeless poor Iranians, young and old, under the care of a seemingly benevolent "Captain," who is able to provide food and medicines for the refugees her brings on board. He is able to buy provisions and medicines by gradually selling off metal parts and oil on the ship that the young men are made to identify and rip off the ship each day. The Captain is a veiled representation of the Iranian Government, which is dictatorial and brutal to those who step out of line, while appearing to be benevolent to others. The same benevolent Captain, in the film, also mercilessly tortures a lad, who escapes the ship when his beloved, an unmarried girl with a partly masked face, is given away in marriage by the Captain to someone else living on the mainland (a process that makes the 'Captain' richer). The lad is caught and brought back to the “iron island” all tied up in a boat.  The 'Captain' teaches the errant lad a tortorous lesson that leaves him almost dead.  The motley refugee group on the “iron island” represents the innocent folk with little or no income, who accept their fate without being able to question their benefactor’s (the Captain’s) motives or actions out of a combination of fear and gratitude. 

The boy called Fish, ultimately is made to leave the tanker for the shore but resumes his pastime, searching for small fishes, this time trapped on the sandy beach. He picks one and throws them back into the sea as he used to while on the tanker, little realizing that there are fishermen’s  nets set up in the water to catch such fish. 

The lovers on the tanker who were forcibly separated by the Captain are brought together by fate even though the lad is lying in a mosque recovering from his recent torture ordeal and his beloved is married to a rich person who owns a car and employs a chauffeur. The viewer is left to figure out the outcome of that possible meeting which is never shown on screen. Similarly, the viewer has to figure out the allegory of the Captain’s angry action of throwing out the working TV the boys had painstakingly made to work.

The "Captain" intervenes in a skirmish between
two lads as an elder and peace prevails

The "Captain" collects passports of all adults on the tanker
as precursor to collecting their signatures,
the purpose of which is never revealed, even when questioned.
The viewer has to conjecture the purpose. 

Rasoulof’s films provide punches but the endings of each film are deliberately left open-ended. He does it intentionally; his films have to pass the national censors. It is unclear how many of his films have actually been released in Iran and, if released, how much is censored. Iron Island may not be as sophisticated as Rasoulof's later films but it makes you think beyond the obvious tale. Rasoulof is definitely one of the finest and the boldest filmmakers in Iran, if not the world, now languishing in prison. His crime--he made films that were indirectly critical of lack of freedom in Iran in recent decades and his social activism. The bravery and the acclaim of his films cannot be equalled by most other filmmakers, currently alive and making films. 

The "Captain" is attired more like an Arab rather than a typical Iranian
but speaks Farsi the language of Iran

We live in a world where filmmakers cannot tell the truth without offending the governments in power, even though the respective governments criticised are often "elected" democratically. There are brave filmmakers who present the truth using allegory and fables, to bypass hawk-eyed Government censors. In Russia, film directors Andrei  Zvyagintsev, Andrei Konchalovsky  and Alexei German ,Sr., have made allegorical films. Raul Ruiz made films made films in exile with despondent references to his native Chile. When they do make such films they often win major awards at reputed film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Locarno, among others. Contemporary Iranian filmmakers Jafar Panahi, Mohammad Rasoulof, and Mohsen Amiryousefi are three prominent talented filmmakers who have made films that made the Iranian government uncomfortable often banning their release within the country. Panahi and Rasoukof  have been sentenced to long jail terms and are released for short periods for medical or other reasons, after which they have to return to prison and complete their sentences. It is not clear how many citizens in Iran have seen the completed works of these filmmakers in public screenings and, if so, whether the films were shown without cuts by the censors. 

Iron Island is merely a harbinger to Rasoulof’s later films. His later film Goodbye is an extension of the young lad’s decision to leave the tanker and the oppressive environment in Iron Island. His film Man of Integrity, a film on corruption within Iran and on intolerance of minorities is glimpsed by the Iron Island’s Captain’s actions of collecting signatures of the refugees without adequate explanation and sale of the ship’s parts without the knowledge of the real owners, who innocently believe he is doing a good deed for the refugees. What is quite evident is that Rasoulof has improved further technically with each film, ultimately reaching world standards in There is No Evil, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival. Panahi, Rasoulof and Amiryousefi need the support of cineastes who value filmmakers who use the medium creatively for improving the freedom within Iran and promote the aspirations of its citizens..

 

P.S.   Iron Island won the Golden Peacock award for the best film in competition at the International Film Festival of India (2005); the Cinema prize and the Script prize at the Avanca Film Festival (Portugal) (2007); the Special Jury prize at the Gijon International  Film Festival  (Spain) (2005); Screenplay award at the Montreal Festival of New Cinema (Canada) (2005; and the Critics prize at the Hamburg Film Festival (2005). Three of Rasoulof’s later films Goodbye (2011), A Man of Integrity (2017) and There is No Evil (2020) have been reviewed on this blog earlier. So are Zvyagintsev's The Return  and Leviathan; Konchalovsky's Shy People, The Postman's White Nights and Paradise; Ruiz'  That Day, all films with subtle bits of allegory on politics and its effects on the common citizens. (Please click on their names in this post-script to access those reviews) 

249. Portuguese director Pedro Costa’s seventh feature film “Vitalina Varela” (2019): Stunning, austere, melancholic docu-fiction film that highlights the power of cinematography, sound management, lighting, acting, drama and art direction, presenting an aesthetic alternative to Hollywood and Bollywood films

Film director Jean Luc Godard  had said “In the temple of cinema, there are images, light and reality. Sergei Parajanov was the master of that temple.”  Parajanov, the late master filmmaker from Russia, underscored the importance of bright colours and realistic sound, while Pedro Costa’s  Vitalina Varela goes a step further, accentuating darkness, dark skin, and shadows with muted indirect lighting in a “colour” film, aided with natural sound. When you do see bright images in Vitalina Varela, as at the end of the film, it is not just real bright light and colours, it presents a metaphoric change in the film’s narrative structure.

The award-winning actress plays herself in the film about herself

Vitalina Varela is distinctly different from the Oscar nominees of 2019 or well known commercial films with renowned actors. Vitalina Varela is an unusual film with a title that has the name of its lead actress. The film narrates the real story of its lead actress, a Cape Verdean immigrant arriving without papers in Portugal following her husband’s demise.  (She acquired the formal  papers authorizing her stay in Portugal halfway into the production of this film, several years after her actual arrival.) Its director Pedro  Costa, and his close-knit committed production team of cinematographer  Leonardo Simoes, sound mixers (Joao Gazua and Hugo Leitao), production manager, and stock actors can be proud of their low-cost final product that offers higher aesthetic values than the multi-million dollar products from either Hollywood or Bollywood. It is definitely one of the remarkable films made in 2019, if not the decade, at least for audiences less addicted to conventional action and sex that makes a majority of contemporary films make money at the box office. While the film is made by a white (Caucasian) Portuguese crew,  all the  characters in Vitalina Varela  are dark-skinned Africans from Cape Verde. Half of a film festival audience viewing Vitalina Varela  (in which this critic was a spectator) walked out of the film screening halfway, while the other half stayed rooted in their seats right up to the end of the film and stood up to applaud the film, even though none of the filmmakers were present at the screening.  (This critic recalls that in 1979, when an Andrei Tarkovsky film retrospective was screened in New Delhi, during an international film festival, some spectators who had paid for their tickets tore up their seats at the Archana theatre where the films were screened in frustration as they could not comprehend or appreciate Tarkovsky's cinema. Today, ironically the same films, are likely to be treated with awe and respect.)

Ms Varela, the lead actress of  Vitalina Varela, has little or no acting experience. She emotes and reconstructs with staggering dignity the world of her recent widowhood and love for her late husband, Joachim, who chose to live the demanding  life of an immigrant in the Fontainhas sector of Lisbon, Portugal, for some 25 years, retaining for his memory Ms Varela’s wedding photograph, carefully preserved in a photo frame in his ill-lit, shanty dwelling. This award-winning performance of the actress is comparable to the very best in the world, thanks to Costa’s perseverance and extended committed interaction with her developing the film from scratch for several years prior to the shooting of the film. 

The priest (Ventura) and the widow (Vitalina Varela),
in the church without any other worshippers

The most amazing part of the film Vitalina Varela is that there was no prior written script (just as in most  of Terrence Malick’s films) making it all the more difficult for Costa to  attract producers. The spoken words are essentially recollections of Ms Varela’s life and her second interaction in Lisbon with a real Cape Verdean  priest (played in the film by Ventura, a regular actor in several of Costa’s films), who buried Ms Varela’s husband Joachim, just days before her arrival in Portugal. The concept of the film itself emerged from  Costa’s, his wife’s, and his team’s interactions for 4 years with Ms Varela. Costa has explained that the film evolved with those extensive interactions and the award-winning performance Ms Varela was her honest outpouring of grief and loving memories of her husband who had promised her a palace in Lisbon decades ago, only to find it was a mere shack, which included some clues left behind in the derelict abode of the late husband’s recent lover. The evolution of the film has several parallels with the 2019 Brazilian film The Fever, which also was made after its director Maya Werneck Da-Rin's extensive interactions with indigenous Brazilians.

Contemporary Russian maestro Aleksandr Sokurov made unforgettable, poetic  films: Mother and Son (1997) and Father and Son (2003). Had Sokurov made Vitalina Varela, he would possibly have titled it as “Wife and Husband.”  

Vitalina Varela is a recounting of real events of Varela’s arrival in Portugal from Cape Verde island in the Atlantic, off the African continent (and a former Portuguese colonial territory), a few days after the death and burial of her husband Joachim, originally a bricklayer, more recently a person who survived by doing odd jobs. Like Sokurov’s elegiac Mother and Son, Costa’s Vitalina Varela is essentially a monologue of Vitalina seemingly speaking to her dead husband about her memories with him, comparing the stone house in Cape Verde they built together decades ago, with the tin shanty house in Lisbon.  The Lisbon “palace”  that Joachim promised her decades ago that she occupies following Joachim’s  passing is a shanty house with a leaking roof.

The priest (ventura) metaphorically "carrying the cross
on his shoulders": director Costa and
cinematographer Simoes at their best

The only real dialogues in the film are those between the priest—a real character, a priest of a derelict church in Lisbon, reeling under his guilt of turning away a busload of Cape Verde Christians, who had approached him while he was a priest in Cape Verde to baptise a child without proper papers. The busload of Christians he turned away were killed in a road accident a short while later and the priest carries that cross of his action of refusing to baptise the child to this day.  Costa’s film brings together two individuals from Cape Verde, both suffering from recent tragedies, both religious individuals, both alone in a new country where even God seems to have forsaken them.  One line spoken during  the interaction between the two is evocative: “I had the cross of Christ on my shoulders. I couldn’t move. When I fell, I was free.” A fascinating religious commentary, indeed, in a film that did not have a prior written script.

In Vitalina Varela, the spoken words are less important than the visuals.  A striking point in the film is the arrival of Vitalina in Lisbon.  A plane arrives on the tarmac of the airport and the sole V.I.P. to emerge from it is Vitalina. The “V.I.P.’s” bare feet are shown as she climbs down the steps from the plane. (A cineaste would recall the Japanese director Mikio Naruse’s  classic 1960 film When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (with proper shoes) and the inverse relationship of the wet, bare feet shown in Vitalina Varela descending from the plane in this sequence.)  You would expect lights in an airport at night—but the scene is dark, the person is dark skinned, and wearing clothes appropriate for mourning. The “V.I.P.'s" reception committee are made up of fellow Cape Verdean immigrants working as cleaners/support staff at the airport, one of whom honestly tells her “Vitalina, my condolences. You are too late. Your husband’s funeral  was 3 days ago. There is nothing for you in Portugal. His house is not yours. Go back to Cape Verde.” Some reception for a widow!

A rare bright shot in the film is at the grave of Joachim

Just as Parajanov emphasized light in his films, Costa and his cinematographer Leonardo Simoes emphasize the importance of light by erasing it and using it sparingly to accentuate its importance. This is a colour film that appears to show more black (or lack of light) in most of the sequences with indirect lighting often behind the actors to give a silhouette. It fits with its the subject matter—it is a film dealing with death, sorrow, loneliness, African immigrants struggling to survive in Europe, lack of money and love. Even in daytime, much of the scenes are shot in shadows. Each of these dreamlike shots is aesthetically crafted in austere surroundings and a pleasure to perceive.  There are unforgettable sequences of tired immigrant workers returning home at night, hardly speaking to each other, in dimly lit streets close to cemeteries. You are reminded of sparse visual stage settings crafted by playwrights Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco for their works. And natural sounds and bleak visuals, "speak" as much as humans do in this film.

Vitalina interacts with another woman,
who has burdens of her own

Ultimately Vitalina Varela is a film about a widow and the spoken words are bound to reflect a feminine viewpoint. In a response to the priest, who has kind words for her dead husband, Vitalina acerbically responds with criticism that is considerably true ”Men favour men. When you see a woman’s face in the coffin, you can’t imagine her suffering.” Suffice it to say that the film captures all this and more.

The citation for the film’s Silver Hugo award at the Chicago film festival  sums it all: “..for a ravishing and masterful vision between horror and melodrama, spirituality and desperation that blew the jury all away."

P.S.  Vitalina Varela is one of the author’s top 20 films of 2019. Much of the dialogues quoted above are from memory of a single viewing and are approximations. The film won the Golden Leopard award for the best film and the Best Actress award at the Locarno Film Festival; the Silver Hugo Award for the best feature film at the Chicago International Film Festival; the Best Director, Best Actor and Best Cinematography Awards at the Mar del Plata Film Festival; the Grand Prize of the Jury at the La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival (France); and the Best Cinematography Award at the Gijón International Film Festival (Spain). The Brazilian film, The Fever, mentioned in the review, is also one of the author's top 20 films of 2019.

221. Bulgarian director Stephan Komandarev’s film “Posoki” (Directions) (2017): Has God indeed left Bulgaria along with a third of its population, to quote a character in the film?

Directions could be described as Central Europe’s companion piece to the celebrated Argentine 2014 black comedy and film anthology Wild Tales. Both are portmanteau films that deal with contemporary economic and social concerns of the middle class in their respective global geographies. Both films make you laugh at times, only to present a more somber appraisal of reality. 

There is a virtual bond between Stephen Komandarev and Argentine director Damian Szifron, even though they might not have met each other or even seen each other’s works. While Szifron’s film gave us six stand-alone original tales written by the film director himself, Komandarev’s film is about six taxi drivers’ diverse actions as they drive their taxis in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia, also original tales co-scripted by the Bulgarian director with Simeon Ventsislavov.  Szifron’s Argentine film, in the director own words, was about “law abiding citizens who face difficulty in making money and do so many things we are not interested in…a lot of people get depressed and some explode and this is a film about those who explode.” Komandarev’s film, too, is about some people who “explode” and some others who choose alternate solutions, when faced with economic and social difficulties in leading an honest life, by helping those who need help, whether it is humans or animals, and even undertaking a second unrelated occupation to make ends meet.

Trying to resolve financial problems in ways he knows best

US film director Jim Jarmusch had made a somewhat parallel film in 1991 presenting five taxi drivers in five cities in a film called Night on Earth. Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi used the same template in his 2015 film Taxi with a single taxi driver (Panahi himself) interacting with various customers in Teheran.

Directions is a film that presents the sad reality of Bulgaria’s post-Communist, post-Glasnost society, where the pessimists have fled the country for greener pastures and the optimists have stayed on, despite growing corruption, rising costs of living and persistent  Communist mentality of the past. People work hard to earn honest wages–yet they suffer heart attacks and end up leading lonely lives. Prostitution is rampant as young girls want to live on the fast lane despite elders advising them to change.

A schoolgirl takes a ride

All the taxi drivers in Directions drive their taxis due to their economic and social compulsions.  One of the taxi drivers is a middle-aged woman whose economic plight might have hinged on an event during her university days when she refused the sexual advances of a man who a decade later is wealthy and based in Austria but fails to recognize her in the present avatar of the taxi driver. Another is an Orthodox priest driving a taxi in the night to augment his income, an unusual scenario elsewhere in the world. One might laugh at certain situations the film’s script offers but overall the film is pessimistic with a dash of religion thrown in. Even the dead drive taxis in this film, in the epilogue.

From start to finish, the underlying commentary is on earning money to survive in modern Bulgaria. A taxi driver uses his wiles to stop a man who has called his taxi for a ride before attempting  to jump off a bridge, ostensibly to get his precious fare that would be lost if the man does jump off.  But the segment reveals other unusual contemporary social problems—the man is a philosophy teacher living alone whose students have made fun of him on Facebook that leads him to think of ending his life.  What follows are uplifting and witty interactions between him and the taxi driver. The film Directions proves that the Bulgarian taxi drivers have a heart of gold and are not merely focused on making money.

Loneliness, poverty, Facebook and a taxi driver make an interesting cocktail
in this suicide attempt

Unlike most European films, Bulgarian cinema gives a lot of importance to family ties. A father lives for his daughter’s future. One episode of the film is on a father bemoaning the loss of his son, a loss he cannot tide over. He projects his love for his dead son by feeding a stray dog each night.

...and taxi drivers who take revenge for what led them to a life of a taxi driver

There are suicidal characters. There are characters who commit adultery. There are others who take revenge on those who have made their life miserable in the distant past (as in the opening segment of Wild Tales).  Opposing the negativism are the generous individuals who drive taxis in Sofia not merely for money but extending a helping hand when required to those in trouble—young school girls, old and sick bachelors who need medical and financial help, and suicidal teachers with little or no family to fall back on during stress.

Taxi drivers who help the sick and lonely to reach their destinations

Komandarev’s film strings the beads of the stand-alone episodes in a commendable manner to give us a lovely Bulgarian necklace, unlike its Argentine counterpart. The first episode ends with a taxi driver that is brain dead. Many of the later episodes have other taxi drivers listening to the news of that unfortunate incident. Another middle episode has a taxi driver taking a famous heart surgeon rushing to undertake a last operation in Bulgaria before he emigrates to greener pastures. Later in the film, you have a unemployed and lonely baker having to call a taxi to take him to hospital where he has been told they have a heart available for transplant that would suit him. The viewer has to string the not-so-obvious beads of the necklace.

Taxi drivers who care about stray animals as much as their own family

Where does religion fit into all this? At the obvious level, there is an Orthodox priest moonlighting as a taxi driver with a cross dangling on his chest.  The epilogue of the dead taxi driver continuing his trade and caring for his daughter after death is another. The interesting philosophical conversation between the priest-turned-taxi-driver and his passenger on the way to get a new heart at the hospital is a highlight of the film.

An Orthodox priest moonlights as a taxi driver

More than religion, it is the sad state of Bulgarian family life that is laid bare. Husbands cheat on wives. Many men lead lonely lives of bachelorhood. School girls grow up in the absence of their biological mothers and some take to prostitution. And yet unlike other parts of Europe, Directions seem to be a soulful cry from those who have stayed put in Bulgaria wistfully harking back to their social and religious traditions of old, amidst the ruins.

P.S. Directions is one of the author’s top 10 films of 2017. It won the best screenplay award at the Gijon International Film Festival and was picked to participate in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. Two films mentioned in the above review, the Argentine film Wild Tales (2014) and the Iranian film Taxi (2015) have been reviewed earlier on this blog. (Click on the name of the film in this post-script for a quick access to those reviews on this blog.)

108. Iranian screenplay-writer and director Majid Majidi’s film “Baran” (Rain) (2001): A Sufi take on the mosaic of Iran

Many would assess and dismiss this delicate Iranian feature film as an interestingly made love story between a young Iranian man and an Afghan woman refugee in Iran,or even as interesting cinematic tale where the woman lead actor does not speak a word. However, the film communicates much more than a regular love saga. Baran won the the Grand Prix of the Americas at the 2001 Montreal Film Festival and the Freedom of Expression Award of the US National Board of Review.

The story of Baran, the film, is a based on a delectable screenplay conceived by the director himself. First, the name Baran is the name of the young Afghan lady in the film and Baran also means “rain.” So big deal, one would say. But rain is the ultimate scenario for the final sequence of this Majidi movie. Again rain might not mean much to a casual viewer of this film. Majidi, the screenplay writer, has deliberately chosen the word Baran to link the two elements of the movie, the human and the natural.

Many would assume the principal subject of the film to be the female protagonist Baran. Yet Majidi surprises the viewer by a clever inversion of the subject—the film turns out to be a tale about the man who falls in love with Baran rather than Baran herself. The film traces the gradual change in the male character before and after falling in love with the girl. Once in love, Lateef the young Azeri Iranian evolves from the cheeky young  fighter-cock constantly conscious of the importance of accumulating savings at each opportunity, to an individual who slowly transforms into an ascetic giving up all his wealth and the costly identity papers for his love’s family who needs those items of “pelf” more than him. Lateef in love is a transformed individual, he doesn’t chase away birds but feeds them. This is close to the Sufi ideals that one needs to adopt in life to be “united/aligned with the Beloved/Divine forces.” Somewhere near the middle of the film a troubled Lateef encounters an Afghan shoemaker with a "Rumi-like" visage who says the enigmatic words “From the hot fire of being apart, Comes the flame that burns the heart.” Probably these lines are from the Sufi poet Rumi, I do not know for sure. It is important for the viewer to note that that the shoemaker is never seen again by Lateef, and that the end of the film is also about a shoe that is returned to the owner and footprint of the shoe is shown being erased by rain.

In Iranian cinema, one hardly encounters physical touch by the opposite sexes, and true to this spirit the only acknowledgement of love is a smile or a furtive glance acknowledging the lover. With such constraints, memories become valuable than touch and more so in a movie like Baran, which transcends a love tale to enter a higher level of philosophy knocking at the doors of Sufism (and perhaps Tabula Rasa?).

The movie Baran is replete with minor details that indicate ethnic differences within the Iranian population that becomes apparent in the film but not to a casual visitor to Iran (I have visited Iran more than once on official work but never noticed the mosaic of ethnicity beyond the sprinkling of Armenians in Teheran and the bulk of the Persian Iranian population). Baran could be essentially classified as a tale of the Afghan refugee and the Afghan's eventual desire to return to his homeland, but Majidi’s Baran introduces colourful vignettes of Azeri Iranian (as associated with Azerbaijan), the Turkmen Iranian (as associated Turkmenistan), the Kurds and the Lurs. The official website of Baran explains the details. The construction site brings the different ethnicities together. Majidi’s screenplay knits the logical interplay between the communities: the Persian Iranians play the Inspectors, the Azeris bond together and take care of each other, the Kurds and the Lurs are easily provoked to fight the Azeris, while the poor Afghans, without identity papers, toil away for a fraction of what the others earn always fearing deportation if spotted by the Persian Iranian inspectors. And in Majidi's script and film, each ethnic group lives in separate rooms while they work together at the same construction site. Forget the love story, because these details, lovingly crafted, tell another realistic story that is perhaps more interesting than the obvious love tale.



There is a strange similarity that I note between Majidi’s Baran and Aki Kaurismaki’s Man Without a Past. In both movies, the past of the main persona is forgotten and a new person emerges harking back to Tabula Rasa--to start life anew. In both films “rain” is a mystical symbol—in Baran, you see the footprint of the beloved (or philosophically the one you seek) in the rain towards end of the film; in Man Without a Past there is rain on a clear day to grow potatoes, rain that grows six or seven potatoes on a small patch of land, and the last half-potato is given away to a stranger who wants to eat it to avoid scurvy! Futrther, in Baran there is a departure by a hired vehicle for Afghanistan, in Kaurismaki’s film there is a train that is moving forward, a visual metaphor used to punctuate past and future. Both Majidi and Kaurismaki seem to have similar minds and affinity in their personal philosophies.

A closing thought. Did Majidi, when he wrote the script, intend to make a love story relating to one dazzling individual that struck a chord in a boy’s heart and mind or did Majidi want to make a philosophical film on the life of a young man maturing into one that cares for others less fortunate than himself? I feel both stories co-exist in this film and it is the viewer who has to choose which tale is the more powerful strand of the two.

P.S. Aki Kaurismaki's film Man Without a Past has been reviewed earlier on this blog