The Color of Paradise

The Color of Paradise  Directed Majid Majidi ★★★★
We’re in Bangladesh, at the Kelley’s. We wanted to watch “What about Bob?”. We can’t get the system working. So, we put on an Iranian film, with English subtitles. At first, I was a bit skeptical. What decent film could come out of Iran? This film was superb. The cinematography was first class. The story is about a young blind child, finishing a year of school in Teheran, and going home with his widowed father to the hills outside of Teheran. I had no idea as to the beauty of Iran. It was quite nice and quite rugged. The story discusses the dilemma of a father trying to find a life for his child, first by attempting to re-marry, later, by attempting to get his son to work with another blind wood craftsman. Ultimately the film has a tragic end. I was very tempted to give this film five stars, but knocked it down, only because I didn’t appreciate the director trying to be too artistic with the storyline, by leaving mystery such as at the end as to whether the boy met a tragic versus the fortunate end. It was more a storyline that you might expect from the avant-garde French directors, and while leaving a sympathy for the handicapped, failed to make a strong moral or philosophical statement, but left one hanging. One aside… if I would have seen this film several weeks ago, I would have been fairly annoyed by the dress of the women. Now that we’ve been in Bangladesh for a week, I am appreciating the (usually) colorful though fully-covered dress that is found in this part of the world.