"Children of Heaven"

Majid Majidi’s "Children of Heaven" is the poetic and charming film of two Iranian siblings confronting a particular poverty-driven issue. The children apply a simply and good- natured approach to this issue and are inadvertently rewarded at the end.

Film Summary
The film takes place in the capital Tehran, and follows two young siblings, Ali and Zahra. In the beginning of the film Ali looses his sister’s only pair of shoes. In an effort not to anger their father with the expense of buying a new pair of shoes, the two siblings decide to keep the missing shoes a secret and share Ali’s one pair of beat up sneakers. Zahra would go to school in the morning and run straight home everyday to return Ali’s sneakers so that he could then go to school in the afternoon. It was heartbreaking watching these children share something so mundane as a pair of beat up shoes. Later in the film, Ali enters into a school race. The third place prize is new pair of sneakers, so Ali intends to run the race, win the sneakers, and exchange them for a pair of shoes for his sister. The good-hearted nature and innocence of both Ali and Zahra unfortunately stands in contrast to most American kids their age. They seemed determined to beat the odds of poverty, and still maintain their innocence and upright values. Ali “unfortunately” comes in first place and is utterly disappointed. He comes home empty handed, but unbeknown to him by the end of the film, his father has earned enough money to buy both his children new shoes. The film ends with Ali in despair but with his father on his way home to present his beloved children their gift.

Scenes that stood out:

Scene 1 Gardening Job
Observing the strata of economic wealth and lifestyle in Tehran was very interesting. Ali’s family ate, slept, and lived in a single room home with the landlord constantly complaining of late rent payments. In one particular scene, Ali’s father has an opportunity to earn extra money by maintaining gardens in Tehran’s wealthy district. Ali assists his father in approaching beautiful “western-style” mansions to ask for work. It was eye-opening to realize the disparities in Iran's development and how the wealth seemed to equate with western influence. After earning some extra cash, Ali and his father run into a bit of bad luck by getting into a minor accident. I imagine that much of their hard earned cash went to restoring their health and the dad's broken bike. The road out of poverty, as the film may allude, is very difficult in this environment.

Scene 2 Race Day
In this scene, Ali's community race day, it was as if you took a clip from an American race day in the nineties - neon track suites and all. The proud mothers and fathers prepped their sons for competition, a similar scene throughout US peewee game days. What stood out for me was the motherly apparel. Most US peewee game day mothers would wear the following: "mom jeans", team jerseys, a corny sunvisor, with a camera or video camera in hand. In contrast, all of the Iranian mothers wore their head veils, long sleeve dresses past the ankles, but still with the camera or video camera in hand. My brain had difficulty wrapping itself around this scene. It was just so familiar and yet so different. I wonder how an Iranian family would view the American spectator apparel at a similar event.

Scene 3 Tea at Home
In this particular scene, Ali's mother asks Zahra to make her father a cup of tea as he chops blocks of sugar for the mosque. Without question or complaining, Zahra makes her father tea (a central drink Iran). The daughter sets the tea by her father. With dozens of sugar cubes by his side, the father asks for sugar from the family's sugar bowl. Zahra questions why she should use their own resource for sugar if there in front of the father lies such an abundance. The father, though extremely poor, demonstrates the value of honesty to his kids by noting that the sugar does not belong to them but to the mosque, and that taking any would be stealing. It's a moving scene that perhaps shares where the children learned some of their own positive behavior.

Review of "Before the Rain"

In the film “Before the Rain”, ethnic conflict is portrayed through the lens of a variety of characters. The film is separated into three segments: Words, Faces, and Pictures. In Words, a young Macedonian Christian monk is confronted with the choice of protecting a condemned Albanian Muslim girl from execution. After being expelled from the Monastery, the former monk leaves with his Albanian friend/love to escape the chaos of a forbidden existence. In the end, the girl is discovered and killed by her own brother. As John Simon points out in “Wild and Wilder”, this murder is an unmistaken symbol for the fraternal conflict consuming this land.
In Faces, a young British professional is caught between appeasing her Macedonian lover and making amends with her estranged husband. As she and her husband meet at a nice restaurant for dinner, a clash turned violent separates her and her husband forever. Two foreign background gentlemen dispute over unknown conversation. The tensions mount in their Slavic tongue ending with shots fired throughout the restaurant killing and wounding many. This scene perhaps is an interesting reflection of the western world. To the western world, the Balkan conflict was a consistent background noise, a small disturbance in a nice restaurant. The conflict exploded to the point where, in a new interconnected society, events were not as easy to ignore. Manchevski’s dinner portrayal leads one to believe that in recognition of war, no one should be left unscathed.

Finally in Pictures, the Macedonian lover described in Faces returns as the main character in the film. Alexander, finds himself caught between what he remembers of his former Macedonia, what it has become, and what it will be if the surmounting conflict continues. Alexander attempts to relive his past by visiting a former love interest. Unfortunately his former love interest is set behind an almost visible line of ethnic and religious divide. In the end, Alexander attempts to right his people’s wrongs by saving the daughter of his former love. Alexander gets himself killed in the process by his own family member – a repeat of irrational fraternal discord. Alexander’s death marks the beginning of the elusive rainy season. Rain on a dry land typically symbolizes change – for the better. In the case of “Before the Rain”, the rainy season could symbolize only be the beginning of a new, greater cycle of bloodshed. Centuries of such cycles should prove this to be true.