Along with Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the star of yet another brilliant film director rose in the 1990s Iran, whose work helped to boost Iranian nation’s international reputation in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. In his career of two decades he has helmed eleven features topping the list of Iranian award-winning directors. Unlike the other Iranian filmmakers of the new wave, he feels at home working both in his country and abroad, which is of paramount importance to the balance between the strict religious norms of his native country and the opportunity to express freely his socio-political positions in a specific manner. It was this finding that piqued my interest ushering me to delve deeper into a culturally rich country, still marginal to the Bulgarian public.
Majid Majidi was born on 17 April 1959, in Tehran and this year he turns 58. At the age of 14 he joined amateur companies to then complete his studies in acting at the Academy for Dramatic Arts. Following the Iranian Revolution his affinity for cinema propelled him to playing minor parts in various productions, the most remarkable of those being that in the Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Boycott (1985), which gained him popularity. Soon after, he took up an independent career as a director, writer and producer. In 1992 he made his debut feature, Baduk, screened at Cannes IFF. The work addresses child slavery. The Persian term ‘baduk’ refers to people, often children hired against their will to carry smuggled goods from the border on foot. Like the other representatives of the Iranian new wave, Majidi uses children’s characters to represent metaphorically socio-political problems; still, he was not spared censorship. The director is vocal in many issues of Islamic fundamentalism, revealing at the same time the profound humane aspects of the faith. Regardless of an array of references to religious principles, Majidi’s pictures are rather like tales inspired by the Hadith[1] and mysticism, by symbolism of animals, objects and the deep metamorphoses of human soul. Following his characters, Majidi in his films deals with two subject matters: revelation from Heaven and repentance. His characters face human values and faith put to the test against a backdrop of a life full of tragic wear and tear, thus skilfully combining the tenets of Middle East philosophy and subjects popular with the modern film in the West.
The first film I watched was one of his recent works, The Song of Sparrows (2008), which won me over as an admirer of Iranian film generally, rather than of the excellent storyteller Majidi alone. His protagonist, a member of the socially disadvantaged groups, undergoes a string of life-changing events, and tragic too, at least at first sight. Though torn between material and spiritual choices, he comes to realise his sinfulness and climbs the ladder, one step at a time, to his own spiritual rebirth. The scenes of rural pastoral scenery and the vastness of the countryside are contrasted with the bustling city with its ugly concrete skyline and money thirsty citizens. Majidi’s artistry abounds in marvellous compositions, colours and a variety of perspectives.
The film tells the story of Karim (Majidi’s favourite Mohammad Amir Naji), a middle-aged family man who lives in a village outside of Tehran with his wife Narges (Maryam Akbari) and his three children, working on an ostrich farm. The film opens with striking pictures of the countryside, where Karim makes his living. His work is interrupted with news of his eldest daughter Haniyeh (Shabnam Akhlaghi) losing her hearing aid in the local water storage tank. An incident gives one of the ostriches the opportunity to escape into the countryside. Karim’s strenuous efforts to find the bird come to naught, and he is sacked.
Unable to provide for his family and to repair his daughter’s hearing aid, Karim finds himself in a foreign to him place fraught with difficult moral dilemmas, typical of the modern world: in the unfriendly hustle and bustle of the city (a reference to the neo-realists’ favourite subject). While touring the city on his motorbike, he is mistakenly taken by a hurried businessman to be a private motorbike taxi. Soon Karim discovers a lucrative new occupation ferrying passengers around the city on the back of his bike to make more money this way than back home on the ostrich farm. Karim also discovers that what is considered junk in Tehran would have some value back in his village and he starts taking home different objects to his homestead.
Karim loses his moral footing: his greed, avarice and acquisitiveness growing, he forgets his long-held dream of replacing his elder daughter’s Haniyeh broken hearing aid. Still, he has moments of being in two minds. Initially, Karim’s fortunes are on the upswing and he has worked his way out of poverty, He gives his friend, Ramezan (Hassan Rezaee), an offering to place at the shrine hoping that his life will continue to improve. Gradually, Karim’s wrongdoings settle in, replacing his good works. When his wife offers a spare door from the courtyard to a cousin of hers, Karim completely looses his cool and sets out to retrieve the door to store it back to his material world in his homestead. A wonderful aerial shot showing Karim trudging across the open fields with the blue door upon his back amazes with its meaningfulness and painterliness, marking the film’s climatic scene. Karim’s growing acquisitiveness makes him join a group of hired cyclists transporting refrigerators and succumb to the temptation to sell his cargo refrigerator on the black market to pocket the money. But the chance sighting of some ostriches on a truck somehow strikes a chord with his conscience, and he ultimately returns the refrigerator box to the original warehouse. This eye-opening experience amidst the hurly-burly of everyday life, yet another sign of change, signifies the freedom of the country, bringing him back to those moments of happiness, when he used to feed his birds. The last test he is put to proves to be fatal. Stuck in a traffic jam, he is reluctant to pay a young girl on the road selling smoking aspand (an Iranian custom dating from Zoroastrian times to ward off the ‘evil eye’) anything more than the minimum amount and it is here when he is punished. An accident involving the accumulated rubble leaves him disabled. From this point on, the protagonist becomes a humble observer of the surrounding world and he has a long-awaited lucid moment. Regaining his moral footing, he comes to understand the sufficiency of simple life through his family’s affection, when his wife and children earnestly set about making ends meet. The most moving is the seen when Karim sees a childish dream dashed, a foolish fish-farm scheme to grow and sell thousands of goldfish in the village water reservoir, but the barrel which contains goldfish bursts all the fish spilling out on the ground. Smiling, already aware of the chimerical trapping of the dreams of earthly things, Karim sings a joyful song: ‘The world is a lie; the world is a dream’, wiping away the tears rolling down the sad boys’ faces.
Given the movie’s title, we should broach its focus on symbolism of birds in Islamic philosophy, just one of many, occurring not in Islam alone. Karim’s fury to destroy the reservoir humbly subsides at the heavenly view of birds nesting there. The final scene abounds in symbolism succeeding in evoking a powerful emotional response in me. By releasing the sparrow from his room at the end, Karim seems to herald the emancipation of his soul.
This work is emblematic as part of contemporary film. The creative value of Majidi’s style is established along with the traditions of the neo-realist Iranian film school. The specific photographic principle of focusing on the things of life, typical of the Eastern film as a whole, is adhered to as well as moderation in and laconicism of the storyline, music and lines to achieve a fluent merging of a symbol into another symbol, of a philosophical idea into another idea, of reality into fiction and vice versa. The plethora of expressive devices, imbuement with social messages is like a missing pearl in an era of a universal cultural crisis. Hopefully, audiences will do justice to him for a film may seem to someone to be propagandistic or foreign, but also uniting in defiance of some indoctrinated political or religious prejudice.
[1] A collection of traditions containing sayings of the prophet Muhammad which, with accounts of his daily practice (the Sunna), constitute the major source of guidance for Muslims.
