A SONG OF SPARROWS
Iran, 2008, 96 minutes. Colour.
Mohammad Amir Naji.
Directed by Majid Majidi.
The Song of Sparrows is yet another fine film from writer-director Majid Majidi. He made a great impact in the mid-90s with Children of Heaven and made other films like The Colour of Paradise, Baran, The Willow Tree. The main actor, Mohammad Amir Naji, portrayed the father in Colour of Paradise and won the best actor award at the Berlin film festival for his portrayal of the father in this film.
The film is both serious and comic. It shows the beauty of the Iranian countryside and the simple life of people who live there. This is contrasted with the busyness of life in the crowded city, especially the materialism and the incentives for wealth. The film shows the effect on the upright father who worked on an ostrich farm but goes into Tehran and by accident almost becomes a taxi driver, feeling the need for gaining money and material goods. The film also shows the effect on the family, especially the children and their ambitions.
The film is a kind of microcosm of life in Iran at the beginning of the 21st century.
1. Iranian cinema, its quality, its stories, its deep humanity?
2. The films of Majid Majidi? His perspective on children, adults, the countryside, living in the city of Tehran? His comments, serious and comic, critique?
3. 21st century Iran, the rural areas, the ostrich farm, the countryside, the homes? The country towns? The contrast with Tehran, the buildings, the busy streets and traffic, work? The overall picture of Iran?
4. The sense of naturalism, the focus on ordinary people, doing ordinary things? A sense of realism about the characters and situations? Particularly Iranian? Universal?
5. The portrait of Karim, an ordinary man, his age? His work at the ostrich farm, the accident with the ostrich getting loose, his putting on the ostrich costume, failing to recapture the bird? His being sacked? His life at home, his wife, the children? His friends? His daughter, her study, losing her hearing aid before the exams? The boy, his losing the hearing aid, the cistern and his cleaning it out? The search? The squabbling? The fish, the snake, the ants? The lost ostrich – and the egg and the meal?
6. Karim’s family, his wife and her work, the house, the boy and the cistern, the fish? Karim as stern? The daughter, her age, deafness, the hearing aid? Later, the flowers, his work? The fish? Anger?
7. Going to the doctor, the need for money, getting the lift? The collage of jobs? The taxi, the accusations, the boxes, the range of customers? The need to sell the home? The kindness, the little girl, the temptation to materialism, the money, taking the junk home? The frames? The door – and the blue door against the desert? Working to build up the family again?
8. The fish, anger, the carp?
9. The fall, the accident and the break, care, the visits?
10. The finding of the ostrich?
11. The happy ending, uplifting, ordinary people, their flaws, the difficulties – a song of sparrows and of hope?
