*Spoilers ahead*
A few of you may have heard about Majid Majidi, as his film ‘Sun Children’ was in the lineup for this year’s Venice film festival, and having won the award for Best Young Actor. Majid Majidi is an Iranian director and is most well known for his reflections and depictions of the abused, underrepresented, exploited and the poor; invoking strong emotions in the viewer. In addition, his cinematography focuses on the lush and beautiful scenes of rural Iran. I was first introduced to his work a few years ago when I came across ‘Children of Heaven’, his first critically acclaimed film to have won The Academy Awards.
‘Children of Heaven’ is also one of my favorite films. The film explores the relationship between two siblings in the face of adversity. The film opens with Ali picking up his sister Sara’s shoes from the cobbler after repair. He leaves them unattended for a minute and a homeless man picks them up, mistaking it for trash and takes it away. The boy is scared to tell his family about the mishap as his family faces a deep financial crisis. The siblings decide that, until they find out and retrieve her shoes, they’ll share Ali’s shoes. Ali would wear them to the school in the morning and Sara would swap them with him in the alley for her afternoon shift. Sara goes to school the day after and finds them on a different girl in her school. They track down the whereabouts of the girl and decide to confront the girl about the shoes. However, when they reach her house, they find out that the girl and her family live in worse off conditions. Realising that the girl would need the shoes more, the duo leave from far off. The maturity, understanding, depth and grace that they dealt it with is what makes this film so striking and emotional.
‘The Colour of Paradise’ is another of my Majidi favourites which explores themes of faith and humanity through the innocent perspective of a young boy, Mohammad. His father, Hasheem, a widower looking to marry, hides the fact that his son is blind, and treats him like a burden. Fearing that his bride to be will find out and take it as a bad omen, he sends his son to a carpenter to be an apprentice. Abandoned by his father, he then ponders on faith, and his relationship with God, and why he was blind if God loved everyone equally. In the following days, the film explores the sorrow and pity that his father always felt for his son. Following the introspection, he decides to get his son back. On the way back, while crossing a bridge, Mohammad falls into the river, and in that moment Hasheem is faced with a dilemma between saving his life and getting rid of something he always considered a burden. He jumps in moments after, only to be washed by the current. The next day, he wakes up to find his son dead. A woodpecker is heard at a distance and Mohammad’s fingers start to move, perhaps indicative of him having reached heaven and communicating with God in braille.
‘Beyond the Clouds’ is a more recent film, released in 2017, and explores the slums of Mumbai for a change. The film opens by introducing Amir, a street hustler and a drug dealer, who lives with his sister, a worker at the washers. As Amir is busted for selling drugs, he runs to his sister to hide, who hides him with the help of a male colleague, Akshi. As part of this, Akshi thinks that Tara’s beholden to him, and assaults her. In an attempt at self defence, she hits him in the head with a rock, which puts him into a coma. In addition, due to the bureaucratic administration, Tara gets arrested, never gets to trial, and gets moved to the state prison. Amir, who is trying to move the paperwork, gets visited by Akshi’s wife and child who visit him at the hospital and pray for his recovery, unaware of the whole backstory. Amir, at first hostile towards the family, finally lets them in. The story then evolves around how the two bond over their helplessness and inevitable loss.
Majid Majidi has evolved through the years in his focus of his films, cinematography and direction. The films discussed above give a brief summary of what I believe to be the top three films over his career. These are also my absolute favourites and I would genuinely recommend them to anyone.