Photo: Zahra Bahrami as Rahmat in Majid Majidi's Baran
There are no shoe-loving, crippled children in Majid Majidi's Baran, which pays humanist attention to the plight of Afghan refugees. The film is less feel-good than Children of Heaven and less picturesque than The Color of Paradise but powerfully lucid. After 1979's Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, refugees made their way into neighboring Iran, working clandestinely without proper papers. Though the film's timing couldn't be better, the opening title card that relates the history of the land may or may not fall on deaf liberal ears (Majidi bemoans the poverty Muslims face because of the civil wars caused by the foreign presence in their land). Despite a series of ridiculous slow-mo flourishes, Majidi evocatively plays with water and fire imagery: Hotheaded teen Latif (Hossein Abedini) makes his way through his rain-drenched town, visiting the poverty-stricken people of the country that long to reunite with family members trapped in war-torn Afghanistan before becoming convinced that he can cure the world.
There are no shoe-loving, crippled children in Majid Majidi's Baran, which pays humanist attention to the plight of Afghan refugees. The film is less feel-good than Children of Heaven and less picturesque than The Color of Paradise but powerfully lucid. After 1979's Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, refugees made their way into neighboring Iran, working clandestinely without proper papers. Though the film's timing couldn't be better, the opening title card that relates the history of the land may or may not fall on deaf liberal ears (Majidi bemoans the poverty Muslims face because of the civil wars caused by the foreign presence in their land). Despite a series of ridiculous slow-mo flourishes, Majidi evocatively plays with water and fire imagery: Hotheaded teen Latif (Hossein Abedini) makes his way through his rain-drenched town, visiting the poverty-stricken people of the country that long to reunite with family members trapped in war-torn Afghanistan before becoming convinced that he can cure the world.
