The Color of Paradise: Limiting our Perspectives

The Iranian film "The Color of Paradise" is a beautiful film. While the film has a good storyline and fun characters, the best part is the scenery. The majority of the film is cinematography shots: lots of nature imagery. It is impossible not to fall in love with the Iranian countryside after watching this film. Some of the best scenes in the film are the outdoor scenes: specifically when the characters are in the fields. The film also asks some interesting questions about life, focusing on the question "who is really limited?".

Mohammad, the main character is blind. He attends a special school in the city which teaches blind children how to live with their limitations. They write with special Braille equipment, and love listening to music recordings. As the film opens we see the joy in the children as they prepare to go home for a break. All the other children are promptly picked up, but Mohammad's father is late. While he waits for his father, he hears the distress call of a baby bird who has fallen from its nest. Mohammad eventually finds the bird and manages to find and climb the tree where the nest is, and then deposits it back in the next. As he places the bird into the nest a beautiful smile covers his face, and it is impossible not to completely love this character.

Sadly not everyone loves him. His father sees him as a problem. He is in the market for a new wife (Mohammad's mother recently died), and having a blind child is not a positive trait. In an effort to make himself look good, he makes Mohammad an apprentice to a blind carpenter. The women of Mohammad's family: his two sisters, and his grandmother, love Mohammad. When he arrives at their farm for his break, they run to him and hug him and go running through the fields as if nothing was wrong. They treat him like a normal child. Also, the grandmother allows Mohammad to go to school with his sisters, where he impresses the entire school by knowing their lesson better than everyone else.

Mohammad is physically limited by his inability to see. His father is limited by the belief that his son is a liability (because he is blind). HIs grandmother is limited because she cannot protect her grandson. The audience has a limited perception of reality: we can only see what the filmmaker wants us to see. In this film we also limited by the sounds we hear, focusing on the sounds Mohammad hears. Mohammad loves birds, and when he is alone in nature all we hear are the bird calls. I know this could be stretching it a bit, but Mohammad is also like a bird (well atleast the baby bird he rescued). He wants the ability to fly away, to do whatever he wants, BUT like the baby bird he needs a little help to get started.

The Color of Paradise [Rang-e khooda/] (1999) 90 minutes
Director: Majid Majidi
Starring: mohsen Ramezani as Mohammad
Hossein Mahjoub as Father
Salameh Feyzi as Grandmother

Buy it without seeing it: yes, it's that good...and its beautiful :-)
Dude, it's quotable: actually, it's one of those films you just like because it's beautiful