The Song of Sparrows (Avaze gonjeshk-ha) (2008)


Directed by: Majid Majidi
Starring: Reza Naji (Karim), Maryam Akbari (Narges), Kamran Dehgan (Abbas), Hamed Aghazi (Hussein), Shabnam Akhlaqhi (Hanhiyeh), and Neshat Nazari (Zahra)
MPAA rating: PG
Run time: 96 minutes
http://www.thesongofsparrowsmovie.com/

The history of Iranian filmmaking is both heart-breaking and spellbinding. Sometimes the best films arise out of challenges imposed by strict censorship. Understanding Iran’s checkered past brings useful insight to understanding the peculiarly Iranian genre of which The Song of Sparrows partakes. It is a simple parable of a working-class father and his poverty-stricken family on the far outskirts of Tehran, achingly poetic in a way that recalls the Italian neo-realism of The Bicycle Thief.

Iranian filmmaking flourished in the early sound days and grew into a commercial potboiler factory, much like the Hollywood machine. Following World War II, and with the slide to the radical Islamic right, art-quality and auteur films in Iran have nonetheless persisted, by hook or by crook, through four generations of directors. Majid Majidi is of the third generation, which blossomed in the 1990s and which has skirted censorship by telling very simple tales of simple folk, by speaking in humanistic allegories, and by assiduously refusing to bow to state pressures to distort the plight of women in Iranian society.

Thus we have the very sweet and very moving story of Karim (Reza Naji), a hard-working husband and father of two—a rebellious ten-year-old son and a deaf daughter, who loses her hearing aid in a muck-filled well. Her brother and his band of buddies are determined to become wealthy capitalists by cleaning out the well and raising millions of fish in it. These two stories serve as backdrop to the primary tale. (Note that Karim's’ wife barely appears in the picture.)

As the film opens, Karim is working on an ostrich farm, caring, with increasing exasperation, for these obstreperous creatures. The physical spaces, such as the open-air ostrich farm, quickly emerge as important characters in and of themselves—manifestations of Karim's interior emotional states. They also double as symbolic representations, mostly as pastoral idylls of traditional Persian culture and as contrasting snapshots of the deeply troubling culture of Westernizing modernity.

In a distracted state, Karim accidentally lets one of the ostriches escape, and promptly finds himself fired. The next day, while on an errand in Tehran to fix or replace the now recovered hearing aid, Karim is quickly mistaken as a taxi driver. He immediately divines the opportunity for a new career making deceptively easier money. In no time, Karim is drawn into the corrupting materialistic values of the big city.

Majidi uses a light hand, sprinkling humor liberally in the telling of his tale. Framing and camera shots offer up the ostrich pen as a study in overgrown chickens, mindlessly flocking together. The birds’ bodies and peculiar locomotion turn into an almost silent-era, Keystone Kops chase scene. How Karim finds himself unexpectedly recruited, or hijacked, into driving a motorcycle taxi becomes a parodizing study in mercantile capitalists’ self-importance.

Frequent comic relief intertwines among the tender and harsh scenes of domestic life in Karim's family. Deaf daughter Hanhiyeh’s disability is treated with almost stereotyping pathos. The frequent beatings and slapping the son receives from his father may well upset the contemporary Western viewer; Karim is an old-fashioned patriarchal dad. As members of his community seek to gently steer him back on the virtuous path, the viewer appreciates their wisdom—they can only demonstrate by example to this authoritarian personality.

Underneath this beleaguered father and husband’s crusty personality beats a heart of gold. Karim embodies the contemporary Iranian Everyman and the predicament of his country in seeking to enter the world stage. After all, Iran is a country that continues to suffer under the heavy, and often irrational hand of an Islamic theocracy, under the state rule of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Les K. Wright

les@leskwright.com