Film Festival

National Catholic Reporter, April 28, 2000 by Joseph Cunneen

You wouldn't have heard about it at the endlessly self-congratulatory Academy Awards, but many of the world's best movies today are being made in Iran. And with the release of The Color of Paradise add the name of Majid Majidi to those of Abbas Kiarostami ("Through the Olive Trees"), Mohsen Makhmalbaf ("Gabbeh") and Jafar Panahi ("The White Balloon") as directors whose work is worth seeking out.

Although Majidi's new film centers on the trials of Mohammed, a blind 8-year-old boy (played by Mohsen Ramezani, a non-actor who is himself blind), it is a surprisingly affirmative experience. This is due to the director's ecstatic presentation of the beauty and power of nature; we are constantly reminded that Mohammed has to rely on a deep sensitivity to the touch and sound of everything around him while we are enjoying the flowers, trees and endless sky the camera discloses.

"The Color of Paradise" is a journey through fields and forests into mountainous backwoods country where it is as natural to pray at a roadside shrine as to delight in the chores of birds. The frequent use of children in Iranian movies is partly due to official censorship -- scenes of physical contact between men and women are not permitted -- but we are compensated by a sequence in which the alert Mohammed, interpreting a bird's cry of alarm, searches the ground for a baby bird that has fallen from a tree, and painfully climbs up, dangerous inch by inch, before restoring it to its nest.

The movie opens at a school for the blind in Teheran, where the boys learn their lessons with the help of well-chosen technical aids. But the school is closing for the summer, and a wretched Mohammed is left alone outside, waiting for his father (Hossein Mahjoub) to take him home. The father would prefer it if his son could be kept at the school during vacation. We learn later that the widower hopes to remarry, and a blind child would be a poor addition to the necessary dowry.

At home Mohammed has a joyful reunion with his two sisters and his deeply pious grandmother (Salime Feizi), carefully examining the latter's face with his fingers. She shows him that the tree he planted is now as tall as he, and he rejoices in the wind blowing through fields of alfalfa. Mohammed even goes to the village school with his sisters and impresses everyone with his ability to read (in Braille). His hard-working father, however, who is presented with sympathy, takes his son to a blind carpenter; training as an apprentice would give the boy independence. The grandmother is shocked by his decision, and though the carpenter receives him in a kindly manner, Mohammed feels abandoned. There are alternating shots of the grandmother saying her beads and the boy getting a first lesson in carpentry.

Majidi doesn't really know how to end "The Color of Paradise"; the melodramatic climax, though forcefully presented, seems a violation of its gentle overall tone. By avoiding excessive sentimentality, however, he has given us a film that is as religious as it is exquisite. You will not easily forget Mohsen Ramezani, rolling back his eyeballs the better to listen to his beloved woodpeckers.

Erin Brockovich, in contrast, is a good example of what Hollywood does well. Built on the star power of Julia Roberts in the title role, it's a feel-good movie in which we root for a determined young, working-class mother as she takes on a giant utility. Julia makes the most of her strongest role to date, but I'm old-fashioned enough to worry about your teen-age daughters adopting Erin as a role model. It's not that I'm upset about the skimpy attire she wears to work; I just don't believe that constant displays of abrasiveness will help their careers or personal lives.

Not that Erin doesn't have a reason to be desperate. I was especially sympathetic with her in the opening sequence in which, a single mother of three with no real employment credentials, she is forced to improvise non-answers during a humiliating job interview. Immediately afterwards, she is sideswiped by a careless driver, who turns out to be a wealthy doctor. Her lawsuit fails, in great part because of losing her temper and the impression her clothes make in court.

Director Steven Soderbergh shows genuine sympathy for the desperation in which so many single mothers have to live, and we're all rooting for Erin when she finally wangles a low-paying job with Ed Masry (Albert Finney), the lawyer who had failed to win her case. Although presenting itself as "based on a true story," the movie soon turns into a rather predictable fairy tale, with Julia gradually uncovering a deadly form of chromium that has poisoned the water supply of a Southern California town.

Though the movie doesn't offer the anarchic sense of liberation of "Thelma and Louise," any victimized woman can identify with it. However, it seems strange that the other working and professional women are so unpleasant. Co-workers in the law office are mean and unhelpful, and the woman lawyer whom Masry calls in to help is an unfeeling snob. But even if it makes no plea for sisterhood, you'll find it hard not to like "Erin Brockovich."