Karim is the chief wrangler on an ostrich farm in the
countryside outside of Tehran and one day one of his charges escapes which costs
Karim his job. He’s an impoverished but
happy family man who lives with his wife and three children in their cluttered house in a small village.
A devoted husband and a good father, and
like all their neighbors the family share when they have plenty and lend a
helping hand where needed.
Now unemployed Karim travels to the city with the hope of replacing his daughters broken hearing aid, and even though is he distressed when he discovers
the enormous cost, he is still
determined to find the money somehow. As
he sits thinking about his lot before starting the journey home a businessman
shouting into his cell phone orders to take him to his next appointment as he
mistakes him for a motorcycle taxi driver.
When the man pays him well for the short ride, Karim realizes that if he
did this as a full time job, he could make much more money than his old job. And maybe enough to get the new hearing aid too.
As well as work the city provides Karem, an avid junk
collector, with a whole host of building sites that he can salvage unwanted
scrap that to re-cycle into useful items to furnish his home. And the taxi-ing job starts off well but as he starts
to get used to how easy his new income is he takes on a job to deliver a refrigerator,
and when he loses his way, he keeps the fridge and starts losing his natural
honesty. The once happy man is now perpetually irritated and downright mean to his family and his neighbors.
It takes a bad accident at home that lays him up and
means that his wife takes charge of the family, aided by the children, that restores some values back into their lives again.
Filmmaker Majid Majidi‘s simplistic and somewhat sentimental movie visually
provides a stark contrast from some
dramatically imposing open landscapes with the ugly crowded cityscapes. In this moral fable of his, it casts the latter
as a place where greed is everywhere and is the sole reason why people (like Karim) are
persuaded to forsake both their faith and their purpose.
The characters are totally
engaging which does balance out the occasional weakness in the narrative. Karim is especially likeable, so much so that we can even overlook that this 40+ father is
played by Iranian actor Reza Naji who's 66.
This was Iran’s Official
Entry for Best Foreign Picture Oscar in 2008 and as it is a beautifully crafted
gentle and funny movie, I’m so glad that I finally got to see it.
★★★★★★★★
★★★★★★★★
