Children of Heaven (Bacheha-Ye aseman)

Year : 1997
Language : Persian
Director : Majid Majidi

Children of Heaven is a movie from Iran, with a subject that is very universal. Ali is a 9 year old child who loses the shoes of his younger sister Zhara while he took it to get them repaired. Being from a poor family they know their father cannot afford to get new pair of shoes for her and they strike a deal to do a time-sharing of Ali's sneakers for going to their respective schools without letting their parents know about it. The rest of the story moves on with the difficulties they face and still overly understanding to each other's situation compounded with the love and affection for each other.

The movie has a simple subject and so pure and innocent and yet powerful is the portrayal of the children, their feelings, their adventures that it strikes an immediate chord of familiarity with the viewer irrespective of whichever culture or background the viewer is from, certainly more than the children movies where a superman comes flying from the stars and kills the dragons, or saves the world from devils masked with rotten flesh. I certainly do believe our children should be exposed to movies like this than the zillions of violent superhero movies and animations.

(Read the rest here...)

12 Angry Men

Welcome to real cinema, 12 Angry Men is one of the finest works in cinema making I have seen. I say so not because this is the most awesome movie I have seen (though it stands among the finest I have seen), but because it stands apart due to raw talent and work of art, the entire movie is completely character driven.

Everything takes places inside a single small and claustrophobic jury room, no background music during the entire movie. But yet Sydney Lumet's characters which make their appearance as distinct entities having widely different personality traits, prejudices and backgrounds, over the course of the movie evolve into a group of such tightly bound organs of the setup that will pull and glue you into its world. Each character is so different that an entire chapter can be devoted to describe each of them and yet they together add up to the complete symphony that is 12 Angry Men.

The story is about a 12 member jury who have to decide the fate of a boy who is accused of killing his father. The jury begins with a vote where 11 vote "guilty" and the only one (Henry Fonda) votes "not gulity" based on "reasonable doubt". The verdict has to be taken unanimously. What follows is a totally gripping discussions and collisions of prejudices and reason.

Reading Roger Ebert's review and watching for the second time I could notice the effect that the movement of the camera had on my emotions the first time I watched it. During the course of the movie, its sheer amazing how the camera places the characters as they evolve in the story and as to their personality aspects, and according to how the atmosphere in the room develops.

The movie was nominated for 3 oscars but apparently lost all of them to another great movie made in the same year "The bridge over the river Kwai" (reviewed earlier).

(Read the rest here...)

The Bicycle Thief (Ladri di biciclette)

Year : 1948
Language : Italian
Director : Vittorio De Sica

Its a real pleasant surprise when you watch a movie, love it immensely and than do a little googling only to find out that the movie is regarded as an all time masterpiece. "The Bicycle Thief" is a movie by the Italian director Vittorio De Sica. After watching this movie I got an idea of the meaning of often heard term "neorealism" which in the context of art and movie making often means dealing with the life of the real lower strata of the working class society which is most often poverty stricken.

The movie is set in the post 2nd world war Rome where unemployment is rampant and the society is gravely poverty stricken. Antonio is one such unfortunate man who has a family of four to take care of. He happens to find a job of pasting posters in the city which requires him to have a bicycle. Not having one he and his wife deposit their bedsheets to get some money to get a bicycle. The prospect of having a secure income brings about cheer in the family which has Bruno, Antonio's son and an infant child. With Antonio along with his bicycle which is so must for his livelihood in the city, added to that the title of the movie, it feels so certain that the bicycle is about to be stolen and Sica does take advantage of that suspense at certain times teasing the anxiety of the viewer before the bicycle really gets stolen.

Soon after Antonio along with his son (also initially with some more friends) get on to a tiring and day long hunt for the stolen bicycle. What follows is an up and down ride of hope and despair, finally leading to the most striking and touching scene where Antonio is lured and compelled by his own desperation and agony into attempting to steal another bicycle. The pain, sadness and utter helplessness hanging on the face of Bruno when he sees his father being chased by people on the streets and when he runs to save his father from the crowd is so real. The movie has a very simple story which is rather less of any story with any start or end, but simply a tale of the common day's events in the life of a very common person studied and depicted very strongly with the camera.

(Read the rest here...)

Il Postino : Review

Year : 1994
Language : Italian
Director : Michael Radford

Il Postino is a movie by Michael Radford in italian. The movie is about a young man Mario Ruoppolo who is hired as the personal mail carrier for Pablo Neruda who happens to come and stay in the small island following his political exile from Chile. Mario's first fascination for Neruda begins when he notices the huge number of letters that Neruda receives from women around the world.
His fascination and curiosity about Neruda and his poetry draws him into focusing all his devotion and admiration to the poet. Neruda after some initial overlooking starts taking notice of him. The relationship between the poet and Mario acquires a forceful form when Mario falls in love with the local restaurant girl Beatrice and sees poetry as the only way to reach to her heart. Neruda teaches Mario how to understand poetry but Mario goes a step further and learns how to use it for softening the heart of Beatrice. Mario impresses the girl with the poems of Neruda. When Neruda complained about Mario stealing his poems, Mario says "poetry doesn't belong to the one who composed it, but to the ones who need it" :) Mario and Beatrice get married and than Neruda returned to his country Chile.

After Neruda left, the world of Mario turns upside down. Mario awaits letters from Neruda which never came. It plunges him into a state of depression and he feels he deserves to be forgotten as he is worth nothing, he is not a poet as people thought as he hadn't written anything that came from his heart. That's when he begins recording the sounds of life in the island which he thought would remind the poet of it. It was an act straight from his heart. He began writing and one of his poems that he wrote about Pablo Neruda was invited to be recited on a stage, unfortunately a fight broke out between the crowd and the police and in the stampede Mario never reached the stage. All this recording, the sounds of the waves, of the wind finally leading to the sound of the stampede was finally given to Neruda by Beatrice when long later he visited the island.

The movie delicately touches upon romance, on the beauty of poetry, the relationship between Mario and Neruda which was a complicated web of feelings that encompassed love and admiration, of friendship and of teacher and student. Mario who calls himself a communist after Neruda leaves, also showed how he bent to an ideology not out of any intellectual spark but rather for his immense devotion and trust for the man whom he believed stands for everything right and beautiful. The beautiful island with its rocky and sandy beaches, with the blue sky and the sparkling Mediterranean in the backdrop was a real feast to the eyes. Overall a great movie.

(Read the rest here...)