Baran

Year : 2001
Language : Persian
Country : Iran
Director : Majid Majidi

The most beautiful romantic movie I have ever seen. "Baran" is yet another awesome work from Majid Majidi whose "Children of Heaven" had earlier impressed me beyond words.

The movie is based in contemporary Iran where millions of Afghan refugees live after being displaced off their homes due to Soviet Occupation followed by civil war leading upto Taliban rule. Several of these Afghan people work as manual labor in underpaid jobs as they are not allowed to work without valid IDs. Lateef is a teenage Iranian boy who works in one such construction site where several Afghan refugee men work. He happens to be a rash and aggressive guy who mocks everyone in the site, his work involves serving food and tea to the workers.

One day, one of the Afghan workers breaks his leg at work. Since he is handicapped and has small children to feed at home, he sends his son Rahmat, a tender small boy to work at the same site. Rahmat when introduced to Memar, the site foreman, doesn't utter a single word and is hired to work.

Since, Rahmat is too weak to do the hard manual work, Memar asks Rahmat to do the tea and food serving and asks Lateef to start doing the manual construction work. Having lost the luxury of easy work, Lateef becomes gets infuriated at Rahmat and makes every attempt to make it hard for him. Rahmat's silent and calm posture even at repeated provocations makes Lateef very surprised and curious. By chance one day Lateef peeks into the kitchen only to find a girl combing her hairs and murmuring a song. He is stunned to discover that Rahmat is actually a girl. Here on, Lateef's life changes for ever. Without letting anyone (including Rahmat) know of his new found discovery, his attitude towards Rahmat changes, he becomes very protective of her. One day to protect him from an Inspector who was looking for illegal Afghan workers, Lateef ends up in a fight with the inspector and his men which ends up in Memar firing all the Afghan workers including Rahmat.

At the sudden disappearance of Rahmat, Lateef gets impatient and goes around the Afghan refugee camps looking for her. This journey of discovery is dotted with interesting experiences where he meets a philosophical cobbler. When he finally succeeds in finding her, he is appalled at the hard working conditions in which she has to work. He goes back to Memar and asks for all his savings which he pretends to asking for his ill sister. But fate didn't end Lateef's feeling of misery from looking at Rahmat's hard life, by now he knows Rahmat's real name is Baran. To help her he finally sells his most important possession, his ID card, which he sells and gives the money to Baran's father who says with this money he will go back to Afghanistan the next day with his family. In the last scene where before Baran leaves, their eyes are stuck at each other and their hands cross without touching to pick up some things that had fallen. is the most beautiful and touching expression of love one could ever imagine to see.

An amazingly simple and beautiful story and on top an incredible direction. Majidi had managed to portray even the least attractive setup of a construction site into a gripping surrounding. The broad daylight imagery of the city, the countryside, without any tinge of artificiality was simply incredible. It reminds of one of the writings of Satyajit Ray (on the making of Kanchenjunga) where he mentions how effective natural sunlight, be it bright or cloudy, can be in depicting the mood of the situation. In Baran Majidi has made a movie which is just perfect from every aspect I can think of. Undoubtedly this is the most beautiful love story I have seen on the silver screen.