If you hesitate to watch foreign movies because of the
subtitles, here’s a movie that might change your mind: an Iranian film called The
Song of Sparrows. It has clear subtitles, an easy-to-follow story, and a lead
actor with an incredibly expressive face, in the person of Iranian film icon
Reza Naji. A few minutes into the film, the
subtitles will cease being a distraction. The movie opens at an ostrich farm
where Karim (played by Naji) is an
ostrich wrangler. He gets distracted by workers manhandling some of the birds,
and an ostrich escapes into the nearby hills. Karim cannot catch up to the bird,
and he is fired. A decent and kind man who
has, to our eyes, an idyllic life out in the countryside with his wife and
three children, Karim finds work in Tehran, using his motorbike as a kind of
taxicab. Tehran presents temptations to Karim–he becomes obsessed with making
money, and also amasses quantities of scrap from building sites, which he
stores in an ever-expanding heap at his home. And at one point he teeters on
the brink of theft. Will he be ruined by
the temptations of the fast-paced urban life of Tehran?
“The Song of Sparrows” reminds me a bit of “It’s a
Wonderful Life.” In both movies, so-called “average” men who find themselves in
a seemingly losing battle with the vicissitudes of life, come to the end of
their rope, only to find out what really matters. Director Majid Majidi is a
wonderful director with a particularly sensitive touch for children, seen here
with all their worries and joys. Look also for Majidi’s visual sense–there are scenes as colorful and carefully composed as Persian miniatures.
