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Children of Heaven

Posted by jamesgarvin (A) on January 10, 2007 at 15:59:51

1997 film from Iran directed by Majid Majidi, who also directed the wonderful Color of Paradise. The premise is very simple. A small boy is returning home from having his sister's shoes repaired when he stops off at a small food store, where he leaves the bag of shoes outside while he shops for potatoes. When he leaves the store, he discovers that the shoes are no longer where he left them, having been picked up by a blind peddler.

Well, we are Iran, and his family is not affluent, and so they do not have multiple pairs of shoes. What to do? In a cute scene, he and his sister wrote notes to each other, under their parent's noses, formulating a plan until he can find the shoes. This plan consists of his sister wearing his sneakers to her school, then running and meeting him after her school, at which time he will wear the shoes, and she the sandals, which he will wear to his school.

Obviously, there are mishaps with the shoes that come periously close to blowing their plan. I am not embarrassed to admit that several of the adventures with the shoes had me on the edge of my seat. Eventually, the sister sees a girl in school who is wearing her shoes, and we see the sister follow her, and we feel her trying to get up the courage to say something, anything, to get these precious shoes back.

Eventually, the brother learns of a race in which third prize is a pair of sneakers. While first and second place bring better prizes, his goal is third place. Can you imagine a race with a litany of kids racing each other, with no music, tension created only by the knowledge that this youngster cannot win the race, but must try to figure a way out of coming in third, when there are six kids clustered together at the finish race. Coming in first would be easy. Does he come in third? Watch the film.

This film is so good on so many levels. It received an Academy award nomination in 1997, yet it was largely ignored. On the one level, it is a great children's film. My 3 1/2 year old stood mesmorized by the shoes, and the outside well in which goldfish reside. The kids talk like kids talk. No wisecracks, smart comments, in which kids have higher i.qs than their parents (not hard to do in most films). And the kids are concerned about things real kids are concerned about. I rememember as a child hiding cowboy boots in the bushes so that I could wear them to school without my parent's knowledge. My 3 1/2 year old loves his shoes which light up when he walks. At that age, shoes are everything, and this film appreciates those things which are important to children. Children are not spies, they do not booby-trap house, etc. This is wonderful children's story.

We also get to see a family that genuinely cares about each other. How often do we see brothers and sisters who care about each other (other than finding hook ups for the other). In one scene, the father, who have been given gardening tools as a gift, decides that he can ride his bike, with son in tow, to the upper income part of town, and earn extra money by being a gardener. He rings doorbells, but is too embarrassed to tell the proprietor what he wants, so his son speaks for him, and he gets a job. Rather than be embarrassed, or resentful, he is clearly proud of his son.

The other level which I appreciate a film like this is that much of what we know about Iran is from the headlines we see on television, which generally shows shouting mobs of people crying for death to the U.S. What we see here is a society that is not very different from our own. Women go to school, albeit not with the boys. Fathers and Mothers love their children. There are chores to do. Parents work. Boys like to race and play sports. There are poor areas of town. There are rich areas of town. When you get away from the din, children are children, and care about the same things the world over.

There are many beautiful sequences in the film that rise to poetry, such as when the father and son are riding in a pick up truck after a bike crash, and the father is holding his son in his lap, and rubbing his head. Or when, after the race, the boy, whose feet are cut up after the race, places his feet in the well, where goldfish hover like a cloud around his feet. Nice.

This is a gem that I can wholeheartedly recommend for anyone. If you are looking for a film that the family can enjoy, please grab this one rather than Home Alone and its mindless clones.

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