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February 05, 2006

Geniuses, vol. 2: MAJID MAJIDI

I've recently become utterly obsessed with the genius of Majid Majidi, an Iranian director who's made haunting, important, and unbelievably moving films like Children of Heaven, The Color of Paradise, and Baran.

His films are mythic and visionary, and gorgeously photographed. They offer an amazing insight into Iran and its people, which seems especially important during a time when the country is overshadowed by its government's policies, during a time when its whole population is narrowed and summarized--by our good-old-boy, god-fearing president and his cronies--as an "axis of evil" that very possibly could be next for his schedule of bombing.

Majidi pays special attention to detail and individual day-to-day frailties of his characters--a nice altruistic counterpoint to the overgeneralized media depictions we usually get of Iranian people. We get to empathize with a country's individual souls, not just see its totalitarian government. And there are many single scenes, single images, from his movies that cannot leave my head--that's something I certainly can't say about 99% of the movies I see. Pictured above are four shots from "Children of Heaven," and below, four from my favorite (well, so far--I have yet to see all his films), "The Color of Paradise," which is so simultaneously lovely and heartbreaking that I can hardly write the title without tearing up.