A masterpiece by The Sparrow's director, Magad Magashinti, whose lead actor, Mohan Mod Amir Najib, won the Best Actor Award at the Berlin Film Festival for his film.
From the beginning to the end, the director did not condescend to read the plot of the movie to people, but from the perspective of one of us ordinary people, we showed the ordinary life of an ordinary Iranian.
Struggle in ordinary life, feel in ordinary life, sublimate in ordinary life.
Because of Iran's special geography, the whole movie looks gray. Like the countryside of the 80s in our west, there are corn fields, loess mountains, and a few jujube trees in the middle of the barren grass.
The protagonist of the story is a worker on an ordinary ostrich farm on the outskirts of Iran. He had three children, the eldest of whom was born deaf and needed a hearing aid to maintain her hearing. The second son is a very smart little child, dreaming of becoming a millionaire all day long. The third daughter is also very kind and lovely. Karin's wife was a gentle and virtuous woman. Karin is short-tempered, and his wife is usually silent, gentle with the children, smiling and helping the family take care of the inside and outside.
If the status quo at home has been maintained like this, it seems that the movie will not be much interesting. But life is like this, as in Forrest Gump, life is a box of chocolates, and you never know what flavor you're going to eat in the next moment.
Karin's eldest daughter's hearing aid is broken, and although the child is afraid that his father's burden is too heavy and lies that he can still hear it, Carlin eventually discovers the truth. Just as he was about to buy a new hearing aid for his daughter, the house leaked in the rain overnight, and Carlin made a major mistake in the process of work. Because one of his carelessness allowed the countryside to lose a male ostrich. The farmer is furious and wants to fire Karin!
In order to recover the loss, Karin wore thick feathers and pretended to be a female ostrich in the vast desert hoping to retrieve the lost male ostrich, and after a few days of back pain, but still found nothing. Carlin, completely unemployed.
To help her daughter fix her hearing aids, Carlin rode her motorcycle to town. However, he was unexpectedly used as a motorcycle driver by others and regained a subsistence job.
At this time, Carlin was simple and kind, and when others asked him how much he wanted, he was embarrassed to say, you look at it! Instead of trying to carry passengers like other black car drivers, the lion opened his mouth widely.
The money Carlin earned through the family's life got better and better, but gradually Carlin's personality changed dramatically. He went from being a generous and simple country man to being selfish and calculating. He quarreled with his wife because of a little scrap, turned against his friends, and scolded the children, and their lives suddenly became depressed.
At this time, life takes another dramatic turn, and Carlin is accidentally injured by the scrap he has recovered. After he was injured, the nervousness of his wife, the care of his children, and the care of his quarrelsome friends made him lie in bed and start to examine his life again, to examine his recent actions.
Here the director inserts a small detail, a sparrow flew into Karin's room, because the door is locked, the sparrow in the house has been circling around the house has not been able to fly out, anxious to turn around the room. Carlin looked at the little sparrow and suddenly became enlightened, as if he had seen himself now. Isn't he like this little sparrow, gradually infected with the bad atmosphere of selfishness in the city, and slowly losing the innocence he once had!
Thinking of this, Carlin raised his hand to open the window in the house, let the little sparrow fly out, regain freedom and return to the blue sky. At that moment, the sun was a little harsh, shining on Carlin's face, and Carlin couldn't help but look up at the window in a deep daze, he didn't want to become a selfish person, he wanted to get back to the original him!
This is the director's foreshadowing in the film, isn't Carlin like this ordinary little sparrow, deep in prison and unable to break free?
Thankfully, Karin woke up in time. Slowly, family and friends notice that Karin has changed and change back to the original Carlin. Becoming generous, he would invite friends to the house for a chat; he would become tender, he would sing to his wife the only love song he could sing when she was unhappy; he would become loving, he would mischievously take out his legs tied to the plaster and let the children paint on his plasterboard.
Life didn't treat The Carlins too badly and the family ended up giving them a surprise. The lost male ostrich actually went back to the farm on its own! Can Karin go back to work again? My daughter's hearing aid can buy a new one, right? Is life hopeful again?
The director didn't answer us, and the film ended abruptly. What is left to us is unlimited reverie. The whole film is full of the warmth of the ordinary life of the little people, between the countryside and the city, the urban scavengers finally return to innocence and return to their favorite life. Life is not easy, but the warmth between people can support each other and move forward slowly.
In the days of suffering, the power of family and friends is like a beacon, guiding us to regain our warmth and return to pure nature. Isn't the lost ostrich finally found its home like us in the vast social torrent?