The Song of Sparrows
Directed by Majid Majidi
B-
Modern Iranian cinema consists almost entirely of filmmakers making movies starring cute kids. But few have worked this angle as dilligently as Majid Majidi, whose films (Children of Heaven, The Color of Paradise) feature things like adorable kids running around or adorable kids who are also blind. A shameless populist in a filmic wave of artistes, Majidi gets the Oscar nominations and stateside releases but misses the critical love that tumbles naturally upon the likes of Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi.
To his credit, Majidi has now made a film that (almost) doesn’t feel like he made it. Gone are Majidi’s bright primary colors. The lighting in Sparrows is harsh, its shadows deep and forbidding. The cute little deaf girl in this film is but an infrequent supporting character, and the real star is her father (superb Majidi regular Reza Naji), a harried, frustrated and desperate working-class type who barely tolerates his brood.
Moving from children into the world of adults, the director follows the comic-realist exploits of Naji, introduced searching for his daughter’s lost (and expensive) hearing aid. After he’s canned from his job on an ostrich farm, desperation leads him to the big, bad city. There, while perched on his motorbike for a bit of end-of-rope brooding, he attracts a cell-phone-yammering businessman who sits on the back of his bike, mistaking him for a cabbie. Soon enough Naji is bumming around town on his bike, picking up passengers as they come and eking out a profitable but flimsy existence.
It’s a rich comic premise, made all the better because Majidi keeps himself out of the way and establishes a carefully balanced tone—one that would be impressive no matter who did it, let alone the guy who tends to make Iranian cinema for people who don’t like Iranian cinema.
But, alas, the good times can’t last. Right on cue, the third act takes a tumble into classic Majidi territory. There’s an accident; the all-but-ignored cute kids become more prominent; and the whole seriocomic part leans a whole lot more toward the sentimental side.
And yet hold Sparrows up to the sickeningly sweet Color of Paradise and it bears little resemblance. Keep it up, dude
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