From foreign lands

[muckefuck]

So, as I already mentioned, we actually got through two films on our NetFlix queue last weekend: Majid Majidi's بچه ‌های آسمان ("Children of Heaven") and Ittisoontorn Vichailak's โหมโรง ("The Overture").

I'm going to paraphrase this badly, but in his review of 麥兜菠蘿油王子 ("McDull, Prince de la Bun"), princeofcairo said something about the state of alienation that results from watching another culture's media products for children. That sums up the reaction I had to "Children of Heaven". (As an aside, I looked up the Chicago Reader capsule review to see what praise Rosenbaum had gushed over it and found, to my surprise, that they'd handed this one over to Lisa Alspector, who characterises it as "lightly magical realist". This is why Alspector shouldn't be allowed to review movies: It's so "lightly magical realist" it's, um, actually straight up neo-realism.) It's a slight film that succeeds as a slice-of-life pic, but the anticlimactic ending left me cold.

I very much liked the interaction between the two siblings. In particular, the early scene where Ali is begging his sister not to rat him out to his parents for losing her shoes is heartrending. But I was baffled by their lack of interaction with other children. Other than two brief moments where he rebuffs invitations to play soccer, Ali seems to have no connexion to any of his classmates. Similarly, Zahra doesn't seem to know a soul at school until the girl returns her pen and strikes up a friendship. What's the story? Does the burden of caring for their parents alienate them from contemporaries with less responsibility? Are they shunned because of their poverty? Is there family freshly arrived from the provinces? (That would explain Ali's father's general rubishness and naïveté.) If the film ever tells you, I somehow missed it.

For an otherwise bright kid, Ali seems pretty socially isolated in general. Why does he show absolutely no interest in a contest every other boy in school is fascinated with until he finds out one of the prizes is a pair of sneakers? It seems like an excuse so we can have the implausible and manipulative tryout scene. And then only in a foreign film could winning the big race be reduced to a bitter disappointment. In his review, Ebert called Majidi's work "very nearly a perfect movie for children", but I can't imagine an American child who won't have the same WTF reaction to the defeat-in-victory scene.

Comments

[wiped.livejournal.com]

my take on it is that the children are rejected by their peers because of their poverty, as you suggested. as for the school contest, it could just be a vehicle for the tryout scene, but it could also be that all that's on his mind is getting shoes for zahra, so the contest doesn't interest him until it offers a solution to his dilemma.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I figured that was the director's intent, but I asked myself Are children that young really so singleminded? I know they can obsess about their problems and their desires, but they can also be easily distracted from them by the promise of fun. After all, Ali's dilemma doesn't prevent him from playing with the rich kid in the suburbs. Why does it prevent him from playing soccer or joining in the footrace absolutely everyone else is excited about? I think that was the point at which I began to fall out of the movie.