By
Heidi Noroozy
You
know that poverty is truly desperate when a child’s most treasured possession
is her single pair of shoes.
This
is the premise of Children of Heaven,
the 1997 movie written and directed by the Iranian filmmaker, Majid Majidi. It
was the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award. (Last year’s A Separation was the first to actually
win the Oscar.) Children of Heaven
tells the story of nine-year-old Ali, who loses his little sister’s pretty pink
shoes on the way home from the cobbler, where he’s taken them for repairs.
“How
can I go to school without shoes,” his sister, Zahra, asks when he confesses
his carelessness.
Ali
is a resourceful boy, though, and he comes up with a plan. Since Zahra goes to
school in the morning and Ali in the afternoon, they will share his well-worn
sneakers. Zahra wears the shoes for the first half of the day then races home
and quickly hands them over so Ali can dash off to his own class. It’s like a
two-person relay race through the narrow, cobblestone alleys of South Tehran,
driven by necessity, not the hope of a medal.
The
first few days, Ali is late, with increasingly dire consequences. The first
time the headmaster catches the boy sneaking up the stairs to his classroom, he
reprimands him. The second time, he sends him home with instructions to bring
his father back to school the next day.
Too
proud to tell the headmaster the truth of his circumstances, Ali will do almost
anything to avoid being sent home. Not only would it mean missing class – and
school is his ticket to a better life, one free of the worries and drudgery
that shape his parents’ world – but he has been careful to avoid letting his mother
and father know about the lost shoes. As he tells Zahra when he asks her to
keep their little secret, “Baba has no money for a new pair. He will have to
take out a loan.”
Things
start looking up for the siblings when Ali enters a long-distance foot race
between competing schools. The third-place prize is a pair of new sneakers. Ali
has no interest in first or second place, whose awards are far beyond his
immediate need (a week’s vacation on the Caspian Sea, for instance). But if he
wins the sneakers, he can give them to Zahra, and they won’t have to share his
shoes anymore (which are rapidly wearing out).
The
film has a simple premise, yet it is packed with emotional tension worthy of a
thriller. In one scene, Zahra loses a sneaker on her mad dash home after class.
The shoes are too big for her, so one falls off and tumbles into the joob (the water-filled gutter than lines
Tehran streets). The suspense mounts as the shoe tumbles over rocks and around
debris in the gushing stream. Zahra races along the street, grabbing
frantically for the sneaker, her fingers just about to close around it. One
inch more and she’ll have the prize. But then comes another eddy, sweeping it
out of her grasp. When the sneaker gets caught in a culvert, just out of reach
of her small hands, I felt the echo of her frustrated tears in the prickles
behind my own eyes.
In
Children of Heaven, Majid Majidi
tells his story through the eyes of children, which gives the film a sense of
innocence that softens the bleakness of the character’s lives. And yet, along
with their wide-eyed view of the world, these kids are wise beyond their years.
They live adult lives with adult cares. Zahra’s school-free afternoons are
filled with household chores, for her mother is ill and not supposed to do
heavy work. Ali must run errands for the family while his father is toiling
away at the company where he works as the tea “boy.”
Majidi
also has an eye for the kind of detail that adds poetic nuance to the fictional
world he has built. Life may be harsh in the slums of South Tehran, but that
doesn’t mean the people are hard. Small acts of generosity abound, like the time
Ali’s mother ladles out a bowl of soup from the family’s meager meal for an
elderly neighbor who is even sicker than she.
In
another scene, Zahra spots her lost shoes on the feet of a schoolmate and
follows the girl home then discovers that the girl’s father is a blind rag
picker who supplements his family income through donations from kindhearted
shopkeepers. Zahra realizes that some people are even worse off than herself
and she abandons her plan to ask for the return of her shoes.
One
thing is for sure: watch this movie and you’ll never take your shoes for
granted again.
This is one of my favorite films. My family laughed and we cried with Ali and Zahra. There is so much to be thankful for. Watching this movie with children is a good way to teach them to count their blessings.
ReplyDeletePandora, how nice to see you here again! Thanks for stopping by. I agree that this film makes you appreciate what you have. And Majidi has a way of creating poetry with the camera.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like a beautiful film. Thanks for sharing it here with us!
ReplyDeleteI loved this movie, Heidi. It's been a long time since I watched it, though, and I think you've prompted me to seek it out again. Thanks!
ReplyDelete