These people seemed real and made me cry

I have met Iranian immigrants here in the San Francisco Bay Area, drawn to them for some inexplicable force emanating out of them. They seem far above Americans in perceptiveness and sensitivity to others. It is in meeting them here that I found myself curious about Iranian films, which previously I'd lumped into "misogynistic Arab stuff".

This film is made in Iran, yet its mountain village scenery reminded me of the splendid colors of the Swiss alps. The poignant life of a real blind boy, along with his blind classmates at a real Tehran Institute for the Blind, brought me to tears - not for his handicapp, but for his self-pity. The scene wherein he is left with the blind carpenter for apprenticeship training, sitting on a log weeping, sobbing out his heart to the blind man that he cannot see God and that nobody loves him because he's blind... suddenly my heart lurched and my stomach, too.

It's true, and one has to see his view. He is alone, not unloved, but a burden to his family for being born blind. He is young and helpless and lonely. I hadn't cried in over a year for any reason, when tears started to my shock. Yes, his pain was real. I thought that this boy was real and forgot that these were actors.

The fields of alpine flowers are his playground, where his grandmother and sisters gather the petals to make a dye for carpet yarn. When he runs through these meadows, stopping to feel the seeds as braille bumps to sound out letters, I felt another shock. Imagine to see the world in such a way, once you've learned Braille, that all bumps form letters. The grandmother herself spends her days often with worrybeads, like the Catholic rosary, and shows that she is bonded with her blind grandson, as she uses her fingers agitatedly praying.

The boy does not use a cane, or a seeing-eye dog, yet simply walks ahead with his hands out, feeling for obstacles. His courage is amazing to us as viewers, for surely he has had his share of bumps and falls, scrapes and bruises. I found his ability to cry amazingly touching, for I never see boys of that age cry in USA in public. Yes, he is human and shows it so deeply, as if a saint were crying to show that he cannot bear everything without a sign of humanity.

This film is about Iran, about village life, about love, about an angry and bitter father, who himself is shown weeping when rejected by his fiancee. In spite of the father's ingratitude towards God, I felt for him, in his gaunt and unshaven, pinched and worried face. He was overly plaintive, but I believed this father had cause to believe himself cursed - wife died, blind son left behind, no other sons, two daughters still young, and an old mother dying. It came to the point that this whole family felt real to me, in their emotions and plainness, not actors.
I did want this father to remarry, for some happiness to come to him somehow. How beautiful to see him smile!

The sisters of this blind boy are wonderful and sweet, who love their brother. They're modest and hard-working, like the sisters any boys could dream of, not competitive or jealous.

There's an amazing scene of his visit to the local village school, where he realizes that the sighted children are reading the same passage he's learned to read in his braille-printed reader. He can read along with them and correct them, in fact. The teacher is intrigued and allows the visiting blind guest to take a turn reading. The whole class watches in consternation as his fingers fly over the Braille letters. This is a thrilling scene, one I've never seen in watching over a thousand films.

The boy has one eye slightly closed and the other open in a normal way, holding his face in an unself-conscious and sometimes silly way. I found this endearing as well, for he did not have the presumptive hardness of seeing boys.

There may have been political meaning or historical interpretations to this film, but for an open-hearted viewer, you will be astonished to find yourself drawn into the soul of this boy, his hopes for a happy life, his search for connection with God, and the final tragedy will shock you as you imagine it happening to you if blind.

Very similar to MY LIFE AS A DOG, a Swedish film (see my review), about a boy who goes off to live with his uncle in the country.