Iranian director Majid Majidi is known for sweet and often sentimental films that contrast with the more acerbic films of his countrymen Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami. Though no Iranian film has made much headway at the box office in the U.S., films such as Majidi's Color of Paradise have found their audience on DVD and he has received numerous awards, including an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film for Children of Heaven. His latest film, The Song of Sparrows, which appeared at several film festivals last year, has now opened in limited release in New York and Los Angeles and it carries on in the same tradition of simplicity, warmth, and a substantial dollop of sentimentality.
Reza Naji, who portrayed the blind boy's father in The Color of Paradise, is Karim, a poor man who works on an ostrich farm in rural Iran. Karim, a devoted husband and father of three, loses his job when one of his birds, a symbol of nature, wanders into the hills. Though he chases after the bird, putting on an ostrich costume in a comic attempt to capture the bird, it is to no avail. Compounding his misfortune, his oldest daughter Haniyeh ((Shabnam Aklaghi) drops her hearing aid into the water-storage tank so that it now requires expensive repairs, money that the family does not have. Traveling to Tehran to try to fix the hearing aid, Karim inadvertently finds that people, some with considerable means, mistake his motorbike for a taxi, giving him a new and lucrative line of work as a cabbie.
Clearly visible, however, is the contrast between Karim's wealthy customers and the poor beggars who wait at the side of the road and the job exposes him to the seamier side of big city life and the ugly grey face of crowded Tehran. As a taxi driver, Karim is bilked out of his fare, threatened with reprisals if he does not find another spot to wait for customers, listens to men shouting at each other on their cell phones, and gradually succumbs to the allure of accumulation. Every night he brings home another piece of useless junk that he finds on his route and they begin to pile up in his backyard.
Slowly he begins to lose his generous and honest nature and even his children become corrupted. His youngest son Hussein (Hamed Aghazi) makes plans to become a millionaire by cleaning out a sludge-filled pit and using it to breed and sell goldfish, unaware of what is involved. When the fish are accidentally lost, the boys are overcome with grief but Karim, who has been forced into self reflection by an accident, reminds them that "the world is a dream and a lie," forecasting the family's return to sanity and joy, exemplified by an exquisite ostrich dance that brings a note of light-hearted grace.
Reza Naji, who portrayed the blind boy's father in The Color of Paradise, is Karim, a poor man who works on an ostrich farm in rural Iran. Karim, a devoted husband and father of three, loses his job when one of his birds, a symbol of nature, wanders into the hills. Though he chases after the bird, putting on an ostrich costume in a comic attempt to capture the bird, it is to no avail. Compounding his misfortune, his oldest daughter Haniyeh ((Shabnam Aklaghi) drops her hearing aid into the water-storage tank so that it now requires expensive repairs, money that the family does not have. Traveling to Tehran to try to fix the hearing aid, Karim inadvertently finds that people, some with considerable means, mistake his motorbike for a taxi, giving him a new and lucrative line of work as a cabbie.
Clearly visible, however, is the contrast between Karim's wealthy customers and the poor beggars who wait at the side of the road and the job exposes him to the seamier side of big city life and the ugly grey face of crowded Tehran. As a taxi driver, Karim is bilked out of his fare, threatened with reprisals if he does not find another spot to wait for customers, listens to men shouting at each other on their cell phones, and gradually succumbs to the allure of accumulation. Every night he brings home another piece of useless junk that he finds on his route and they begin to pile up in his backyard.
Slowly he begins to lose his generous and honest nature and even his children become corrupted. His youngest son Hussein (Hamed Aghazi) makes plans to become a millionaire by cleaning out a sludge-filled pit and using it to breed and sell goldfish, unaware of what is involved. When the fish are accidentally lost, the boys are overcome with grief but Karim, who has been forced into self reflection by an accident, reminds them that "the world is a dream and a lie," forecasting the family's return to sanity and joy, exemplified by an exquisite ostrich dance that brings a note of light-hearted grace.