JOIN USWe live in the era of dramatisation, where emotions like love and despair are sensationalised to create an impact on the audience. However, we do not realise that the subtlety of real life is powerful in itself. That is the thought that struck Metrolife during the screening of the feature film Barar (Rain), at the India Habitat Centre, recently. The film is directed by the critically acclaimed Iranian director Majid Majidi, who also has an Oscar nominated film Children of Heaven to his name.
The film is set in 1927 in Tehran, amidst a large number of undocumented Afghani labourers working at a construction site. Lateef, a small time Turkish worker, works under the construction manager Memar. When a labourer called Najaf, falls from the second floor of the building and breaks his leg, his little son Rahmat comes and works in his place. Lateef soon discovers that Rahmat is a beautiful young girl, and falls in love with her. Later in the film, he goes on to pawn his meagre savings and even his identity to provide relief to the girl, whose real name is Barar, and her family.
“How Majidi uses silence and light to stir your emotions, I will never understand,” Shehnaz Khan, an audience member, tells Metrolife.
“You see a very unclear reflection of the girl through the mirror, when we learn that she is a girl, and yet the way Lateef looks at her, makes you see her through his eyes and instantly makes her beautiful. She does not say a word throughout the movie, and Lateef never even talks to her, and yet his actions for her add to the girl’s magnificence. Even in the last scene where she half smiles at her apparent devotee, she looks ethereal, and she isn’t even covered in makeup like the other drama actresses!” Khan jokes.
Suresh Verma, a 64-year-old Majid Majidi fan, who came for the screening, says, “With the way the movie has been directed, if you pay close enough attention, you will realise how he highlights the various problems of war-torn Afghanistan. The cries of Baran, when she toils hard in the cold water to earn something meagre for her family, the pain of Lateef at witnessing the sight...even selling off his identity, we can’t even imagine what that action meant in the state of affairs he lived in.”
Saisha Kumar, a literature student, and a movie buff was also awed at the story and the direction of Baran. “Think about the paradox – true, innocent, love set in an area almost destroyed by war. Makes us think about what the important things are,” she tells Metrolife.
The appreciative response of the audience matched the acclaim that Majid Majidi had received around the world. It is truly wonderful to watch movies that are like a breath of fresh air. The fact is that innovation and creativity and usage of every intonation and feeling, however underrated, are a must in cinema. And what better way to underline this fact than by the producing such heartwarming movies.