Censorship is good for the arts. Searching for the right and kosher metaphor to carry across your point (after all, that’s what a meta is phor!) stretches your creative muscles. After the Russians left, the Czech republic elected a truth-telling playwright, Vaclav Havel, as prime minister. In the aftermath of independence, though, the vibrant live stage in Prague lost much of its audience, its lan, its raison d’tre.
Iran is filled with people who love Americans. On September 12, 2001, vast crowds in Tehran lit candles and grieved with our shocked nation. One reason for the Iranian people’s affection is the hatred their ruling mullahs hold for the USA.
Apparently, the contempt is mutual. Intelligence analyst “Alan Peters” described the “father” of the mullahcracy, the Ayatollah Khomeini, as follows:
Some linguists, who studied his public speeches in 1979 and 1980, concluded his Farsi vocabulary to be less than 200 words, so not only did he not have Persian blood, he did not even speak the language. With the number of Iranians who have died because of him and his successors over the past 25 years going into the hundreds of thousands, if not well over a million if the death toll from the eight-year Iran-Iraq war is included, this Anglo-Indian with Arab Sunni Muslim theological and philosophical roots may have had no love or compassion for Iranians either. In the Iran Air aircraft flying Khomeini back from France to Tehran in early 1979, with cameras rolling, a journalist asked: “What do you feel about returning to Iran?” He replied: “Nothing!” The question was repeated, and again he replied: “Nothing!”
Meanwhile, the Iranian cinema is flourishing.
If you enjoy seeing universal human themes played out against an exotic background, be sure to rent Majid Majidi’s film The Color of Paradise. The filmmaker obviously loves his country, and spectacular rural scenery frames the human melodrama. Keep in mind the theme of generational conflict as you watch a lad who longs for familial connections. A venal, self-centered, shame-ridden man trying to distance himself from his blind son. A traditional matriarch who worries about what her son is doing to his own soul, by his refusal to do right by the grandson. I found it interesting to note how this Muslim filmmaker used a Christian metaphor – the father is repeatedly shown washing his hands.
Finally, take note of which characters actually get to see the face of God, the stated goal of life for Muslims as well as Christians.
Japanese legend says that fireflies are the souls of combat casualties. Critics acclaim Grave of the Fireflies as the epitome of Japanese anime. Some call it the greatest anti-war movie ever made. When you see it, note the contrast between the lovingly detailed landscapes and the comic-book line-art human characters. The ground-level view of incendiary bombing raids on a civilian town pleads the cause of the noncombatants who pay the price for military machinations. Fireflies, and lots of them, feature prominently.
The male characters wear westernized garb. The females, with one exception, traditional Japanese clothing. Towards the end of the film the absent owners of the town castle come home, dressed like American flappers, blithely indifferent to the ordeal of the peasants.
This movie, based on an autobiographical novel, focuses on children. It is not a children’s cartoon.
August 13, 2004
