The Color of Paradise

At this very moment, Iranian cinema is teaching the rest of the world some long-forgotten lessons about what movies can be, and, in the process, a body of work is accumulating that equals the outpouring of Italian neorealism after World War II. In Majid Majidi's The Color of Paradise, a blind boy (Mohsen Ramezani) who wishes his father (Hossein Mahjoub) took more interest in him dives inward and finds the face of God in everything he touches. Indeed, a grain of wheat or the petals of a flower speak to him as clearly as his Braille notebook. Prohibited by Iranian censorship from indulging in Western-style sex and violence, directors like Majidi, limited in subject matter, have had to dive inward themselves. The result here has the simplicity of phrasing, the blunt smallness of story, and the bottomless-feeling profundity of a story from the Bible. The film contains moments that evoke the primal power of Griffith and Spielberg; its epiphanies can make you feel as if you're levitating. What The Color of Paradise has in common with other recent masterpieces of Iranian cinema is the way in which it leaves one overwhelmed with gratitude, deeply in touch with the fragility and transient joy of being human.