The Color of Paradise

Majid Majidi's portrait of a torn Iranian family is riveting both in its scope and in its emotional texture. Mohammad (the arresting Mohsen Ramezani) is an eight-year-old blind boy who spends the school year at an institute in Tehran and then journeys to the highlands to be with his family for summer vacation. As the film opens, his father (Hossein Mahjub, the movie's only professional actor) is late to pick up his son, and when he does arrive he's reluctant to do so. Back home in the hills, where life unfolds in small, simple strokes, Mohammad is warmly received by his grandmother and sisters, but his father, a widower, remains disdainful. He perceives the boy's handicap as an obstacle to his proposed marriage with a woman from a strict Islamic family, so he tries to place Mohammad outside the homestead. This self-interested action causes a division and triggers a chain of tragic events.

Majidi, who impressed American audiences with Children of Heaven, makes a visually stunning film and yet communicates the lack of sight with sensual brilliance, whether it's Mohammad pawing through a pile of leaves to save a hatchling or touching his sister's face gently to measure her growth. Like Mohammad's ever-reaching fingers, and the soul they bear, The Color of Paradise offers great rewards.

-- Tom Meek