Children of Heaven

by Lev David

Durban, long the pariah of the South African art movie circuit, is suddenly experiencing a mini-flood of "foreign" (i.e. non-American) and independent cinema. While this is sometimes a mixed blessing (crap is often just as easy to come by on the art circuit as it is in the mainstream), from time to time we get lucky with a little gem like Children of Heaven.

This is a touching little Iranian movie, with Persian dialogue and English subtitles, that has been released at limited times and for a very short run on one screen at Musgrave Centre.

It's the story of Ali, who loses his little sister Zohre's only pair of shoes. He is less afraid of being punished than he is of his father feeling obliged to borrow money to replace them, and so takes it upon himself to find or replace the shoes without burdening his destitute family. In the mean time, Ali and Zohre must keep their big secret, and share Ali's tattered pair of takkies to go to school.

The child actors who play Ali and Zohre (Amir Farrokh Hashemian and Bahare Seddiqi) are the heart and soul of the picture. At first, you might be a little thrown by how different their performances are from those of the child actors we're used to seeing in the mainstream, but then you realise that it is these two kids who are doing it right and the rest of them who are doing it wrong. They come across as kids, instead of short, squeaky-voiced adults, and had me thoroughly convinced that their characters would go on existing after the camera stopped rolling.

What is striking about this story is the utter simplicity with which writer/director Majid Majidi tells it. This shouldn't have to be such a rare pleasure, since it is one of the basic tenets of storytelling (and hence filmmaking) that the best stories are the simple ones, well told. Still, movies (be they special effects extravaganzas or low-budget indies) get increasingly messy and self-congratulatory, forever searching for clever new angles instead of just getting on with it.

After watching a movie like this, one can't help but frown on the South African movie industry - for the most part, it's either bloody Leon Schuster or some misguided, self-consciously indigenous imitation of art, clearly contrived to win awards overseas. (Which, by the way, they rarely do.)

Much worse movies than Children of Heaven have been made in South Africa with bigger crews, bigger casts, and a whole lot more money, so perhaps it's time for SA filmmakers to rethink what it takes to be world class.