VIEWS FROM THE REAL WORLD
by Howard Schumann

"Don't you go letting life harden your heart . . . we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder. We always have the choice." -- The Dalai Lama

Baran, the latest film from Majid Majidi, the director of Children of Heaven and Color of Paradise, draws attention to the desperate plight of the Afghan people. It begins with a note about the 1.4 million refugees from Afghanistan living in Iran (a number that has probably increased substantially since September 11th). Some are of a generation that was born in Iran and have never set foot in Afghanistan; others fled from Taliban oppression and long to return home. Afghans are forbidden employment by Iranian law, and must work illegally, usually in low-paying heavy labor jobs.

At a construction site in northern Tehran, Memar (Mohammad Amir Naji) employs a large number of Afghans, to work along side of Turks and Iranians. In spite of his harsh treatment of some of the employees, Memar has moments of generosity and humor, and his rough exterior seems to mask a genuine sympathy for the workers. One of them, a 17-year old Iranian tea boy named Latif (Hossein Abedini), feels his job is threatened by a new worker named Rahmat (Zahra Bahrami) who has difficulty performing construction tasks and is moved to the kitchen to prepare and serve the tea, essentially switching jobs with Latif. Short tempered to begin with, Latif now takes out after Rahmat, intent on getting revenge, which leads to a series of slapstick encounters that are almost Chaplinesque in tone. But when he learns Rahmat's secret - that "he" is actually an Afghan girl named Baran - he transforms from a selfish wise guy to a caring and surprisingly generous young man. Infatuated with Baran, he secretly tries to help her in any way possible, donating his savings to her family and involving himself in protecting her from the hands of inspectors looking for illegal immigrants.

Shot in a style reminiscent of Italian neorealism, with location shooting and a largely nonprofessional cast, Baran's natural performances, along with its theme of the transforming power of generosity, has a strong appeal. The film's visual tone, proper to its realistic setting, is drab, only occasionally interrupted with bursts of color. Majidi, who also wrote the screenplay, depicts a microcosm of the blue-collar working class in today's Tehran. Many languages are spoken, and the film sheds some light on the startling variety of ethnic groups living in Iran.

Though I found Baran to be, at times, repetitious and dramatically weak (it doesn't help that Latif and Baran never interact), it is an admirably humanistic film, full of warmth and humor. Though it documents dehumanizing working conditions, its true focus is the emotional awakening of a young man who has discovered his own self-worth through acts of kindness to another. In a wider sense, Majid is symbolizing the world's discovery of the suffering of Afghans, and his hope that the world will respond with compassion. Baran - a word that means "rain," a symbol for springtime - builds to a poignant climax, leaving Latif with the wistful image of a footstep in rain-splattered mud, an image that may remain with him as a constant inspiration for future self-sacrifice.

Moshen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar, another Iranian picture about Afghanistan, shouldn't be judged by the usual standards applied to narrative films. The fact that it was even made seems more important than the details of plot or character. It was shot on the Iranian-Afghan border - the Taliban, who were then in power, refused to allow filming in Afghanistan. Conditions were primitive. Makhmalbaf and his crew received constant threats, and even had to wear disguises in order to survive. The work that resulted illuminates the extreme poverty and hunger in Afghanistan, the conditions of women who must hide their identity behind their burqas (veils), and the constant, daily threat of landmines left over from the Russian-Afghani War.

Nafas (Niloufar Pazira), an Afghan refugee in Canada, receives a letter from her sister in Afghanistan informing her that she intends to commit suicide on the approaching eclipse of the sun. In a desperate bid to save her, Nafas decides to travel back to the city of Kandahar. The guides who accompany Nafas include an old man steeped in traditional tribal mores; a young boy who faces starvation when he's expelled from his religious school; a black American who went to Afghanistan to find God but failed; and a landmine victim. In a powerful scene, Nafas stumbles on a medical camp where Afghan men beg for prosthetic legs (actual limbless victims fill these roles). Apparently, these patients wait for almost a year to receive primitive, metal limbs.

Accompanied by Mohamad Reza Darvishi's haunting score, cinematographer Ebraham Ghafouri creates intense, unforgettable images: men hobbling on their crutches to retrieve prosthetic limbs being parachuted down from the sky, a man draping his wife's dress over a pair of prosthetic legs to ensure that she gets the right fit, a procession of burqa-clad women walking into the seemingly limtless distance.

Makhmalbaf's methods have their drawbacks: much of the dialogue, for instance, is improvised, and delivered in a stiff monotone by amateur actors. Though flawed in this and other ways, Kandahar is a moving depiction of the desperate conditions in Afghanistan, one that should be seen in the Western world, now that many think all the problems in that area have been resolved. In a recent interview, Ms. Pazira said that she believes "It's the awareness of the rest of the world that could bring change. I am an optimist in that sense. With Kandahar, we tried our best - we set up a little movie theatre in the village, we started a school for women and we introduced them to a world they'd never seen before. That could be a crack in the wall. Much more could be done practically, but I can't simply do it. We've done our little share of responsibility. Now I want people to take this message away and think about it."

If more people would think about it, the crack in the wall could become a lot wider.

Enlightenment Guaranteed, a German Zen comedy directed by Doris Dörrie, succeeds on several levels: as an insight into Buddhist philosophy and practice, as a humorous portrait of two men and their maturing process, and as a look at the hectic world of Tokyo, Japan. I won't guarantee you'll be enlightened, but I'm sure you'll be entertained.

Shot on digital video, the film revolves around two brothers, Gustav (Gustav Peter Wöhler), a Feng Shui consultant, and Uwe (Uwe Ochsenknecht), a salesman whose wife and children have just left him. After his brother's marital breakup, Gustav reluctantly takes Uwe with him to the Sojiji Soin Father Temple, a Zen monastery in Monzen, outside of Tokyo. Their adventures in Tokyo are funny and touching. They get lost and can't find the way back to their hotel. Another time they run out of money and, in an hilarious sequence, are bilked by a singing ATM machine. They end up sleeping in cardboard boxes, and then in a tent next to a railroad train.

The two are thoroughly spent when they finally arrive at Monzen. There is a stunning contrast between the frenetic pace of Tokyo and the serene setting of the monastery. The brothers have to get used to getting up at 4:30 A.M., taking cold baths, running cleaning rags across the floor, and the elaborate unwrapping of eating utensils. Roles are reversed to a certain extent, as Gustav buckles under pressure, while the uninitiated Uwe, merely along for the ride, proves surprisingly adaptable to the rigors of monastery life. The two brothers gradually lose "control" of their lives and learn to live in the present. As the Abbot of Monzen explains, enlightenment is not the achievement of something, but the absence of something. In Uwe's case, it might be the absence of attachment to the circumstances of his life.

Enlightenment Guaranteed is a celebration of the act of looking within ourselves to unravel the mysteries of who we really are. The clanging of the various chimes and gongs, the beating of the drums, and the meditation rituals of the Buddhist monks create an atmosphere of spiritual calm and joy. The film is like a glimpse, accompanied by a soft chuckle, into the basic simplicity of life that too often eludes us.

And now, two older films that can also "soften us and make us kinder."

Baraka (Ron Fricke, 1992). Baraka is an ancient Sufi word, which means a blessing, or - in a more esoteric sense - the essence of life from which the evolutionary process unfolds. It's a documentary or visual collage, photographed on six continents in 24 countries, including Tanzania, China, Brazil, Japan, Nepal, the U.S. and Europe, on the theme of man's diversity and his impact upon the environment. There is no story or dialogue, yet the picture transcends geography and language to provide a sensual and spiritual experience that enables the viewer to look at the world in a totally different way.

When the film opens, a lone snow monkey sits in the middle of a hot spring, biding its time. The expression on its face is one of deep reflection and weariness. When it looks up at the stars, then closes its eyes, shutting itself off from its surroundings, it evokes in the viewer a longing for the infinite. As the film progresses, we see the edge of a volcano in Hawaii, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the Ryoan-Ji temple in Kyoto, Lake Natron in Tanzania, and the fire plains of Kuwait, their oil fires burning after the 1991 Gulf War. Through Fricke's camera, we glimpse various forms of religious expression, from the chanting of monks to tribal celebrations in Africa and Brazil.

Baraka seems at times like an updated version of Godfrey Reggio's 1983 film, Koyaanisqatsi. Using speeded-up images of hectic big city life with its homelessness and deprivation, interspersed with mountain vistas and forests, it depicts the mechanical nature of modern life as contrasted with the beauty of the natural world. This film allowed me to see things I never knew existed, and to glimpse patterns of interconnectedness and a sense of balance and proportion in the world of which I was barely aware. I was moved to simply look into people's faces and have them look back at me, allowing me to connect with the universality of the human spirit. Fricke has said that Baraka was intended to be "a journey of rediscovery that plunges into nature, into history, into the human spirit and finally into the realm of the infinite." Unique in its beauty, sensitivity, and perception, Baraka succeeded in moving me from hectic everyday awareness to a calmer and more spiritual space.

Life on a String (Chen Kaige, 1991). Travelers arriving. Travelers departing. This, says Chen in his fourth feature, made before his breakthrough film Farewell My Concubine, is what life is about. Based on a story by Tiesheng Shi, the tale concerns two blind people, a singer/saint referred to as Old Master (Liu Zhongyuan), and his young apprentice Shitou (Huang Lei). Old Master learned when he was a small boy that his sight would be restored when the 1,000th string on his sanxian (a banjo-like musical instrument) breaks. He and his apprentice travel through an awe-inspiring landscape of mountains and rivers in Western China. Ailing and frail, he looks forward to the day when the final string will be broken and Shitou will take his place. His student, however, wants a different type of life, and when he meets and falls in love with a young villager named Lanxiu (Xu Qing), he goes against his master's wishes to be with her.

Life on a String is essentially a meditation on vision and blindness, silence and song, life and death. It is a serene, touching, and visually stunning work, saturated with wondrous folk music from Chinese composer Xiao-Song Qu. Old Master sings in a deep, melodious, and powerful voice as he entertains amazed villagers by firelight. Nearing the end of his life, he continues to play his strings earnestly in order to reach his goal. His songs have the power to stop warring groups and turn them toward peace. (Old Master is much needed today in the Middle East). The film's visual power is balanced by fine characterizations, and the relationship between Shitou and Lanxiu has a remarkable innocence and naturalness.

Both Old Master and Shitou question their blindness. Throughout their journey, the master questions whether it was worth sixty years of waiting to be able to see. "Is the world I'm going to see, the same as the world inside of me? Is it worth it?" he asks himself. And he answers, "It is not worth it…It is worth it." After a conversation with the God of Death, Old Master sings to assembled villages under the firelight, "One day," he sings, "all of us will sing; no more sadness, no more tears. We will all lift our voices and sing for joy."

To watch Life on a String is like bathing in sunlight. It communicates a tremendous sense of calm, love, and longing for the infinite. The God of Death says that life is a game in which some play better than others. Let the good times roll.

©2002
Howard Schumann
CineScene