Reality as viewed through the eyes of children is full of challenges, but there are always alternatives to the problems that may be discovered only in strong relationships and close bonding with the family. Ali and his sister Zahra, the central protagonists of master director Majid Majidi’s Oscar-nominated Iranian film ‘Children of Heaven’ (1997), share this viewpoint. This film portrays many different themes and stories, and depicts diverse lessons. From the beginning to the end, this film signifies many different things.
Majid Majidi stands out from the crowd, especially when it comes to his style of filmmaking with special effects like Hollywood or not with very complex themes. What is most striking about his work is the very deep audio-visual language in the artistic style. In Iranian films, Majid Majidi has always tried to portray real-life events and real natural scenes. Again, Majidi Majidi has given non-professional actors a chance to perform in this film. If one wants an example of very good realism in film, one can blindly talk about this Iranian film. Majid Majidi applied the ‘full-length shot’ method very well in his masterwork ‘Children of Heaven’. The inventor of full-strength shot, Andre Bazin, claims that “film shooting objective and nature supply it with reliable quality that painting and other creations do not include,” and that the objective universe was shot by automatically rather than human involvement.
The director uses a series of full-length shots at the beginning of the film to show the real-life places of shoe maintenance. The spectators appear to be there on the scene, which fits with the film’s premise. Many rushing moments in the film are shown in full shots, which identify the viewer with the other pioneer of Iranian cinema “Where is the Friend’s House?” (1987) directed by Abbas Kiarostami, in which Ahmed runs on the hillside along the twisting river, which is also made in full-length shots. Their jogging embodies not only the fundamental meaning of running, but also the hope and belief that comes with it. It neatly employs the line drawing to present the director’s perspective on Iranian local situations and customs through full-length shots, leaving the long-lost movement with the quiet lens language. It uses montage techniques to create a performance. The great combination of realism and freehand adds the gorgeous sensation in the video, matching the winding road, lush forest, crooked lanes and other lyrical natural scenes.
Majid Majidi has inherited his unique and persistent approach of applying many lyrical sounds to represent the inner world of characters when it comes to movies. For example, as the siblings–Ali and Zahra–are washing their tattered shoes, the background music matches the goldfish swimming pace and is sprightly beat by plucked instruments. They emphasise that they seek joy in the midst of grief and that they are pure. The filmmaker enhances Ali’s gasps and matches the chorus during his long-distance battle, blending the scenes and sound seamlessly. They vividly depict Ali’s struggle and adversity as well as his unwavering character.
A lot has been said and done about shoes in the film. First of all, the colour of the shoes explains a lot. The colour of Zahra’s shoes is pink that symbolises not only femininity, but also purity and innocence. What we see in the film is how Zahra hides her lost shoes from her parents. With Ali’s white shoes, Majid Majidi wants to convey the purity, innocence and cleanliness of the children between Ali and his sister. White is a colour that reflects the purity of the newly-weds in Western countries. It implies that she is a virgin. In the East, on the other hand, the colour white is used as a purification of the soul, just as white is used when someone dies. It means that he has been freed from his sins or is departing this life leaving all sins in the world.
In ‘Children of Heaven’, shoes are shown in many senses. Majid Majidi uses the shoes as a symbol, a symbol of safety. The pair of shoes given to Ali and his sister Zahra by their father is used here as a symbol of protection. Through this metaphorical use, the director wants to mean that their father did not give them a pair of shoes but a shield of protection by which the duo can move forward in their life struggle on their own. These shoes are the most valuable possession of Ali and his sister, even if they look dirty to the naked eye or to others, as they were fighting for their lives with this single pair of shoes, winning a race. The race here is also quite symbolic. Symbolic in the sense that race is part of our life. Our life may be beset with so many problems, so many obstacles and so many eccentricities, but we have to move forward braving all these banalities and oddities. As Ali did, he participated with his dirty and torn shoes.
Ali’s shoes also mean that we have to take care of everything we have because nobody knows when something will work for us. His sense of responsibility is revealed when he lets his sister read his shoes since he is the eldest child in his family. Another aspect is the water pipe shown in this film, from which Ali drinks water. It symbolises how normal life Ali is leading and he does not need much in his life, as he knows full well about his family’s impoverished condition.
We see the stark reality of life in the movie. Ali’s family is quite poor. They do not have enough subsistence to eat much. Amid the abject poverty is Ali growing up, and when a man grows up, his appetite also increases. Here Majid Majidi shows how Ali is trying to satiate his hunger by drinking tap water because he can’t eat even if he wants to. It, therefore, can be said that drinking water from Ali’s pipe symbolises the crisis situation of their family. Drinking water also emblematises that Ali understands their condition and has learned to survive with it.
From a scene in ‘Children of Heaven’, we see that Ali goes to get some potatoes from a shop. There, the man tells him to take the small potatoes on the floor inside the shop, and not the big potatoes on top. It indicates the deep-seated inequality between the rich and the poor in a highly stratified society. In a word, this scene suggests long-established social status and divisions.
Again, we come across a poignant scene when Ali gives the potatoes to the shopkeeper for weighing. The man weighs only by his own guesstimate. This is an affront to Ali for his age and size and social status. Another thing that is being symbolised is that nowadays people everywhere give their judgement arbitrarily but they don’t even think about whether it is right or wrong. The scene reminds us of the old saying: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Ali gives Zahra two gifts (a pen and a pencil) so that she cannot tell her parents that he had lost her sister Zahra’s shoes. This reveals a strenuous effort by Ali, who is trying to make up for the loss of shoes. Again, it serves as a kind of symbol, they are very poor but there is no shortage in their education or morals. The pen and the pencil clearly symbolise how important education is. This indicates that Ali has been able to achieve excellence even after living such a difficult life. Again, we see that Ali is trying to please his younger sister Zahra with whatever he can. This means that although Ali is only nine years old, he has learned a lot in this short life. His maturity is seen when he gives his sister a very valuable pen from his teacher as a gift.
Later, we see that the people of the mosque give a lot of sugar candies to Ali and tell him to give them to his father to cut into pieces. While her father is slicing them, Zahra picks them up and picks them up as they have run out of sugar in their house. But his father forbids her to take sugar and says that it is a deposit of the mosque. It epitomises their honesty and righteousness. Luxury is not everything to everybody, this verisimilitude is also revealed in this scene.
In another sequence, Ali and Zahra are playing with bubbles while washing shoes. On the other hand, affluent kids are playing with balls. Here Majid Majidi seeks to highlight that you do not always need money to be happy. At one point in the film, when Ali and his father go to work in the garden, a child named Alireza requests Ali to play with him. The boy’s impassioned plea only represents his loneliness. Majidi has successfully symbolised it through these two scenes that money is not all-important and it does not guarantee happiness.
This Iranian blockbuster film shows Ali and his father happily returning home after finishing their garden work, but their bicycle brakes go wrong. The broken brakes here symbolise a lot of tidings like danger, as woes betide anybody at any time in life and they should always be prepared for it. On the other hand, unforeseen dangers make people stronger.
Goldfish are used as a symbol in ‘Children of Heaven’. Goldfish are shown in two scenes. One is when Ali and his sister Zahra think of washing shoes just before him. Here goldfish symbolise happiness and wonder. There may be myriads of problems in life, but happiness is hidden in small things. Ali and Zahra have discovered that happiness by themselves.
The iconic filmmaker Majid Majidi represents our changing personal faith–it is undeveloped in its knowledge of the universe but immensely rich in its emotional experience of it. And it eloquently reflects the traits and problems that every child possesses: their intuitive insight and attention to significant concerns such as poverty and starvation, their tremendous potential for happiness, affection and empathy, and their fragility and perseverance. Beyond everything, Majid Majidi’s portrayal of a child’s life with the unmet bare-bones and the struggle for meeting them, in my opinion, has made ‘Children of Heaven’ the best-ever film on childhood.