2 of 3

While it gives us a picture of a very different culture, influenced by starkly contrasting religious beliefs and superstitions, it's worth noting that Daigo and his mentor grow in their hope of joy beyond the grave. During a simple Christmas dinner, Daigo blesses the meal with a passionate performance of "Ave Maria," an expression that conveys more consolation than any words of comfort ever could.

The Song of Sparrows tells another story of a man who loses his job and is forced to start from scratch. But it's an altogether different story.

It begins with an ostrich. When ostrich farmer Karim (Reza Naji) accidentally lets one of the valuable birds break free from the flock and run into the wilderness just outside of Tehran, the timing couldn't be worse. Karim's daughter Haniyeh (Shabnam Akhlaghi) needs a new hearing aid. It's going to cost him 400 bucks that he doesn't have. And now, he's been fired from the farm.

His first idea? Find the ostrich! Karim hops on his motorbike and rides off to find the ostrich like a lone samurai off on some sacred quest. But those aren't weapons he's carrying—they're pieces of an ostrich costume. Few big-screen sights this year will be as memorable as that desperate fool strutting around in the desert and performing a ostrich mating dance as if auditioning for Julie Taymor's The Lion King on Broadway.

Karim (Reza Naji) finds his big break on his bike

Riding his bike into the big city, Karim stumbles onto a brand new opportunity. A cell-phone yammering businessman jumps onto the back of his motorbike, assuming that it's a taxi. Flustered, Karim plays along. And he quickly learns that there's a lot of money to be made in this expanding, flourishing city. Watchful and opportunistic, he's soon carrying wads of cash, a new champion for Iran's booming business world.

We can see what's coming. At the beginning of the film, Karim wanted to sleep with his wife on the rooftop under the stars. Now he cannot wait to mount a massive TV antenna there. Piece by piece, he starts bringing home gaudy acquisitions—fancy window frames, expensive gadgets, household appliances. As greed gets the better of him, he turns to ethical compromise, stooping to robbery when opportunities present themselves. Who's going to miss one refrigerator from a delivery truck?

Even though he berates and punishes his children whenever he has a notion they're up to something devious—Karim's son is trying to become a millionaire by cleaning up the family's water reservoir and turning it into a goldfish farm—it's Karim who's being childish. The disease of consumerism begins to take a toll on his heart and, in a sudden cataclysm, his body.

Meanwhile, poor Haniyeh waits and waits for a new hearing aid.

This summary makes director Majid Majidi sound preachy and sentimental. That's true to an extent: Few filmmakers can catch up with Steven Spielberg when it comes to filming slow zooms on teary-eyed faces, but Majidi's in the race. Where Iran's most celebrated filmmaker—Abbas Kiarostami—asks viewers to think things through and arrive at their own conclusions, Majidi has typically been more willing to use familiar (even Western) storytelling tactics to provoke the audience's emotional engagement.

Nevertheless, Majidi never misses an opportunity to fill the screen with poetry. Whether it's a big white ostrich egg or a goldfish in a pond, Majidi's never met a metaphor he didn't like. As in his two most beloved films, Children of Heaven and The Color of Paradise (in which Naji played another hot-tempered father), Majidi associates beauty with the tender hearts of children. (I highly recommend you track down both of those enchanting films.)

Majidi is clearly troubled by what is happening in Tehran. Movers and shakers, perpetually plotting by phone, are crawling over that city as madly as the ants Majidi finds swarming around a broken ostrich egg in the desert. Infected by ambition and self-interest, people become like swarming insects, disregarding and trampling one another.

next page... |  2 of 3