The Color of Paradise

From the producer of the ACADEMY AWARD nominee, CHILDREN OF HEAVEN, Majid Majidi, comes this sequel, THE COLOR OF PARADISE. Described as 'Stunningly beautiful. A gem." by Stephen Holden of the New York Times. Winner of the BEST PICTURE at the 1999 Montreal Film Festival and other awards internationally, this is a story about an 8 year old blind boy and his relationship with his widowed father. It grabs your heart immediately as the boarding school for blind children in Tehran, where Mohammad attends, is ending for summer vacation. Mohammad is the only child left after all the other parents have picked up their children. He is sitting alone on a bench and hears a baby bird fall out of its nest and chirping on the ground. He also hears a cat nearby. He manages to shoo the cat away and find the baby bird and climb the tree and return it to its nest. Welcome to the world of the blind. His father finally arrives and wants to leave him there. We meet a poor, hard working man from a rural village who has lost his wife and is trying to raise his other two daughters and make a living as best he can. He also wants to remarry and considers Mohammad to be an obstacle to finding a wife. The rest is a wonderful human interest story. The scenery is outstanding. Iran is really a beautiful country in many areas. Many emotions come to the surface during the film. It is a film you can easily watch with children who are mature enough to understand the themes. It is worth watching just to better understand the handicap of being a blind child. If you've seen CHILDREN OF HEAVEN, you know what's in store. Rated PG for mature themes, there is no offensive language or material of any kind. YOU WILL BE DOING YOURSELF A FAVOR BY PUTTING THIS AT THE TOP OF YOUR LIST.

The Color of Paradise (Persian: رنگ خدا, Rang-e Khodā, literally The Color of God) is a 1999 Iranian film directed by Majid Majidi. Here are the pros & cons as I see it.Pros:1. Excellent and interesting cinematography and use of slow motion.2. Film makes you quickly connected to blind boy named Mohammed, if you have any compassion.3. Interesting from a cultural and intercultural communication perspective.Cons:1. I am giving this film four stars as the ending did not do much for me and it was not exactly my kind of film, but this is only my opinion, you may love it.

I have trouble explaining this magnificent movie to people. How can the few moments of bliss/paradise be so moving and wrenching? How is it possible that only a few minutes into the film you care about the little boy at its center as much as you do? How is the pain and the terror of the story's unfolding as dramatic as it is when there is also a seeming inevitability about it? I guess it is called "art." And artful this film surely is. The use of slow-motion. The acting...all the acting, which is not like Hollywood acting at all and in fact never feels like any kind of acting at all is superb. A culture produced this film. An Iranian culture. I know there is great repression in that country, but there is clearly something else afoot as well. This film could be about "evil," painted with a simple brush. But it is not. The character who brings pain is nuanced. More clumsy and ineffectual and weak than evil. I know there is a great deal of simplistic religious fervor in Iran, as there is in our country, but this is a deeply religious film with no fundamentalist judgment or edge. Just some sense of grace that seems heartfelt, genuine and loving.

I needed this older DVD for class; it serves my purpose; thank you!!!

I was really surprised at what parts of Iran looked like.. One imagines that area as desert with people riding camels. In this film you see mountains and valleys and tons of lush green scenery. People are riding horses, harvesting crops like alfalfa, and living in houses built exactly the way like they do it in Eastern Europe. The people look very much like Ukrainians or Slavs in the way they dress. Women wear what looks exactly like a bubuska. Iranians are NOT Arabs but Persians and you can see the influence the Persians brought to Eastern Europe. At one point there is a scene of a woman using prayer beads that are identical to Rosary beads. The people portrayed are followers of Islam and have islamic names but in this film there isn't the constant quoting of the Koran and the madrases like you see in Pakistan or Afghanistan. The characters were excellent and their lifestyle excellently portrayed. They seemed like kind hearted, hard working, and generally good people. This film gave me a totally different view of the people of Iran. Often the government is NOT representative of the people (as many would say about us here in the USA.) This movie was an eye opener.

Majid Majidi's The Color of Paradise is a heart-felt film that explores love and the withholding of love. The story centers around a father's (Hashem) anger with God for giving him a son (Mohammad) who is blind, and hence flawed and perceived as a burden. Hashem does everything he can to "lose" his son, from pleading with the school to take him regardless of the summer break, to pawning him off as an apprentice to a blind carpenter.Although Mohammad is not "whole" in Hashem's eyes, as is the mirror he drops and cracks while shaving in a scene, he is still his son and capable of providing him unconditional love and is therefore of some "use," as is the mirror now cracked--it's imperfect, but still capable of serving a purpose. But as with the mirror, Hashem rejects Mohammad, which ultimatley leads to even greater loss.The message is simple: Appreciate what God gives you, if necessary adjusting your values to accommodate that gift. For it is never His gift that is flawed, but rather our perception of such.

Masterpiece.

An exquisitely beautiful film. Like many Iranian films, the protagonist is a child and, in this case, a blind child. A simple film, full of humanity and beautifully crafted. Deeply moving.

Beautiful and very moving film

One of my favourite films

very good