The Song of Sparrows (2008)

This movie underlines the fact that a movie belongs to the director, How he treats the theme and narrate the story. This movie is about a very ordinary man living in the outskirts of Teharan, Finding it very difficult of get the income sufficient for the family, But happily living with them.The struggle of a common man is beautifully enacted by Mohammed amir Naji. He really deserve an applause for his splendid performance throughout the movie.All other characters in the family also given very good performance. The first few minutes of the movie is in a ostrich farm where the protagonist is working. Those who have not seen ostriches in real life this is visual treat. Similar is the way in which two wheeler's are used as Taxi in Tehran.The silence of Desert is beautifully captured in this movie. The background music is also very apt. Overall this movie is a pleasant experience , thanks to the care taken by majid majidi in each scene.

The Song of Sparrows is a simple film about Karim, an uncomplicated man who is a caretaker of ostriches on a farm. One day, one of the birds escapes and Karim is fired. He rides his motorbike to the city in order to get his daughter's hearing aid repaired. Someone mistakes him for a taxi, and he discovers a new way to make money. The problem is that the passengers are mostly rude and nasty to the good natured guy, and it sours his outlook on humanity. He also becomes a pack rat, picking up all kinds of junk on his daily travels on the "taxi" bike. The stuff piles up, much to the consternation of his wife. He fights with the neighbor over an old, used door that they have borrowed, demanding it back. He loses his temper, and during a rampage, breaks his foot. He must then rely on the kindness of others because he is bound to a bed while his leg heals. The Song of Sparrows is a beautiful movie with excellent performances all around.

Majid Majidi's favorite man,Reza Naji who played the construction overseer Memar in Baran (2001),the father of the blind boy Ali in Bacheha-Ye aseman (1997),and Mortaza the hospital mate of Youssef (Parviz Parastui)in Beed-e majnoon (2005)plays Karim this time. Karim works in an ostrich farm.He doesn't make much but he seems to be contented with what he has with his simple family. One day he gets the ax when one of the ostriches runs away.On his way back home, he finds out that her daughter has dropped her hearing aid in the sludge of the local storage. Soon after, he travels to Tehran to have the hearing aid fixed.When he is mistaken for a cabbie with his motorbike he starts making his living in Tehran.Through heavy traffic he carries goods like- even-a refrigerator and many sorts of people.Through the bustling city life we witness Karim's sustained efforts trying to preserve his unadulterated self. Karim,even as an understanding husband and father is still part of a patriarchal society. He believes in his own truth. For instance, one day when he is coming back from the city,he sees his kids selling flowers on the roadside and the first reaction he gives is:" Don't I provide for you enough?" However the only dream his son Hussein (Hamed Aghazi), has is to clean up the storage,buy some fish to let them reproduce there and to become a millionaire by selling more and more fish:)No matter how brusque he looks like Karim is a good-hearted guy like any other major Majidi character. Deeply and genuinely concerned with faith,bad men don't seem to be taking much of a space in Majidi's movies. Unlike other Iranian directors like Abbas Kiarostami he seems to have undertaken a mission of creating simple but sweet movies. Last but not least,IMDb's language information may sometimes be not fully correct. Majidi uses more and more the Turkish language in his movies. Song of Sparrows include more Turkish words than his previous movies maybe because of the fact that Karim and the local people around him speak a Persian mixed with Azerbaijani Turkish. The song Karim sings at the back of the truck and the song he sings to his wife are in Turkish. The songs to which they listen on the truck's tape recorder are also in Turkish. It may be just me but I guess Song of Sparrows is also a more hopeful and less dark movie than the previous Majidi flicks. As someone who have seen his movies like Baran and The Colour of Paradise, this one is easier to watch without tears. All in all, it is a purely humanitarian,an overwhelmingly sweet movie that you will just like!

I've only seen but a handful of films from Majid Majidi the master Iranian filmmaker, and he continues to open my eyes to Iranian cinema with his latest The Song of Sparrows, telling the tale of a down and out of luck Karim (starring regular Reza Najie), a general worker in an ostrich farm, and the life of his family in a quaint little village. Being the perpetual loser in life, sometimes as a consequence of victimization, we follow his misadventures as a small time guy being caught up with opportunities in the big city, again being the puppet on whom Chance chooses to smile upon.There are plenty of comedic chaos in the film which makes this quite the delight to watch. In the beginning we see how he orders a group of children around when they were treading around sludge waters in an abandoned well to find the hearing aid belonging to his daughter. Taking charge over the operations and barking orders to the kids, we discover he's not exactly that inspirational a leader even amongst kids, being devoid of clever ideas whose bark is more severe than his bite. Then comes the escape of an ostrich in the farm which he and a group of fellow workers fail to recapture, leading to his dismissal from work.With time on his hands, he journeys to Tehran to get his daughter's damaged hearing aid fixed, though the exorbitant repair costs provides additional headache. But he stumbles upon the motorcycle taxi business in the city by accident, and discovers it pays quite handsomely. Before you can say "opportunity", he's already on to it, and in a short span of time made a lot more money than he could have imagined, meeting with a myriad of characters, and with the cash, stocking up his home with material wealth. This segment of the story was made quite enjoyable by Karim's customers, some of whom are good to him, while others seek some incredible ways to exploit.There's a sense of measured hysteria toward the end, but I had felt it was somewhat a statement made on how the ambitions stemming from opportunity would have presented an avenue for misguided corruption, as well as the failure to see the finer things in life that mattered a lot more. The son portrays the wishes of the common folk, in wanting to seek out their interest and a better life quite off tangent with the father figure of authority, who continues to punish his son and his friends, and discouraging them from pursuing their now broken dreams, which involved quiet determination in wanting to take over and clean up a filthy water storage tank for fish rearing and profit. The patriarch figure determines and dictates what can, or cannot be done, and doesn't hesitate to use a little violence to slap his orders across.From success to loss, the final arc was one of the most colourful, and filled with some picture perfect imagery that would leave you spellbound, especially the scene with the hundreds of goldfish flapping around in need for water. Majid Madjidi once again crafted a film that will leave you reflecting upon the layers and messages hidden behind a film which came across as deceptively simple, on one level seeking to entertain, and on another a probable commentary of life hidden underneath the simplistic veneer.