Baran Movie Review

Story of survival and exile is told without sentimentality

By SEAN AXMAKER, SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, December 19, 2002

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Hotheaded, money-obsessed Latif (Hossein Abedini) is a young Iranian on a construction site teeming with illegal Afghan workers. A boy among men, with a cushy job serving tea and running errands, he is, in the words of his gruff but paternal boss (Mohammad Amir Naji), "a fighting cock, always ready to jump and fight."

Only his ID card, a commodity greater than gold in a world dominated by off-the-books refugees, keeps his job secure. It surely isn't his bad tea, worse manners and sloppy work habits.

When he loses his position to a silent, shy Afghan boy (Zahra Bahrami) too small to handle the heavy lifting of construction, he's resentful and even vengeful, until he discovers the smooth-faced boy is really a girl in disguise and he becomes smitten with Baran.

Not exactly a convincing turn of events, but it provides the springboard for Latif's growth from callow selfishness to generosity and sensitivity when the site is shut down. As Latif searches the city for Baran, he discovers a culture of impoverished Afghans who have fled the Taliban for Iranian slums, caught between the dream of freedom and the pull of homeland.

Iranian director Majid Majidi resists the temptation to preach and sentimentalize. "Baran" isn't exactly subtle, but he trusts his images -- scene after scene of workers hauling supplies and building walls, and Afghans scattering whenever the Iranian officials come around -- over explanations.

The enigmatic, nurturing Baran is too idealized to come to life, but Abedini makes Latif a vivid creature of pure emotion and impulse. Its local release delayed by a year, the timeliness of "Baran" has come and gone but the universality of its story -- of exile, of poverty, of scrambling for survival -- is timeless.

Like his fellow Iranian directors, Majidi never fails to find an evocative and moving final image, and his deft moments of unspoken communication glow with a power beyond words. The faces of its inarticulate characters tell the story, and Majidi has put some amazing faces on the screen.

BARAN

SYNOPSIS:
Somewhere in Iran, a construction site buzzes with the activity of mostly illegal (unregistered) Afghan refugees under the eye of building manager Memar (Mohammad Amir Naji). Teenager Lateef (Hossein Abedini) is resntful of them, especially when the young son of an injured worker, Rahmat (Zahra Bahrami) takes his caretaker’s job serving tea and meals to the workers. The slender and weak Rahmat is an easy target of resentment in the poverty stricken team, until Lateef discovers Rahmat’s secret: he’s a girl. The deception is one of life’s necessities in a quest for survival amidst the million dispalced Afghan refugees in Iran. Lateef’s resentment turns to infatuation, even as they two are separated by the forces of fate.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:

It was in blissful ignorance of the story that I saw a preview of this film, and I am sorry if you have read the synopsis, because it robs the film of some of its power to reveal itself to you. But there is much more that isn’t in the synopsis that will make up for that. Majid Majidi, who made the well received Children of Heaven, creates a wonderful, subtle film that is at once a restrained love story – in which the lovers never even kiss – and a metaphor for his own society as well as the wider universe.

Baran is set almost entirely on a suburban construction site in Northern Iran, which is awash with Afghan refugees. Many are illegal workers who survive day by day as labourers. The setting is a surprisingly rich environment for cinematic exploration of human behaviour. It could be seen as Majidi’s metaphor for his country, at once busy and conflicted, building yet destroying. It is also a social hothouse, where the resentment of the locals against the foreign workers is portrayed through Lateef’s eyes, a volatile and mischievous teenager.

But his simplistic antagonism is turned on its head when his expectations are up-ended by the young boy/girl. He not only reverses his attitude, he takes severe risks on her behalf. Majidi delivers this story through subtleties, drawing us into the specific world he portrays in one tiny part of Iran. Filled with honest performances and exceptional detail, Baran is a gentle film with dramatic punch, a haunting ode to humanity.