The Color of Paradise movie review (2000)

As the film opens, the school term is over, and the other boys have been picked up by their parents. Mohammad waits along outside his school, for a father who does not come. There is a remarkable sequence in which he hears the peep of a chick which has fallen from its nest. The boy finds the chick, gently takes it in his hand and then climbs a tree, listening for the cries of the lost one's nest-mates. He replaces the bird in its nest. God, who knows when a sparrow falls, has had help this time from a little blind boy.

The father finally arrives and asks the headmaster if Mohammad can stay at the school over the vacation term. The answer is no. Hashem reluctantly brings the boy home with him, where grandmother and sisters welcome him. Mohammad is under no illusions about his father's love. Local children attend a school. Mohammad has all the same books, in Braille, and begs to be allowed to attend. In class, he knows the answers--but his father forbids him to continue at the school, possibly hoping to keep his existence a secret. Eventually the boy is apprenticed to a blind carpenter, who will teach him how to build cabinets by touch. This might be a good job for some, but not for Mohammad, who is eager to compete in the world of the seeing.

For all of its apparent melodrama, "The Color of Paradise" is not an obvious or manipulative film. It is too deliberately simple. And it is made with delicacy and beauty. The soundtrack is alive with natural sounds of woodpeckers, birdsongs, insects and nature, voices and footfalls. A blind person would get a good idea of the locations and what is happening--as Mohammad does. The performance by young Mohsen Ramezani, as the boy, is without guile; when he cries once in frustration, we do not see acting, but raw grief.

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