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Iranian Love Story
This is a low-key but affecting story about a young man learning to love. <
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>Seventeen-year-old Latif works at a construction site for a friend of his father. He's all hormones and bumptiousness, quick to laugh, and quick to pick fights with the older workers who toss jibes at him. Many of his co-workers are Afghani immigrants who have left their war-torn country looking for a better life. Latif is in charge of the kitchen, preparing meals and serving tea to the workers. When one of the Afghani workers falls out a window and breaks his ankle, he sends his son Rahmat to take his place, since the family desperately needs the money. This boy isn't strong enough for heavy labor, so the foreman puts him in the kitchen in place of Latif. <
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>Enraged, Latif loses no opportunity to torment Rahmat, until the day he sees the lad furtively combing out his long, black hair and realizes Rahmat is a girl, a beautiful one at that. Latif goes from bitter to smitten, and takes to protecting Rahmat from the other workers. He even risks jail to keep her from being picked up by the Immigration officers. When the foreman is forced to lay off the Afghani workers, Latif's new love disappears back into her country neighborhood. Latif uses all his spare time to find her, and all his money to help her dirt-poor family. Through all of this, he never actually talks to Rahmat, or spends any time with her. Loving her though, transforms him from a callow youth into a compassionate, even noble, young man. <
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>Baran presents a type of love we in western societies don't usually experience. Latif's behavior towards Rahmat is fervent, self-sacrificing, and abstract. The idea of his love for her seems to drive him more than the prospect of actually interacting with her. Part of this is surely cultural. At the movie's end, just when it seems that they're about to talk, she throws a buhrka over her head and turns away to her father's truck. Latif is left with a hair pin she dropped and the image of her footprint in the mud, soon washed away by heavy rains. You can imagine how this intense, abstract emotion could be transformed in young men into a willingness to die for the abstract idea of a perpetual afterlife. <
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>Hossein Abedini gives an energetic but emotionally shaded performance as Latif. Actress Zahra Bahrami doesn't speak one word for the entire movie, but conveys all of Rahmat's feelings and yearnings through her lustrous black eyes. Director Magid Majidi does a great job conveying the dust and sweat of hard labor - there's a particularly wrenching scene where Rahmat and other women find work lifting heavy boulders out of a cold stream. Without romanticizing, he also shows us the bonds that form among poor working men. <
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>I've also seen Majidi's film Children of Heaven, about a brother and sister in a poor neighborhood in Tehran, and would recommend it highly.

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Change of heart . . .
This is a gently heartbreaking film set in Tehran, a city flooded with Afghan refugees during the time of Taliban rule in their homeland. It touches on several themes, including the plight of the refugees, and those of them who work illegally as laborers in the construction industry. Much of the story takes place at a construction site, where the central character, a young Iranian, a short-tempered lad full of complaints about his lowly status among the other workmen, gradually discovers within himself a heartfelt compassion for the refugees in the person of a girl masquerading as a boy to support the family of her disabled father, injured at the work site. <
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>The young man's compassion is ignited by the love he begins to feel for this girl, and there begins a series of selfless sacrifices that he makes for her and her family. Though they never exchange a word in the film, she leaves a deep impression on him, and he is utterly changed by his experience. A story that is about the transformation of character, the film sometimes struggles to externalize this process, often observing the main character as he watches from the sidelines, wordlessly ponders his situation, or goes in search of the girl and her family. Director Magid Magidi compensates in part by revealing the working conditions of the men, the difficulties of the contractor in charge of them, and the unforgiving weather (snow, rain, cold) in which they all labor. Recommended for the window it opens into a world rarely revealed by the cinema or the news media.

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a quiet film that deals with suffering, love and sacrifice
Baran is a beautiful film that, oddly enough, primarily takes place at a construction site in Iran. The plot is simple and sweet; the characters are well-developed; the cinematography is often stunning ... Baran has all the makings of a great film, and it is, indeed, very enjoyable. <
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>There were 2 things that I especially liked about this movie. First of all, Baran is the first Iranian film I've seen, and I was grateful for a glimpse into a culture that I know very little about. I thought Majid Majidi - the director's - portrait of Iranian and Afghan-refugee workers was at once lovely and painful. Specifically, it is somewhat difficult to view the conditions that the characters live and work in - and yet - the film in no way asks for sympathy. It is simply telling a story, and the characters happen to work low-paying, back-breaking jobs. That is their reality. Also worth noting, the entire movie does not take place at a dirty, grimy job-site. The main character, a teenager named Latif, leaves on several excursions. These scenes are especially beautiful. Even if this film lacked plot and characters (which it, thankfully, does not), I would have to give it some credit for the aesthetic quality of these scenes. <
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>The second thing that I especially liked about this movie was the way it was able to make a very innocent and restrained gesture seem provocative. There is a footprint in the mud toward the end of the movie that is - somehow - an evocation of sexual and emotional longing. There is another scene, during which a male and a female pick up a basket of food that has spilled, and though their hands never touch, it is one of the most erotic cinematic moments I think I've ever witnessed. <
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>Worth noting - Baran moves rather slowly. I wouldn't say it's boring, but it's certainly languid. There also seem to be a few problems with the flow of scenes. I could be wrong, but occasionally, I found myself disoriented when it would cut abruptly from one moment to the next. But this is really a trivial observation. Overall, Baran is a very nice film. If not profound, it's at least quietly beautiful.