Bicycle Thieves meets Grave Of The Fireflies in a sensational Iranian masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (27 May 2019)

It was a rather peculiar experience to watch Children of Heaven again, on one hand it brought back a lot of the feelings that I had when I first watched it as a kid and how the lives of those two children resonated with me back then for so long, and on the other hand I can see now how masterfully this piece of art is crafted with my (rather) more experienced eye and so I decided to write my first review ever.
Children of Heaven is a very simple story about an -insignificant- event in the -not so important- life of two Iranian children, it is literally a story conceived with a pair of shoes in the center of it! and yet it succerds in what so many Hollywood blockbusters fail, that is speaking to its audience sincerely and creating characters that we really care for.
You don't need a tragic backstory about a psychologically traumatized childhood for your character or a first class celebrity to take the role in order to make the audience feel the character, it is much more subtle than that.. And Majidi shows us how it's done! (by the way I have to give a shout out to the little children that took the leading roles in the film for their outstanding and touching performances).
Like Grave of The Fireflies, Children of Heaven is about a brother-sister relationship in an environment that is not adequate for their innocence and yet they find meaning in the most insignificant of things, and like Bicycle Thieves, the father-son relationship faces difficulties but is never broken. It is the interpersonal relationships that give these characters a reason to fight the cruel lives they face and find meaning in it.
Children of Heaven, like its two coumterparts, are examples of storytelling at its best.. They don't force anything on you, they don't rely on schmaltzy music or melodramatic special effects, they respect the viewer as not to tell them how to feel at a particular moment, and they all depict "real" life no make-up or sugar on the top, just the plain life we all live and see.
I should also point out for the subtle social and economical criticism that Majidi displays in his film, showing us the big differences between the classes and yet not depicting the rich as evil and selfish or the poor as the persecuted heros.
In the end we're left with an ending that's the perfect metaphor for life itself, not a happy ending nor a sad one nor anything actually, it's just there.. This type of ending might as well be of impact on the Iranian cinema as another outstanding Iranian film, A Separation, had a similar type of ending.
In conclusion, Children of Heaven is the type of films that we should all watch from time to time to remind ourselves of life as it is not as it's presented through most of the media. simple but profound are the best words to describe it.
Stay well..