Persian Bicycle Thieves Finds Elusive Balance

Rating: 7/10 (30 October 2016)

I have been on a "family movie" kick recently. An odd genre to delve into. And no, I am not a nostalgia addled twentysomething revisiting Disney. I'm talking anything that moves and talks and is inoffensive enough so that parents can let a screen babysit their munchkins for 2 hoursish. This genus of film shelters the lazy and has historically provided us with the most notorious specimens of hackery. Beyond the trash however, there exists children's movie that inspire wonder. It is these films, where creators did not compromise on their art, that feel as if they are abandoning me. I am inured, always on guard. Is simple innocuous sentimentality so unstomachable even when not squishy? I blame society. Children of Heaven is my only recent escape from this cultural conditioning.
Let's first address the most obvious possibility why Children of Heaven is an exception. Writer/Director Majid Majidi is from Iran and this is a Persian language film. Now any film veteran knows that flowery words can work beautifully as subtitles and be completely hollow when audible. This is a wrench in the works when reviewing foreign language films. So unless I learn Persian, I cannot say exactly how resilient I am to the syrup. I'll get right on that. So I am sure the unfamiliar tongue does lower my guard, but I am convinced that is not the deciding factor. The source of conflict is sublime. Children of Heaven is the story of how young boy Ali survives day to day life after misplacing his sister Zahra's shoes. There is a duality to this problem's scale. Even the smallest mishaps can be tragedies for children. Lost shoes seem like one such problem, yet Ali's family is poor. With the rent past due, Ali's father overworked, and his mother injured, even the smallest mishap can push a vulnerable family over the brink. With this and their father's potential ire in mind, the siblings choose to handle this problem on their own.
This seems a reasonable undertaking for a pair of elementary schoolers, but we forget how integral shoes are in everyday life. They are practical, but also convey style and status. So when Ali and Zahra share a pair of worn out tennies this arrangement colors their day to day life. Still, the loss is not a McGuffin driving a plot, but a perspective. Ali and Zahra live where school is run in shifts to maximize the use of the facilities. Zahra takes the shoes in the morning, dashes to a meeting place, Ali trades her sandals hopefully in time to get to school without being tardy. A reasonable arraignment, but imagine trying to get your sister to ware your beat up oversized shoes or wearing ugly ill-fitting boats to school. So no, plot lovers, this is not a story for you. Just life in the face of the tiny obstacles the size of the world. The dilemmas never seems forced our overly dramatized. The director knows the peril these narratives pose to our attention spans. The movie is not even 90 minutes long. Identical to the similar Bicycle Thieves. There is a climax to Children of Heaven, but it does not resolve the problem of the shoes. There are some hints, but Children does not have a slick Hollywood ending. This has and will continue to perturb some viewers, but I argue they missed the point. Majidi is a measured storyteller. Like the family, authenticity hangs on a delicate precipice. Heartwarming, but another dash of cuteness could send the film tumbling into an abyss that has claimed so many others. Children of Heaven finds the balance and a place in any beating heart.