The Color of Paradise | Rang-e Khoda: Majidi brings the beauty

Movie title: The Color of Paradise Original title: Rang-e Khoda Release year: 1999 Director: Majid Majidi

I am sitting on a tool on the rooftop of my house. It’s late afternoon, the sky is partly cloudy, partly clear, after a rain-shower. A cool breeze is waving through which is very much welcome after a hot and humid day. The mahogany tree leaves are bustling in the breeze, the moringa tree in the West side looks even prettier as the rain drops sparkle on it. Four-five different birds can be heard from my tool. I ask myself… am I a person who can see love, who can see grace?

For one day, the human in me cries out, the senses in me sharpens—the effect after watching a film by Majidi.

This is the third film by Majidi that I watched. Color of Paradise, the title even evokes a sense of grace… The movie starts at a boarding school for blind kids. It’s the start of the holiday season. Parents taking their kids home. Mothers hugging their boys. The boys who can sense their dear ones through touch and smell and other senses except vision, are touching the cheeks of their mothers, who bent on their knees to receive the long awaited gesture… one kid, Mohammad is left in the bench, waiting for his father, from a faraway rural village to come fetch him… Mohammad hears birds calling, touches his surroundings, and waits… we see Mohammad kneeling on the ground, moving on his all fours and following the tree shades, he gropes dried leaves and keeps going. We wonder why the boy is crawling under the trees… Mohammad’s hands finally pause and the camera shows a little newborn birdie held in Mohammad’s hand. Only then we understand what Mohammad was seeing which we could not see… he takes the screaming newborn in his hands, senses its beaks with his fingers and puts him inside his shirt pocket. The boy listens, gropes for a tree trunk, struggles to climb the tree. He finally climbs it and finds the nest of the newborn. Mohammad lays the baby bird in its home, his shirt wet with sweat and his face breaks into a smile…

The Color of Paradise is a story about Mohammad, his father, and more than anything—something we can’t see with eyes—God, beauty, paradise—the things that need us to imagine, listen to nature, sense the lives around us…

Beside the lovely story, Majidi showed utmost excellence in creating the movie. The landscape reminded me of the most heavenly place I know—Kashmir, the river reminded me of the fierce Sindh in whose current I once dipped my feet… the little girls’ blushing cheek, and full smile… you know, paradise itself appeared in his shots…

Fathers in Majidi’s films have serious eyes, thick eyebrows and a very Persian face that is lined with hardships of life… I loved this story, not only because of the beauty, but also for all the humane flaws that it showed…

The Color of Paradise is a film that stays with you forever, if you are someone who sees paradise in the earthly world…

Will end my review with some favorite shots from the movie…