mxahmad@PacBell.COM (Mehdi Ahmadi) (04/16/91)
BASHU, THE LITTLE STRANGER
A film review by Mehdi Ahmadi
Copyright 1991 Mehdi Ahmadi
Last night I saw a film called BASHU, THE LITTLE STRANGER in San
Francisco. It is a film made in Iran. The "San Francisco Chronicle"
had a review of it last week end. It is one of the best movies I have
seen in a long time.
BASHU is a fantastically directed and acted dramatic movie about a
ten-year-old Iranian boy who lost his family in southern Iran during the
war. His village was bombed. He sneaks into the back of a truck to get
out of the war area. Traveling north, he ends up in the beautifully
green areas of the northern Iran (by the Caspian Sea), where he faces
suspicious villagers who distrust him because of his dark face and
southern dialect. A young woman villager takes him in, and the story
begins.
The story is great. The cinematography is fantastic. Bashu was
played superbly. What is interesting that I noticed is that even though
the movie did not have a haunting score, the rare occasions of audio
percussion were quite moving.
Also in the Thirty-fourth San Francisco International Film
Festival, there will be another Iranian movie called CLOSE UP (NAMA-YE
NAZDIK). Here is an article from the San Francisco Film Society
publication:
"A frustrated young film buff, who had been posing as
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, was arrested. The accused, passing himself
off as the celebrated film director (The Peddler), entered
the life of a well-to-do family with ostensible intention of
wanting to make a film with their participation. All this has
apparently been an excuse for planning a burglary which was
forestalled with the man's arrest." This small item in a
Tehran magazine caught the attention of another venerated
Iranian filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami and became the genesis of
CLOSE UP.