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BLACKBOARDS Send This Review to a Friend
The image is haunting. Kurdish men with blackboards strapped to their backs make their way over grim terrain near the Iran-Iraq border. What can they be doing? They're on a mission to teach and in search of children willing to learn. They are also in limbo, trying to get back to their village, which had been attacked with lethal chemicals. The blackboards get double use. They become shields when the travelers are attempting to hide from a menacing plane overhead.
Director Samira Makhmalbaf, who won the Jury Prize at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival for "Blackboards," now getting a release in the United States, is a young director with a keen eye for building a visual impact. She places her characters in a dangerous situation but also in one that conveys the desperation of life in their surroundings. There is cruel poverty, and we meet youngsters who are more involved in being mules smuggling contraband than in learning. The set-up of teachers without pupils is a strong metaphor for life in that forsaken part of the world.
The director is the daughter of the renowned Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and she previously had another impressive film to her name, "The Apple," about two young girls held virtual prisoners by their father. Her method in "Blackboards" is to slowly observe the various characters, cast with non-professionals, as they go about their lives and attempt to achieve minimal goals while dealing with problems encountered en route.
The director, whose father contributed to the screenplay, doesn't hit us with an exciting story. Instead, she lures us into rapt observation of the situation and compels us to feel for those whose lives are marked by so much daily deprivation and struggle, whether by individual focus on her leading characters, Bahman Ghobadi as Reeboir, Said Mohamadi as Said or Behnaz Jafari as Halaleh, or on others who complete the human landscape.
Not only is "Blackboards" a film that's different; it is proof of an important new talent emerging and worth following. A Leisure Time Features/Kimstim release.
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