leoperu Review of The Willow Tree

The Willow Tree (2005)

To see God through one's own blind eyes

[7/10 · 15 March 2013]

I found "Beed-e majnoon", the younger, but in form and content more adult and restrained sibling of the famous "Rang-e khoda", very good, despite some minor flaws. But by chance, I did not enjoy it as much as I might have, because its heart, so to say, was revealed to me years ago through a chapter in "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", a small book of essays by Annie Dillard. I would like to embrace this opportunity and recommend it to any reader of this who is not yet familiar with it and would feel concerned. A couple of pages where the author depicts the inner world of the blind who have regained their sight touched me deeply and for good. Thus I can't but look upon Majidi's film rather as an illustration to Dillard's essay than as an independent work of art. This is of course a subjective attitude not fair to the movie, since it offers much more than what's inherent in "Pilgrim". Apart from its obvious religious value which is something I can hardly judge (who else than "The Film Sufi" should know better ?), "Beed-e majnoon" is rewarding and inspiring from both psychological a philosophical point of view, let alone its visual beauty. Although New Yorker Video did their best to conceal it in their inferior non-anamorphic transfer, it still shines - as early as in the quasi-mirroring calligraphy of the opening titles. The image of our hero staring at his mirror self emerging in the glass door ; another one letting him slowly fade in the rearview mirror of his wife's car ; the whole sequence at the airport - not one of the following scenes, for me, could match this one ....

Speaking about blindness as a theme for filmmakers, there's one more work to be recommended : Werner Herzog's early documentary about deaf and blind people in Bavaria "Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit". In short : a harrowing and enlightening experience !