Blackboards - *1/2
Now Playing: (2000, Samira Makhmalbaf) [seen in theatre]
I was pretty curious to check this one out, since the director is another of the Filming Makhmalbafs of Iran, and her dad's not too shabby as a filmmaker in my opinion. While she's obviously inherited some of dad's talent, I really didn't care much for this one. This gives off a pretty strong important-film scent, being filmed among the Kurds, etc., but I just couldn't get around the fact that it was saying the same thing over and over. For you see the two principal characters, a pair of wandering teachers who carry their blackboards on their back wherever they go, are greeted with almost universal indifference by those they meet. Because, you see, for the Kurdish people there are more immediate concerns than readin', writin' and 'rithmetic. I'll grant Makhmalhaf-Jr.-ette that this is a pretty compelling point, but it's not really enough to hang a feature-length film on. By the time one of the teachers desperately tries to go through a lesson with his new wife while she calms her kid down, I've gotten the point many times over. So for most of the rest of the time we watch the teachers walk up mountains and down mountains, and then join up with various groups of people who walk up and down mountains some more. Now maybe there might be a lot of pregnant metaphors and the like in the film, but I had a hard time sifting them out of the rest of it. Makhmalbaf seems to enjoy conversations in which characters repeat themselves over and over and over again too, which to me seems like an affectation but then what do I know. The use of non-actors is more hit-and-miss than it usually is in Iranian films, with the woman who plays the teacher's new wife being glaringly unnatural in front of the camera. There are moments of beauty scattered throughout the film whenever the camera stops shaking, but the final shot didn't have the impact it should have since it felt to me like a overdetermined "ironic" ending. I know that I'm supposed to like, or at least support, films like this that open a window on cultures that are often overlooked by cinema, but as with last month's Waiting For Happiness, I just can't get around my desire to, you know, actually give a damn about what's happening onscreen.