Tala va mes

The central theme in Gold & Copper seems to be: What is religion and how does one get close to God? Reza (Behrouz Shaibi) is a young cleric who has come to Tehran from a provincial town with his wife, Zahra, and children in order to study under a famed cleric. However things don't go as planned because very early on in the film he finds out that his wife is suffering from MS. This forces Reza to take on a lot more parental responsibility that he had bargained for, including cooking, washing, taking his kids to school, etc. Though he is initially very upset at missing many of the religious lessons because of his situation, he begins to think that perhaps God is teaching him the true meaning of religion and piety in a different way. Gold and Copper handles the universal issues that it deals with in a very delicate and sensitive way. It is helped greatly by the performance of Negar Javaherian (as Zahra) who is fast becoming one of the greatest Iranian actresses of her generation. The script is very inventive and injects the right amount of humor into what is a very serious subject. Recommended.

With complex themes beautifully explored, amazing performances across the board and many hard-hitting, powerful scenes, Gold & Copper is also very tightly edited and superbly directed. This drama is difficult but also essential to watch fueled by a brilliant script and fantastic dialogue. It is a very complex film which doesn't give us easy answers, but portrays life as it is - messy and complicated. Gold & Copper truly is one of the best films of the entire decade.

Apart from the two main protagonists -- the seminarian and his wife -- this film has a third, albeit inanimate, one. A hand-woven Persian carpet in the making, stationed expectantly on its loom in the main part of the modest family home in Tehran. When illness and tragedy befall the family in the shape of a degenerative illness, it is the husband who takes over (yet another) task, that of completing the carpet, that was ably -- and almost invisibly-- done by the wife. The carpet, with its rich floral pattern and skeins of wool in dozens of colours waiting to be knotted, then cut, symbolizes not only a cherished Iranian artifact and a symbol of Persian civilization, but also the family's own life as new migrants in the city, forever being crafted, inch by inch, and forever threatening to unravel.

The seminarian, a devoted husband whose faith is tested, but doesn't waver, gets little or no assistance from his colleagues and teachers at the seminary. The only fellow student who helps him does not seem to be a serious student. There is a also a hospital employee, perhaps symbolizing the modern Iranian woman, disdainful towards religious figures, whose life is touched by the ailing woman.

The voice-over in the last few minutes of the film, a Mullah reciting a moral lesson to the effect that 'love cannot be learnt from a book' has profound implications for our understanding of the relationship between individual compassion and character, and the capacity of faith to mould that compassion.

The movie is about a family which has recently moved to Tehran due to the father of the family, who is a mullah, to continue his religious studies. But the story is not about this, it's about the challenges a family goes through, what a father goes through, what a wife goes through. This movie shows life, with its happy times, sad times, funny times, and memorable times. A great quote that can be heard a few times in this movie, is "Enjoy the little things", and during the movie, it shows how to do so.

Highly recommended.