Pedar

An OK movie, with an ok plot, good acting, great music, but also some incoherent characters. Not really good, but better than the average US movie: 6/10.

Directed by Majid Majidi, who would later helm the better known Children of Heaven, this Iranian film is set in a working class milieu, and it tells the story of a teenage boy, who after his father is killed in a traffic accident, has to leave school and start working in order to support his family. He is proud of being, at such a young age, the person bringing the bread to his poor family. But things change when his widowed mother marries a police officer. He regards this as a double betrayal, and he tries to make life for his family impossible. After putting his two young sisters in jeopardy (in a domestic oven, in one of the film's best scenes), he flees to a port city. The policeman follows him, and in the road back they found themselves in the desert, in a final chase scene that is among the best thing I ever saw. Eventually, and in extremis, adoptive father and son reconciles. Perhaps the best thing of the movie is the portrayal of the policeman. His manners are a bit rough and unpolished, but in his heart he is a good man; it would have been much easier for the film to portray him as a monster, but happily this was avoided. Another triumph for the humanistic Iranian cinema that surprised the movie-watching world in the 1990s (and which sadly, right now, seems to be going through a bad time, hurt by renewed censorship in the Islamic republic).

I am a fan of Majid Majidi and have been watching his work in reverse chronological order. Much like other Iranian directors, his early work shows great promise and is very enjoyable, but is clearly not up to the standard of his later work.

Pedar is a good enough film, enjoyable story, fine acting, the usual nice settings and camera work from Majidi. However, where it falls below his later work in standard is (just like The Color of Paradise)the lack of subtlety and nuances in this film ; it is overly-emotional and arguably melodramatic in places. People show their emotions by shouting and screaming in this film, which is a slightly coarse way of portraying their feelings. Majidi's later works, such as the great Willow Tree, offer a greater depth.

A good film, which was followed by better ones.

After the death of his father, 14 year old Mehrollah traveled to the southern town to find a job to support his mother and three baby sisters. Upon his return to his hometown with some gifts and the money he had saved for his family, Mehrollah was furious and confused to find the fact that his mother had remarried to a policeman and lived in a new home. Although the policeman was a man of kind-hearted, Mehrollah refused to accept him to be his step-father. Mehrollah refused to go home to live with the new change, instead, he decorated and stayed in the old house that used to be his birth-father's.

Mehrollah tried everything to fight against his step-father, and even worse, he stoled the police-hand-gun from his step-father and ran away to a far away town. The policeman was mad and rode on his motocycle to the town, and caught Mehrollah. On the home-bound road, they had a hard time lost in the wide desert and had to give up their broken-down motocycle. They walked on helplessly, thirsty and starving. The boy and his new father began to help each other under the hardship, and started a new relationship...

Director Majid Majidi is an expert who knows how to tell a simple story with deep meaning, with excellent camera language and very little dialogue. This movie is calm and beautiful.

Pedar (The Father) by Majid Majidhi. An Iranian film. Like most of the Iranian films the story is simple but told with artistic touches. The adolescent son working for his family comes back and finds that his widowed mother remarried a policeman. She explains that she had to marry again for social security. But the boy who loved his father before the accident could not stomach a step father. With all Hamletian fury he hates his step father without finding out what sort of a person the step father is. He runs away and the stepfather searches for him and finds him. On their return journey they have to undergo hardships while traversing the desert and empathy builds up between them. Majidhi's touches are there in many scenes. The accident which killed the boys father was just shown with the scene of the accident. He also knows when to stop the narrative. The boy and the stepfather lie dehydrated over a stream,. The photograph of the stepfather with his mother and sisters drifts from the pocket of the stepfather and stops at the nose of the boy indicating reconciliation and the boy's discovery of a new father. And then the film ends. The best acting is by the mother - the anguish and suffering of a poor woman (whatever the culture they live in) who is torn between the love to the son and love to the man who kindly gave security to her in a traditional society and jas neem a good father to her children.

Of course I think Majidhi's other film "the children of heaven" is much better film – the story of how a bother and sister of a poor family share a pair of shoes between themselves.