Boofe koor or The Blind Owl is a very complicated novel and to translate it into a cinematic form requires adroit skill and keen perception on the part of the director to catch all the delicacy of this masterpiece. Yet, I believe, as an audacious attempt to cinematize this novel, the director should be congratulated. This novel is like a web of multiple meanings and the director has apparently had a great understanding of the novel. His film somewhat conveys a rather just depiction of the novel. The performances are fabulous especially that of Parviz Fanizadeh who always proved to be an able writer. Perhaps a plot of the novel may help to indicate the very grandeur of it.
The novel has never ceased to fascinate the readers although they may have never been able to understand the different layers of meanings embodied therein.
The narrator represents an intellectual in the society who looks for ideals which are no longer chained to 'this savage world.' The surrealistic ambiance of the first section contributes to the notion that the ideal world is gone for ever and the narrator wakes up only to find himself in an earthly and down-to-earth life.
His nanny represents the past ill-founded beliefs and superstitions which keep tormenting the narrator while his wife represents the fallen values of the society. Hedayat was a great enemy of traditions and traditional beliefs and this novel is an egregious attack on those values. To him, these beliefs and so-called social values should be discarded and buried so that man can live at peace with himself.
The whole novel, more like a nightmarish journey into Hades, is an internal journey in the course of which the narrator loses his ideals and degenerates into a lowly being which he always upbraids.
The influence of The Blind Owl on modern Persian fiction is so powerful that the rest of writers are at loss to escape the inevitable grip. Audacious though it may seem, Modern Persian fiction was born out of the works of a legend called Sadeq Hedayat.
