Review by kos2

This was a good film, certainly not a great one. Many scenes were way too static without any kind of narrative purpose for their being so.

I sense a lot separates me (and probably most Western viewers) and what's going on in the film--cultural differences. For example, I think I must be one of the few people to realize that the first family to which Hussein delivers a pizza is a Jewish family, celebrating Hanukkah. What is the filmmaker trying to show with this? Is it that Jews--like everyone else in Iran--are terrified of anyone visiting (atypical of practice, the menorah is not positioned in a window)? Or maybe that everyone else is unafraid, except for people like Jews?

Even more confusing to me was the house of the man with the rich family. Are we supposed to look down on them because they are so rich and live in the US? I gather that Hussein's jump into the pool was some attempt at an escape.

But then to go the robbery/murder/suicide....I don't understand the narrative connection or progression between the penultimate and final scenes.

A film worth seeing, but too oblique in what it's trying to convey.