Bacheha-Ye aseman

Very rarely do movies make me feel emotional. One such movie I saw recently is an Iranian film named "Bacheha-Ye aseman" (English title: Children of heaven) released in 1997. An excellent film about two kids.

The movie is about a small boy 'Ali' and his younger sister 'Zahra'. Ali and Zahra's family lives in a poor condition. Their father struggles a lot to make both ends meet. Mother is very sick and unable to do any work at home. Zahra takes care of their youngest sibling, apart from cleaning the house and helping her mother in cooking. Ali buys vegetables and takes care of works outside home. Amidst all this, they manage to study. And they are brilliant. The movie is set in this backdrop.

At the beginning of the movie Ali unfortunately loses Zahra's shoes while bringing it back from a cobbler. He begs Zahra not to tell this to their parents, not wanting to add anymore misery to them. He assures Zahra that he will find it out. But all his searches end in vain. Zahra accepts Ali's offer to use his shoes because Ali's school starts only after Zahra's classes end.

Now that they have only 1 pair of shoes they struggle to manage their time. Zahra first goes to school wearing Ali's shoes, and runs back as soon as her classes get over. They exchange their footwear one the way, and Ali runs to school. Unfortunately their timing doesn't work out well and Ali starts arriving late to school for couple of days in succession. He gets caught while trying to sneak in to the school and almost gets expelled by the head master, when one of his teachers interferes and pleads him to give Ali another chance.

When a marathon competition is announced Ali doesn't care about it at all. But later when he comes to know that the third prize is a pair of shoes, he promises Zahra that he will win the third prize and give her the shoes.

Did he manage to keep up his promise?

The climax is a bit cinematic but quite moving.

There are some scenes that made me pause and take break to overcome the sorrow.
In one scene Ali goes with his father searching for some work in the city. When Ali's father is unable to speak properly asking for any job, Ali handles it quite well. Those scenes show how the society and living conditions make children grow very fast.

In another scene Ali and Zahra clean their lone pair of shoes and keep it outside for drying. It rains and spoils the shoes again.

The most beautiful of them all is when Zahra accidentally drops her shoe in to a stream carrying dirty water.

While watching some of the scenes I was reminded of my young age (when I was 6-7 years old).

Those Sundays when I used to 'polish' my shoes by dipping white chalk piece in water and rubbing it all over the torn white canvas. Shoe polish was quite unaffordable then.

Those times when we lived in a single-room house, which was smaller than the bathroom of the apartment I live in now.

Those nights when we set up mouse-traps to escape from those horrible creatures, and the following mornings when I mercilessly killed them.

Those days which dawned with the shouts of neighbourhood ladies quarreling with each other for a bucket of water from the common pipe, and the nights that ended listening to all the bad words the foul-mouthed drunken husbands thrown at their wives all over the dirty neighbourhood.

I paused the movie and kept staring at the ceiling for a long time, re-living those days of my life. Those days - which will never come back.

The performance of the kids who played Ali and Zahra are unbelievable, and extraordinary. I loved them so much that I kept on thinking and wondering what they would have become now.

It took me a very long time to come out of the movie.

--S--