Synopsis
A semi-autobiographical account of Makhmalbaf's experience as a teenager when, as a 17-year-old, he stabbed a policeman at a protest rally. Two decades later, he tracks down the policeman he injured in an attempt to make amends.
1996 ‘نون و گلدون’ Directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf
A semi-autobiographical account of Makhmalbaf's experience as a teenager when, as a 17-year-old, he stabbed a policeman at a protest rally. Two decades later, he tracks down the policeman he injured in an attempt to make amends.
Nun va Goldoon, Nūn o goldūn, Pain et Fleurs, لحظة من البراءة, Nun and Goldo, Un Instant d'Innocence, Um Instante de Inocência, Brot und Blumentopf, Kenyér és virág, Pane e fiore, Chwila niewinności, 纯真时刻, Миг невинности, 순수의 순간, パンと植木鉢
After watching this film, I realized I'm never going to be film critic or scholar. This beautiful feeling that I'm feeling cannot be put to words. I've realized that the greatest films are something about what you can write and write, try to open them and their beauty, try to ease your burden and wonderment but you simply can't put them to words. I've loved film theory but after a film like this, I can't help but to pretty much forget it. I have admired great writers and their ability to write about films but right now it all feels just pointless. Theories of Bazin and Eisenstein for example; sure they will always have their impact on cinema but they'll…
The history of beauty in a brief dialogue:
-Does she love you?
-Yes.
-Did she say so?
-No.
-So how do you know?
-Well...each time she returns my books, there are flowers inside.
-What sort of books do you lend her?
-Novels, poetry, books on science, computing...
-Does she read them?
-Of course she does!
-Does she? Have you asked her?
-I can see she's underlined the good bits.
- Does she want to save mankind too?
-Yes.
-How do you know?
-By the sentences she underlines.
-Is that enough to know she wants to save mankind?
-Yes.
So goddamn perfect, I don't even deserve this.
Iranian cinema, I love you.
*coughs and clears throat*
As in Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968), I am in the imperative need to make a dissected analysis of the film in so-called Levels of reality and meta-reality to uncover both the real-life aspects from the cinematic medium and the moral subtext hidden within (if you paid close attention, I already gave you the heads-up of three levels by now).
In the tradition of Kiarostami's masterpiece Close-Up (1990), Iranian master Mohsen Makhmalbaf constructs a semiautobiographical meta-commentary account of his real life experience (kill some neurons). Why, then, to use a fictionalized real account rather than a real-life, documented account about a real-life event? In my humble opinion, Makhmalbaf also wants to explore, similarly to Kiarostami but with…
"A film as big as its director!"
I had read a lot about the extraordinary circumstances that led Mohsen Makhmalbaf to make A Moment of Innocence, so much so that it initially blinded me to how well-told this complex story is. Let me tell you instead how this story begins:
A middle-aged man comes to the house of Mohsen Makhmalbaf. A young girl answers the door - Hana? Samira? An actress playing one of them? He comes in to take part in a project, selecting an actor who will play a young version of himself. He chooses the actor who looks the most like a fashion model, but is overruled in favour of a quieter, younger, more enigmatic boy.
Elsewhere,…
How can you explain this film to somebody? You can't, it's a film that you need to witness on your own.
Deconstruction as a vessel for reconciliation. The past converging with the present; reality merging with cinema, until the two become one. A pair of souls—one regretful, the other adrift—rewriting a mutual history in cathartic synthesis, discovering a connection through mutual agony. Suddenly, desire to recapture becomes a need to amend. For twenty years they set their pain down, but pain doesn’t stay in the same place; it must first be addressed and processed before it can be relinquished.
The filmic rectification of a shared burden by way of A Moment of Innocence.
i like to think of the final moment as the page they’re leaving the flower on & the lines in the book they’re underlining. small gestures changing history. making fiction reality, and reality fiction.
Cinema as reconstruction, deconstruction and as past and present. Can cinema heal or does it hinder? In returning to the past do we dredge it up or can we make peace with it?
The brilliance of this film is in how it leaves some questions open but gives answers to others. To watch this film is to see an argument unfurling real time, it is a step removed from dialectical filmmaking as positions and perspectives shift. Truth and falsity are interwoven beyond the bounds of the audience as the film tests out ideas. Is the director trying to absolve themselves? Have they thought about the impact of their healing on others?
And at the heart of the film is reconstruction.…
As a teen, Mohsen Makhmalbaf was part of a militant party that opposed the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He found himself taking aggressive action, and at 17-years-old, he stabbed a police officer. This event led to him being locked up and sentenced to death. However, five years later, his prison time ended during the Iranian Revolution. It is an event that stuck with him, so he decided to direct A Moment of Innocence to reflect on the event and his life since.
It's a film about how events shape our lives and perspectives. It is also a therapeutic exercise and a search for catharsis. Makhmalbaf's approach to life reflection here is genius, as it is also a film…
I didn’t understand really what I was watching until embarrassingly late in the film, but when I did I felt the same excitement and refreshing bewilderment that I experienced while watching Close Up.
9.0 / 10