“Shahr e Zobaale haa (Scream of the ants)”, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s latest movie, is a story about a couple, a mildly spiritual/religious woman and an seemingly atheist/ex-communist, spending their honey moon, traveling through The whole film can be summarized as a sequence of some truly magnificent scenery and exquisite cinematography that has been completely ruined by the idiocy of a man who knows how to use his camera but not his brain!
Inject the content of a gravely depressed, high school teenager’s diary, edited by his housewife mother, into a very well made documentary about
Couldn’t anybody around Makhmalbaf reminded him that since 15th century, the question “Why God has created poor people?” has not been considered a philosophical question for God’s sake, but the one a six years old might ask the parents over the dinner table!?
And you know what can make those “100 philosophical questions for mentally challenged Soccer mom’s” even more intolerable?! Asking two actors, whose acts are unacceptable even by the standards of a kindergarten’s play about talking pumpkins, recite them out loud, in a way that can easily be outdone even by a well-trained parrot!
Apart from two monologues; one by the guru-type who allegedly stops the train by his eyes, and the other by the German monk, who for some reasons, speaks English with a funny Indian accent; one can find the most idiotic, unreasonable, childish ideas, expressed in the most banal, unnatural and corny way possible in a movie which is so shattered that nothing, even all those mind-blowing scenes and even the exquisite beauty of the actress, “Mahnour Shadzi” (VOA’s dazzling gorgeous anchor, also known as “Luna shad”), can make it a dash less painful to watch.
Put this movie next to M. Night Shyamalan’s recent disaster, Lady in the water, and you’ll have every possible reason to burn down a movie theatre and feel happy about it!
For heaven's sake, can somebody tell me how a woman, so preoccupied by spirituality doesn’t know who Dalai Lama is?!!
Dear Makhmalbaf, that Scream was not from the ants, but from those wretched audience in the theatre, who couldn’t fool their badly-insulted intellects, even with all those eye-catching, artistically-done images. When a skillful pianist has a horrendous, crow-like voice, maybe he should just shut up and not overshadow his brilliance in playing the instrument, by his unforgivable voice! Please keep your philosophical point of views to yourself and do not scream them in our ears.
Just by doing that, you can make the world, slightly a better place!
3 comments:
I just saw this at the Chicago Film Festival Last night. Your review is a little harsher than my opinion, though on the same lines. I would've liked it if the Iranian couple were completely taken out of the movie all together (acting and dialogue) and the rest stayed the same... then it would've been tolerable
I was just browsing for reviews of this flick and i must say your piece on it is a real delight ...
Ya hagh
I watched this movie, I think it wasn’t great but your review was one of the harshest reviews I ever read. Although this movie wasn’t the greatest ever, but it is still better than 80% of the movies you see every day all over the world. I wonder what you write about a really bad movie. You probably pull out the gun and shoot the director. Where is that level of anger coming from? You seem to be really offended by this movie. Oh, maybe it’s because you are “the complete man”. Maybe you should put the pen down and start making “the perfect movie”. It will be a disaster for the world cinema to know about you just from your insightful critics in writing and not in practice. Just make something, anything. Don’t let your talents get wasted. The world wants to hear from you dear Mehrdad.
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