“
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
India to meet “the complete man”. A philosophical journey through which, Makhmalbaf tries to portray human suffering; and I have to admit that he has been quite successful since at least I, experienced an excruciating pain watching two extremely untalented actors, uttering the most stupid, cheesy, retarded ideas for the whole 91 insufferable minutes!
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 India and voila, you’d have “Scream of the Ants”!
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!