The White Balloon (1995)

Strictly average movie

A Major Disappointment

A Disappointing Continuation

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This Iranian film was one I found listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, it was selected as an entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, but was not accepted as a nominee, I hoped it would be worthwhile. Basically in Teheran, it is the eve of the Iranian New Year, seven-year-old Razieh (Aida Mohammadkhani) has seen a goldfish in a shop and begins nagging her hurrying Mother (Fereshteh Sadr Orfani) to buy it for the festivities instead of the skinny ones in her family's pond at home. On their way home, the mother and daughter pass a crowd of men gathered to watch two snake charmers, Razieh wants to see what is happening, but her mother pulls her away. Back home, Razieh is upset her mother is refusing to let her a new goldfish but continues her campaign of nagging. Her older brother Ali (Mohsen Kalifi) returns from a shopping errand for their father, he is unseen, but his presence causes tension in the family, he complains that we asked for shampoo, not soap. When Ali returns with the shampoo, Razieh enlists his help in changing her mother's mind about the goldfish, bribing him with a balloon, insisting she can buy it for 100 tomans. Razieh finally gets her wish, her mother gives her the family's last 500-toman banknote and asks her to bring back the change, she sets off with an empty glass jar to the fish shop a few blocks away. On the way, Razieh stops to watch the snake charmers, one of them takes the banknote from her to wrap around a snake, tempting her to grab it back, but they eventually give it back to her, seeing that she is getting upset. Then while running to the shop, she stops outside a cake shop for a moment, she reaches the shop selling goldfish, but then she realises she has lost her money. An Old Woman (Anna Bourkowska) takes pity on Razieh and helps her to retrace her steps and find the banknote, it is found in a grate that leads to the basement of a shop. After the old woman leaves, the money has fallen into the grate and the basement of the shop, which is closed for the New Year celebration. Ali comes along, as his sister has been gone for some time, together they try to find a way to retrieve the money and receive help from many people, including the Tailor shop owner (Mohammad Bakhtiari) next door and an Iranian soldier (Mohammad Shahani). The money is just out of reach, but the fish shop owner promises he will try not to sell the fat white and orange goldfish until the little girl returns. Finally, the siblings receive help from a young Afghan street vendor (Aliasghar Samadi) selling balloons, he carries his balloons on a wooden stick, he has a white one left. The group attach a piece of chewing gum to the end of his stick, and with it, reach down into the basement through the grate and pull the money out. In the end, Ali and Razieh run off to buy the goldfish, leaving the balloon seller sitting alone on the grate, the siblings pass him and are happy to finally have the fish, and the change, and the boy walks away with his white balloon. Also starring Hamidreza Tahery as Reza and Asghar Barzegar as the Pet Shop Manager. It is a very simple story, a journey of discovery for a little girl desperate to buy a goldfish, and her desperate attempts to get the money back to buy it, Mohammadkhani is cute, and her insights make the ordinary seem miraculous, it is slow and annoying in parts, but overall it is a delightful drama. Good!

As an elementary school teacher, the movie features the sorts of earnestness and sincerity in simple transactions and negotiations that I see every day. Making sure things go according to plan becomes less crucial as we grow older, but if we cast our minds back, we can remember how important it was to get a fair deal for our sandwich or our marbles or how important it was to treat people fairly. If you got a raw deal, you felt hard done by and if it happened enough, it might haunt you to this day. There was an acute sense that that was not how things should be. That is definitely the sense one gets from the determination of the kids in this elegant, poetic movie. A girl wants to get a goldfish before Tehran shuts down for Iranian New Year (Nahrouz). Seems like it should go fairly simply, right? And if this was an adult telling the story, it wouldn't be notable. However, kids are more vulnerable and can be more affected by circumstances. The kids have to be a little more determined to get what they want and the child actors in this movie, Aida Mohammadkani as the little girl, Mohsen Kafili as her brother, and Aliasghar Smadi as the balloon seller were excellent.As I saw some other reviewers say, this is a film that doesn't patronize children. It shows them using all their considerable abilities to solve problems and they often come off better than petty, small-minded, and thieving adults. The universality and simplicity of the themes in this film make it translatable to every culture.

Assuming you're keeping up-to-date with your current affairs, you'll have heard that the great democracy of Iran yesterday jailed director Jafar Panahi for six years, and forbade him from making movies, going abroad, or giving media interviews for the next twenty years. Allegedly, he had been producing a film critical of the Iranian government; that is, he was calling a spade a spade.As a sort of one-man protest, I decided to watch one of Panahi's movies. 'The White Balloon (1995)' was the director's feature debut, and won the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It tells an extremely simple tale, almost in real time: a young girl is given a 500-toman banknote to buy a goldfish for the Iranian New Year. On the way to the market, she loses the money down a sewer grate, and spends the rest of the film trying to get it back, either ignored or aided by the strangers she meets.Putting the plot so simply doesn't really suggest a riveting cinematic experience, but I must say I was taken by the effectiveness of the film. We experience the bustling marketplace through the lens of the young girl, and genuinely share her mixed emotions. This really struck a chord with me. When I was a prep (age 5), I got lost during a school excursion, and I can still recall the dropping of my stomach, the quickened breathing, the welling of tears (don't worry, we got icy poles afterwards!). That's the feeling I got here, particularly when the snake charmer stole the girl's money and claimed it as a "donation." I felt as helpless as she did.Fortunately, the film's overriding emotion is one of optimism. Strangers, seeing a child in distress, stop to offer their assistance. A young Afghan balloon-seller proffers a stick and chewing gum with which to retrieve the out-of-reach money. The girl's brother, a resourceful kid of about age ten, arrives on the scene, and suddenly everything seems like it's going to be OK. Sometimes simple films can be the most enjoyable of all.

This movie, as has been said before, enters the world of children. But it does it with such a lack of full credit for grace and feeling. It never belittles children - in fact, it makes adults look like the buffoons they are. You feel for every victory and defeat they have and get engrossed in their plots and problems. The encounters with common Iranians is also wonderful, especially the soldier at the end. Perhaps the most natural example of child acting is shown through Rezayeh - I am surprised she was never nominated for anything in this film. Her other films are also great, but nothing matches "The White Balloon" Not to be missed - one of the best Iranian films of all time, without question.