Rhino Season (2012)

Please don't spend money on this.

Brilliant and touching

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The movie is about a poet who was imprisoned for political reasons and when he was released, he tries to find his wife, Mina, in Instabul. The story itself is a very powerful story and the few lines that are used are supporting that atmosphere beautifully. Maybe it's because there are not much to say about it those things, and the persons keep their silence as a way to protect themselves from what had happened to them. The scenes and the shots are very realistic, and with the reading of the poem added over them, it gives a more poetic view on the cruel reality of the heroes. The unrealistic scenes, like the ones with the rhino, are nice, but some of them I couldn't see the meaning behind them. And there is a lot of symbolism in the film, so you have to keep watching and don't miss anything. To be honest, I didn't get the ending and some of the scenes, as they were back and forth and the ones at the ending too quick, like they were rushing the story to end. So 6 out of 10.

It is obvious why Monica Bellucci was hired to play a prominent role in Bahman Ghobadi's latest flick. Local (middle-east) stars won't dare to show their skin in front of the camera, it may end in controversy like Lebanese skier caused controversy over topless photo during the Sochi winter Olympics. Though adding the major Italian star who is known very well to the world made the movie to strike stronger.I don't know I felt I knew this story well from somewhere. At least it looked very similar to other movies I had seen beside divergent characters. Like the movie 'Oldboy' this movie depicts an old man who was away for a long time who enters the familiar but changed society in search of his lost family.They say it was loosely based on the story of a real person, but I feel it is fiction because real people won't behave like the character from this movie. Anything might be possible, but this movie was lacking in either character or story development. The cinematography was awesome, it had a pleasant frame tone with greenish-gray.The director thought to bring more artistic effect by adding inappropriate scenes to the story. There are many scenes where viewers may respond in questions to those parts. In one of the scenes turtle rains and in another a wild rhino hit by a car. It goes on like that, like illusions during illustrate a person.It tells the story of a man who is affected by the 1979 Iranian revolution. Yeah, the same revolution that showed the movie 'Argo' but in a different perspective and character. Overall, it was not a movie that I was expecting from Bahman Ghobadi, but still it can be enjoyed by his fans.

I am coming across many people, who are the so-called "critics" and speak lengthily about the hidden beauty of a film, or what the audience should feel or understand. I am an ordinary person and for me that film was stupid. Maybe the story would have been nice, maybe the camera man is good, but as a whole I went out of the cinema regretting those hour and a half. The only good thing about it was Monica Bellucci. Someone tried to make it more poetic, more artistic, but I only saw a man who out of no-where slept with his almost daughter, then a horse, then also this man ran over, yes-ran over a rhino, a rain of turtles...The characters did not act realistically in some cases and it was awful slow. It's like Rothko's paintings but in movies-too expensive, too much praises, but a person sometimes dares to wonder is that really art!

While no one doubts the magnificent cinematography, there is much more about this brilliant masterpiece comparable to the works of great masters such as Angelopoulos. Although the movie events happen in Iran, they are all about universal themes such as love, jealousy, destruction and the desperate search to discover the meaning of the Being. The Iranian revolution and its destructive impact upon the society, the pandemic injustice that the revolution promised to end but did not and yet exacerbated, the hostile environment and its impact upon the afflicted families, are all depicted with rigor and with poetic images, rather than with cliché dialog and rhetoric. The movie manages to keep an appropriate pace letting the scenes find their desired depth and yet avoiding boredom, and the performances are brilliant. What more would you expect from a movie anyway than to show you innovative images and to share a new kind of experience with you, which you would have had to pay a great price to experience it first hand? A master piece 10/10.