Blind since childhood, Youssef has a devoted wife, loving daughter, and successful university career, but his affliction fills him with secret torment. As if in answer to his prayers, a Paris clinic restores his sight - a miracle that is double-edged. Although this new world of sight and color floods Youssef with ecstasy, it also plunges him into a labyrinth of confusions and temptations. A pretty student begins to eclipse his dowdy, previously invisible wife. In one disturbing scene, he
silently watches a subway pickpocket, who fixes him with a look of withering complicity. Eager to claim the lost life he feels he is owed but unable to take the next step, Youssef is inflamed with possibility and paralyzed with egoism.
A perfectly worked out story and a marvelous new step forward for Iranian director Majid Majidi. It is also, in some ways, yet another step forward for his country's cinema, a national art that grows more accomplished every year.
Explicitly religious, intensely poetic meditations, filled with recurrent symbols and suffused with a spirit of divine apprehension. [It is] sad beyond measure.
Perhaps Majidi intended wry commentary and observation of the dubious influences of Western culture on Iran, where outside scientific, technological and material advances impart a knowledge that is not necessarily likewise wisdom, enlightenment or virtue.
Perhaps Majidi intended wry commentary and observation of the dubious influences of Western culture on Iran, where outside scientific, technological and material advances impart a knowledge that is not necessarily likewise wisdom, enlightenment or virtue.
Iranian director Majid Majidi... takes his place alongside Robert Bresson as a master of sacred cinema. His Iran is a place of natural beauty so intense that even the sightless can experience its splendor.
Children of Heaven won me over with its slow gentle build and big sweet heart. I was expecting more of the same with Willow Tree. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.
Anchored by Parastui's luminous, heartfelt performance, [director] Majidi also revels in the joy of sight, especially as manifested in the beauty and lovely colors of nature. The Willow Tree is a powerful and ultimately optimistic movie.
It needs a patiece to enjoy and watch this sort of movie.
December 13, 2009
Wahida K
Super Reviewer
In "The Willow Tree," Yusef(Parviz Parastui) is a university professor in Tehran married to Roya(Roya Taymourian) and father of a young girl, Maryam(Melika Eslafi). He has also been blind since the age of eight. While at a hospital in France to have a tumor beneath one of his eyes removed, he learns his retinas are
not totally gone and there is a chance that he may regain his sight... "The Willow Tree" is an insightful and thoughtful parable about how we see the world with our eyes but also how the blind live in the world, especially by how they listen to sounds. Yusef's losing his sight when he was a child irrevocably changed not only his life and the direction it would take, but also how people see him. So, I cannot condemn him for his actions, as he seeks to discover the kind of person he could have been. Early on in the film, Yusef takes a fall and is later seen unconscious in a hospital bed but his recovery is not shown nor is this event again mentioned. So, it is possible that the later events in the film are simply dreamed by him, imagining what it would be like to have his sight back.
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