The Apple

Director Samira Makhmalbaf in her movie Sib (The Apple) speaks of how two young girls are confined to the four-walls of their house. At a time when women are treated on par with men, it is saddening to see that there are places in this world (Iran for one) where people still consider it taboo to educate the woman child, or as in this movie even let them outside their homes to see how the world looks like.

There's more to it. Their father is a 65-year-old beggar and their mom a blind lady who is paranoid about her daughters going to school or even outside their house. Their folks don't ever keep the girls clean. They are even deprived of a decent bath all these years. The result: The girls are unable to think like normal kids and grow up slightly deranged. Other than the blooming flowerpot outside their house and the sun, the girls have hardly witnessed what God's creation (Earth) looks like. This mere fact shocks viewers IMMEDIATELY. The pathetic plight of the girls will make viewers reach for their hankies.

But there's hope. They do get to come out and see the world and learn things when a social service organization helps them out. What happens, next and how they do it is for you to see.

The movie in its entirety moves more like a documentary and less like a movie. It is definitely not the run-of-the-mill cinema. In-fact it is on a higher plane than even commercial cinema. The social message is so powerful that the movie leaves a strong impression about the future of the woman child in places like Iran etc.

Critically acclaimed, Samira directed this movie when she was only 19. Kudos to her. At a age whilst most of us haven't even figured out life, here is someone who speaks of social problems plaguing third world countries. Must view for those who look for a social message in movies.

I can't add much to the review by Bob the Moo from Birmingham, who pretty much sums up the strengths of this film. However, as an illustration of the skill of the film-maker I would like to mention one scene that stands out in my memory, not in detail so as not to 'spoil', where a sense of incipient menace is subtly hinted at - one is almost expecting something horrible to go wrong to prove that it was right to keep the girls imprisoned for their own safety and this looks like being the moment when it happens; one hardly dares hope that it will have a happy and positive outcome - but it doesn't. It turns out there is nothing to worry about at all. This sounds like a non-event, but I found the subtlety with which this point was made quite outstanding.

The film is a pure delight, more powerful than any heavy diatribe against repressive regimes. The compassion with which all participants are presented in their own contexts, particularly the father who could have been demonised but isn't, is also outstanding. No judgements are made, and the lessons are all the more clear and convincing for that.

This is a film that stands out in my mind, both visually and symbolically, as clearly today as when I saw it several years ago.

One of the great pleasures I get out of watching foreign films is that I get see a real culture, not tainted by the political or mythical stereotypes that we have put upon them. The Apple (a.k.a. Sib) is perfect example, as it is an Iranian made production that speaks nothing of terrorism, but only of the people.

The Apple walks a thin line between documentary and drama as it tells the story of two young girls who have never walked outside their home in all the 11 years they have been alive. As the film opens, neighbors have written a letter to the Child Welfare department, and a case worker comes to the home to take the children away. Their father, a fundamentalist muslim, and their blind mother protest this and are allowed to take them back only if they promise to treat them properly.

What is truly amazing about this film is that is was filmed by Massoumeh Naderi, a seventeen year old actress and director, and that it stars the actual children and their father. As I watched this film I wasn't aware of this fact and I recall thinking about the amateur acting, yet how these characters seemed so believable. All of this makes me want to see the film again.

The Apple is one of the few films that has left thinking long after the credits have rolled and I am sure I will be disecting it for weeks to come. A review I read after the film questioned how the American media might cover a story of two children being locked away. I, on the other hand, am pondering the films intent, (I gather it is about women's rights) and the state of affairs for the real people who live in Iran.

Wow!

Like many recent films from Iran this one has a simple plot line, light humor, and a humanitarian streak that is rarely seen in American films. Yet it too has a resonance due to its use of metaphor and to a rather complex theme. The film starts with concerned neighbors signing a petition for social workers to investigate a home where their blind mother and out-of-work father have locked up two girls for eleven years. Social workers "rescue" the (now slightly autistic) girls then give them back to their parents. What follows is an initiation period in which a social worker and the father have a seriocomic encounter in which he gets a kind of comeuppance and the girls go out into the neighborhood and begin to make friends despite their lack of social skills. What's most harrowing about the film is that it's based on a real life event and the principal characters play themselves. What's more it's directed by an 18 year-old Iranian woman. Highly recommended.

Based on a true story and starring the very same people involved in it, this movie (by first time director Samira Makhmalbaf) tells the story of Zahra and Massoumef, twelve year old twins living on a very humble neighborhood in Tehran. Virtually imprisoned in their own home by their impoverished, ignorant, fundamentalist father and blind mother, they were freed by Iran social services after neighbors complained that the children had not bathed and could not speak. Makhmalbaf shows the twins attempting to function beyond their parents' wall after the social workers have intervened. They lack social skills to the extent of being unaware that they have to pay for food. Made when she was just 17 years old (probably with some help from her father, the acclaimed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf) this film stands very well in the Iranian tradition of social realist, humanist cinema that came out beginning in the mid 1980s. It's so moving, it will be hard for you not to cry while watching it.