The first comes at the beginning of the film, when Mohammed waits for his father to pick him up from the school for the blind that he attends in Tehran. The other children’s parents show up on time because it is the last day before summer break, but Mohammed’s father is late. While he waits, Mohammed hears a baby bird fall out of a tree. He makes his way to the bird and carefully climbs up the tree, depositing the bird back in its nest. We see Mohammed’s immersion in nature; he hears a baby bird slip out of its nest and fall to the ground, a sound most of us could hear 100 times a day and not realize it. His tender care of the bird is a blatant contrast to his father’s seeming desertion of him. We learn a lot about Mohammed in this sequence, and we also learn about his father. Mohammed is alone and potentially abandoned, yet he cannot allow the same to happen to a tiny bird.
A second scene that revealed a lot about the film and writer/director Majid Majidi’s themes was when Mohammed went to work for the blind carpenter. Of all of the sadness we have seen Mohammed face – from being left at school until long after otherchildren’s parents picked them up, to his father requesting that the school keep him, to being yanked out of his sisters’ school after he experienced wonderful success because it exposed his existence, to being shipped off to a blind carpenter – the only time we see Mohammed cry is in this scene. Even then, it is not a maudlin self-pitying cry. It is far more raw and intimate. He wants someone to love him. His mother has been dead for five years, his grandmother and sisters adore him, but he has no love from his father. Iran is a patriarchal society wherein men hold most of the power. Yes, a mother’s love is vital, but a father’s love is equally so. Mohammed feels abandoned not only by his earthly father but by his God as well. He weeps because he wants to be loved, and he wants to see God. Majidi is very direct with this scene: we all want and need to be loved. And those of us who believe in God want to see Him. There should not be distance between us and the people – or God – who love us. We need love.
The final revealing scene is the final scene in the film. Mohammed’s father came to get him from the carpenter, but on their trip home, Mohammed tumbles through a rickety bridge and falls into the turbulent river below. Hashem, his father, jumps in after the boy, but Mohammed washes up on the banks of the river, dead. Finally realizing what he has loved and lost, Hashem cradles Mohammed in his lap. Majidi trains the camera on Mohammed’s tiny hand, the fingers of which seem to flinch and move faintly. Mohammed wanted to “see” God, and the blind see by touching. Having died, Mohammed now, finally, can see God. It is a heartbreaking scene, yet oddly uplifting. Hashem finally realizes the love he had for his son, and Mohammed finally is with God, who loves him, and whom Mohammed can see. Majidi’s themes of isolation, nature and love all come together in this scene. Mohammed died at the hand of nature, his father unable to save him, but his isolation ended. He now is in heaven, reunited with his mother and grandmother, and can see God, and surrounded by the love that was denied him on earth. Perhaps Majidi says here that Iran must kill off that which isolates it from the rest of the world in order to be accepted.
I would not rewrite the ending to this movie, although undoubtedly, if Hollywood were to remake The Color of Paradise, Hashem would come to love his son far sooner and the two would live happily ever after. It is terribly sad, but necessary. Life doesn’t offer neat endings, no matter how much Hollywood would have us believe otherwise. Part of the beauty of The Color of Paradise is the joy we feel for what we imagine Mohammed experiences when he gets to heaven.
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