Perhaps the least internationally known of top Iranian directors, Majid Majidi is making a startlingly strong case in “Under the Willow Tree” that the blind are closer to God than you and I.
The main character, Youssef (Parviz Parastui) enjoys a full, satisfying life as father, husband and university professor — until it’s discovered by accident that his milky eyes can be restored to sight and his heart can be open to temptation.
*** 1/2 RATING | Drama
Majidi is telling the story of a man, blinded as a boy and a stranger to physical beauty, who falls for the first pretty face he sees — and it isn’t his wife’s. But what might have been the darkly comic aspects of Youssef’s dilemma are muted by Majidi’s clouded view of the universe, and how he places Youssef in it.
Can you make a film from the vantage point of a blind man? No, and Majidi doesn’t try, because his point is that the temporal world is damned and that only when Youssef joins the sighted does he also join the sinning.
A beautiful, strange film, deeply moving and no surprise from Majidi (“Children of Heaven”).
“The Willow Tree”
Not rated. 1 hour, 36 minutes. Directed by Majid Majidi. Written by Majidi, Fouad Nahas, Nasser Hashemzadeh. In Farsi with subtitles. Starring Parviz Parastui. Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
