Ahmed unintentionally has packed in the book of his school mate Mohamed. Mohamed however was warned by his teacher, that the next homework he doesn’t write in his book would have real consequences. In order to protect his friend, Ahmed runs into the neighbor city to bring Mohmaed his book, but unfortunately he has no idea where he lives.
With „Where is the friend’s home?“ Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami made a goddamn heartbreaking film out of a story that sounds as thrilling as a soccer match between Iran and Austria. He manages to do that with giving some details you only hardly notice. In the first scene we see the school class that seems to be really afraid of its teacher. When Mohamed gets abused by him, he starts crying as if the world would be at its end. It’s really well done, because the audience is really frightened in that scene. You don’t care that it’s actually not THAT bad, because for this poor boy it seems to be that way and it really breaks your heart. Just when school is over, Mohamed falls down on his knees. Ahmed helps him back on his feet again and is checking for his health.
This first scene is actually what holds the whole movie. What’s following is an hour of quite silent filmmaking that shows Ahmed trying to find the house of his friend. We wouldn’t care at all if it wasn’t the first scene that showed us how much Ahmed cares for Mohamed. Mohamed is scared, and the audience is scared too. That’s why it works.
The second thing I loved about the movie is the acting of Ahmed. There is this scene when he decides that he will go looking for Mohamed. Just before that he showed his mother the two books he is having, his own and Mohamed’s. He holds them into the camera and explains his mother he unintentionally took them both, because they look totally the same. His mother however forbids him to look for Ahmed and tells him to do his own homework. When his mother is not looking at him for a while he decides to go away and search Mohamed. So he takes the book and exactly, what do you think there? “Oh, look again! It might be the wrong book!” And what does Ahmed do? Exactly, he looks at the book and realizes that it’s the wrong one. He goes back, takes the other book and then he runs away.
I thought this scene to be fantastic, because one single time you have a character who really thinks about what he does. And also the other decisions Ahmed takes are very well. They don’t show him as a wunderkind or a genius or something like that, but as a clever boy that just really wants to help his friend. It was a wonderful character in my eyes, although he actually is only defined by his actions. There isn’t too much dialogue that would characterize him more precise.
So these two points made this movie great to watch. You know, you have the story you care about, due to the characters and you are really thrilled how it will end. (I won’t spoil it.) But besides that this movie has a message. On his little journey almost nobody really listens to Ahmed. Especially the older men just ignore him. He has to tell his mother the same thing over and over again till she finally listens to him. But the movie is not so shallow to just criticize elder people and tell you that children are the kings of the world. What it really shows are communication problems between generations and, luckily, in one scene also how easily they could be solved and what you could really get from generations working together. I’m quite sure you can figure out this scene when you watch the movie, so I’ll take another scene to talk about, because it in my opinion is the strongest one of the movie.
It is when Ahmed comes back from the neighbor village for the first time and just when he wants to buy some bread his grandfather stops him and asks him to bring him some cigarettes. Ahmed says he doesn’t have any time, but his grandfather insists on it and so Ahmed runs home to look for some cigarettes. But this time something strange happens. The camera doesn’t follow Ahmed, but stays at his grandfather. And we see him taking out a cigarette of his pocket, because he actually has some cigarettes with him. Then he explains to his friend, who is about the same age, that he doesn’t need the cigarettes, but only wants Ahmed to be better educated. He tells his friend that when he was a child his father would hit him every single day and that would have helped him to be so disciplined. Of course this doesn’t fit to our ideas nowadays, but that’s not what this is about. It wants to show us that these men lived in a totally different time and we have to accept that. This scene is so wonderfully done, because it doesn’t judge the grandpa and his, well, actually stupid ideas of education. The movie does what the people in it do not. It LISTENS.
That’s what I thought to be the key message of the movie. Listen and talk to each other. It is that simple, it really is.
Yeah, what rating should I give there? I still don’t like ratings. Especially, because there are so many people giving 9s or 10s to every movie they liked. I’m not that kind of guy. So when I give it a 7 or an 8, it still is a great rating for me, because you know, it was a fantastic movie, but there still are even better ones. When I give, don’t know, a 10 to “The Hurt Locker”, which I loved, how is it then possible for me to give a higher rating for a movie like “2001”, which I thought to be even better. So I try to give a 10 to as few movies as possible, and compared with my personal 10s, this movie doesn’t deserve one. But I really hope that doesn’t make you ignore it, because it is great. great great great. So, yeah, to summarize it,
WATCH IT!
