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Reviews
Liverpool (2008)
A little gem from Argentina, beautiful and sad
It's the story of Farrel, who left who shortly before his daughter was born. He spent long time on a ship. As he returned home, after many years of absence, his mother, by that time old and sick, doesn't recognize him. His daughter, who never knew him, doesn't warm up towards him. After a short while, he disappears again.
It's a beautiful, sad movie. Beautiful scenes, lots of silence.
Dayereh (2000)
An outstanding artistic view on the fate of women in Iran
Artistic seen, it's a peculiar work of art: the movie doesn't stick to one character, but it rather unfolds the story through few characters that embody the one main figure on which the movie concentrates, namely, the woman or the fate of the woman in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The life span or the "circle" of the woman in Iran opens with her cursed fate of having been born as a woman, continues to her mature life in subjugating patriarchal society, being subjugated to the whims of her "masculine owner", and lastly closes with her being incarcerated for not gratifying her husband.
The movie is so designed that only in retrospect it is fully comprehended - only by looking backward on the entire seen movie, it can be fully understood.
Jafar Pahani has paid heavily for his uncompromising artistic work and courageous critique of the tyrannic regime - he was judged last year for 6 years in jail. After his release, he will never be allowed to leave Iran and to direct movies.
Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland (2011)
Bad comedy, pathetic melodrama, performance on the level of commercial for washing powder
The movie plots on two opposite lines the story of Turk family on the way to Germany as foreign workers, and their way back to Turkey. The relationship between the Turkish guests and the German hosts are idealistically depicted - the Germans love their Turkish hard-workers (if things are so happy, why Turkey has been time and again declined from joining the European Union?), the Turkish family is completely modern - like a normal Westernized family : they react tolerantly to their young daughter who gets pregnant from a non-German guy (no word on the common and prevalent honor-killings among the Turks in Germany, no word on arranged marriage which is also the very common among Turks in Germany, etc.) I've been living many years in Germany, and the story this movie tells us is completely unconvincing.
As far as the artistic sides of the movie are concerned, it starts as a comedy and suddenly, with no seen reason, it turns into saccharine melodrama. The performance, the dialogs, the mimic and gestures reminded me of typical German TV commercials for Washing Powder, Yogurt, etc.