Edinburgh International Film Festival

            The Song of Sparrows is a feature length Iranian film about a man in his middle ages, Karim, and the changes he faces in his life and the world around him.  It’s a unique look at an Iranian common man’s life.  It is a story about reaching for the unattainable and the struggles that that entails.  It also showed a strong belief in karma.  The idea that either doing good or bad will come back to an individual is strongly represented in the movie.  There is a lot of symbolism during the course of this movie.  There are the contrasts between wealth and poverty, old ways and new, even rural life and city life.  Although the movie seems to leave things unfinished, they are unfinished because the struggles that Karim is facing are going to continue.  They will probably continue for the rest of his life. 

             The movie is well worth seeing, if for nothing else, then for the fact that it was a very entertaining story.  Personally, I enjoyed the movie even though it left me with a feeling of something unfinished.  It was a series of problems that Karim must face without an actual climax or resolution.  However, a resolution wouldn’t have fit very well into the theme of this movie.  My favorite thing about this movie was the camera shots that it contains.  They used a lot of wide angle shots that showed some beautiful scenes in the Iranian country side and very hectic scenes in the city of Tehran.  I found that the acting was done well.  Over all I thought that this was a well done movie.  One that I enjoyed but probably wouldn’t go out of my way to see again.