For the first half hour of the film, I was full of doubts, how would such a lengthy foreshadowing and monotonous narrative unfold? But the exquisite picture, comfortable rhythm, and delicate and real performance make people sit down. As new characters appear, new clips unfold, and new contents make people more and more narrow their eyes and stare carefully, and even fully enter the story. Until the subtitles came up, I fully experienced the boy's mood.
For an hour and a half, it only shows an extremely simple theme, making it cute and full of nostalgia. At the same time, there is also a bit of sadness and predicament about life, which is breathtaking. Maybe we are easy to see and tend to grasp the absurdity of the adult world in the film, the closedness and stupidity that accompanies poverty, and I thought I had found the theme of the whole film, but Abbas didn't dwell on it, he pointed the camera at Boy, that's what's unusual about him, and that's what fascinates me the most.
The world shown in the film is relatively closed, not only because of a backcountry, but also because of a lack of reflection and self-awareness. Just as the childhood of the audience and the director belongs to the past in time and can only exist as a memory, this closure presents an irreversible chaos and powerlessness. Boys are always terribly weak in the face of teachers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, and unfamiliar adults, and they have little room for debate and resistance. The teacher repeatedly asked, "Why isn't the homework written in the notebook?" The mother repeatedly ordered the child to "find the homework before going out to play." He opened his eyes wide and looked up at each other for a long time, or immediately obeyed the order, or collapsed and cried. At that moment, they were so real that it made people suspect that this was who they were: they didn't have the ability to judge what adults said, and they didn't pay much attention, but they clearly and firmly believed in what they were going to do.
Simple, clear, not even antagonistic, just a little defiance through inner struggle, and still obedience. When the film came to an abrupt end at such a tactful place, I was enlightened—yes, it's that simple. The director did not ask the audience to do too much reflection and criticism. You can't find any profound power. The moving things can be described as: restore the most simple beauty in memory with the most real details, and there is a slightly careless feeling. Lazy, seems to be profound, with a slightly warm poetry. What's more interesting is that it's all based on reconciliation with childhood and with the world.
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