The Color of Paradise, was a foreign movie directed by Majid Majidi in 1998, shows a young blind kid's involvements with God, his family, and community as a whole (Majidi). The director manages to succeed in reasonably and realistically and display the position of values, practices, cultural principles, and social arrangements of the Middle east and, yet more explicitly, Iran. All through the film, innovative and creative cinematography and audio aids Majidi in representing Iranian and Middle Eastern cultural values. The film was able to shows these values but are not limited to, family structure and the significance and definitive existence of religious relations. With that said this paper will explore the cinematography, mise-en-scène, sound and editing of The Color of Paradise.
Cinematography
When it comes to cinematography, the film did a good job in showing the family’s patriarchal form, as talked about in lecture and several discussion units. As stated by Dr. Newhall, patriarchy is a universal arrangement of social organization in which males are provided the benefit of power, status, financial, and political regulation. Authority is dispersed vertically, centered on age and sex. The utmost extent of authority is given to the oldest man in the family. In The Color of Paradise, the father has the largest amount of power. The cinematography of the film illustrates this family’s value marvelously by showing the patriarch power and also the culture. The purpose of Been-Seen' Majid Majidi’s movie Color of Paradise is to show the watcher a country that a person may not have had the chance to visit. There are plenty of landscape shots of Iran done by cinematography in order to give the viewer a feel for somewhere that they might like to travel one day. Color of Paradise was dusty, less colorful and was actually set on the city streets. In the movie, the view of the city is just brief right before Mohammad leaves with his father to the countryside. Children of Heaven were dusty, less colorful and set on the city streets. In this film, the scenery of the city is only brief before Mohammad leaves with his father to the scenery. The Cinematography shows the countryside very well and of course it may not be what the viewer of the film might expect of a Middle Eastern nation. Actually it looks a little like Japan even Switzerland, with flowery meadows and green rolling hills. Mohammad, who is played touchingly by Mohsen Ramezani (who actually in real life is basically blind), has a bright imagination, which is stimulated by this gorgeous scenery. He discovers minute particulars of it with his hands. The cinematography does a good job by showing him running his hands through a river, discovering braille letters in the pebbles.
Mise en scène
In Color of Paradise, the representation of space affects the reading the film. Depth, proximity, proportions and size of the objects and places in this film at times were actually be manipulated by means of the camera placement and lenses, decor, lighting, successfully determining mood or relationships among elements in the diegetic world. An important element of Color of Paradise "putting in the scene" is called the décor, which were the objects confined in and the setting of a scene. In Color of Paradise, a lot of the Décor was used to intensify character emotion people such as Mohammed's grandmother when she is heartbroken when she finds out that Hashem (Mohammed's father) has given him away to a blind carpenter and she gets very ill (Majidi) This scene was considered to be one of the dominant moods of the entire film because if showed so much emotion. In these shots from Color of Paradise (Majidi) things such as the foreign furniture and reduced color scheme are what really stress the sterility and impersonality of the school environment in Tehran. Majidi's mise en scène underlines the diverse ways boy and man see life: while Hashem works away in a tough, grey world of coal, Mohammad is successor to an environment of vivid color, best suggested by an almost abstract arrangement in which the screen is filled with flowers and the natural colors they were able to create.
In Color of Paradise décor also emphasizes the scenes that involve the bride. Ultimately, the bride is the one that discovers the contrast so appalling that she ruins her reputation and financial standing so as to please her lover's wish for a luxurious existence. The term Mise en scène is sometimes utilized to shows a style of assigning the information of a scene chiefly through a single shot. For example, the part where the film is showing the viewed that father is unlike his son in that he is a miserable man who only sees life through a negative lens. Most of this was done in a single shot in order to capture the importance of the moment.
Another example of the Mise en scène in the film was when the father decides to send Mohammad away from the village in the Iranian countryside all the way to the city of Tehran in order for him to attend a school with other blind people his age. This was a very captivating shot. Acting was part of the Mise en scène because the movie showed a huge historical and cultural variation in performance. A lot of the acting scenes were symbolic, for example, at the end of the term, Mohammad's father unwillingly returns to pick up his son for the school holidays.
Sound
The Color of Paradise starts playing only after the words "To the Glory of God" start showing on a black screen and then for a few minutes a screen remains black, while we hear the voices of boys and their teacher as radio music is playing in the background. Sound is done masterfully in the movie. Since the theme is about a blind boy, a lot of sound appears to be utilized. Majid Majidi manages to start his film by providing the viewer the aural experience of a blind person before substituting a visual one for all those who are able to see. The soundtrack actually stays important during the course of the film with its irregular chorus of insects, rain, woodpeckers, wind, footfalls, birds, and rushing brooks, as these are the sounds by which Mohammad “looks at” the world.
Editing
It was clear that the movie was shot on locations that were considered to be authentic, using professional and non- professional actors, and preferring an inconspicuous camera and editing style. The editing in the film was done in a way of making sure that the film was able to seek to highpoint the social difficulties of average individuals. Given their tiny budgets, the film was still able to prove the editing to be superb and at the same time being surprisingly accomplished creatively. In spite of its modest visual style, The Color of Paradise holds a number of stunning images done through the editing scenes. These consist of a shot of Mohammad's sisters, with loads of leaves tied to their heads, competing across a meadowland in order to receive their brother when he proceeds home for the summer Another example of an edited part of the movie done rather well was when there was a slow-motion appearance of the grandmother strolling into a courtyard while a whole bunch of white goose feathers start to just swirl all around her.
Works Cited
The Color of Paradise. Dir. Majid Majidi. Sony Pictures Classics, Columbia TriStar. 1999. Varahonar Company.
