The Colour of Paradise

First, a brief synopsis (Warning: spoiler ahead!):

Mohammad is a boy attending a school for the blind in Tehran. He is a very open and curious child who seems quite attuned to nature. It's the end of term and all of the other children are picked up by their parents but Mohammad's father is very late in coming for him. The father tries to persuade the school to keep the boy over school break, saying that there is no one to take care of the child at home. This is not true because the boy's grandmother adores him, as do his two young sisters.

Actually, the father has mixed feelings about his son because of the boy's blindness. It seems like another one in a string of rotten things that have afflicted the father and left him fearful and anxious.
Trying to turn his life around, the widowed father is courting a young woman but, while she and her family know about the two daughters, he has not told them about the blind son.

The father makes arrangements to apprentice the boy with a blind carpenter. He's convinced himself that it is for the boy's own good and takes the boy away. Brokenhearted, the grandmother packs her things and leaves her son's house but soon collapses and is taken back to the house to recover. She gives her son her jewelry for the wedding but not her blessing and spends her remaining days in prayer and when she dies her face is illuminated with a golden light.

Meanwhile, Mohammad is also nursing a broken heart. He feels unloved and unwanted.

After the grandmother's funeral, the father learns that his fiancee and her family have called off the wedding because the circumstances were too ominous. Grieving yet another loss, the father goes to the carpenter's and fetches his son. Tragically, a bridge they are crossing collapses and the boy is swept away in a raging river. The father follows after and eventually washes up on a shore near his son. As the father weeps and holds his son, the boy's hands are bathed in a golden light and the fingers begin to move.


Prompts for this blog:

Analyze at least three different specific scenes that you found particularly important or revealing and why.
1. While Mohammad waits for his father outside the school, he rescues a baby bird from a cat and climbs a tree to put the bird back in its nest. He doesn't hesitate to act in the world. This contrasts with the father who hesitates and seems afraid of nature and the calls of birds.

2. When the grandmother packs up and leaves, the father is worried about what people will think. The grandmother, however, is worried about him.

3. There are many scenes of Mohammad "reading". He doesn't just read Braille; he also "reads" pebbles in a stream and grains of wheat. He has been told by his teacher that the blind are favoured by God because, although invisible, God can be felt. Mohammad knows that God is everywhere and is eager to "see" God.

Were there any aspects of these scenes or the film as a whole that you found confusing or unclear?

The unclear part was the ending and I am not sure whether or not the ending is meant to be as ambiguous as it seems.

If you had to rewrite the ending, how might you change it?

If the boy is dead then the golden light on his fingers as he "sees" God makes perfect sense but I'm not sure why the child didn't die until his father found him. Futhermore, it makes the boy's death just another tragedy in the father's unfortunate life. So.....I don't really see that the father has really learned anything.

If the boy is not dead at the end then I don't know why the golden light would appear as it does but it would explain why his fingers are moving.

I think that the father finds the boy is at the moment of his death. Maybe feeling his father's love helps the boy to "see" God. But I think I'd make the final scene a little clearer, one way or another.