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Majid Majidi's "The Color of Paradise" is a beautifully photographed, poetic story about symbolism, convention, and normality and about how little we regard those who we ostracized.
That the film takes place in Iran rather than the West doesn't detract from its powerful message. "The Color of Paradise" is about two outcasts - the blind boy Mohammad who knows a great deal about suffering but is intelligent enough to compensate for his physical infirmity, and his widowed father who is only beginning to deal with his social infirmity. Perhaps the opening sequence best epitomizes this tension, as Mohammed is left at blind school waiting for his father and manages to carry a stray bird back to the tree nest while the father arrives, stunned and befuddled at the prospect of having to take his son home. Mohammad is clearly wanted by his 'granny' and by his two sisters who delight in playing games and even taking him to their regular school.
But society is not kind to a man with damaged goods nor to a man who grows old without a strong normal son to support him. In his quest to start up a new family, the father wants to jettison Mohammad, not knowing that the boy is uniquely gifted or that his love will only come out when Mohammad's life is in danger. Symbols abound in this film, from the frequent use of hands communicating touch, friendship, and longing to the ominous call that the father hears to Granny's dropped pin after she has brought a squirming fish back to water. There is an especially thought provoking scene involving Mohammad and the blind carpenter in which the tearful boy questions why God would allow him to be blind while others are not.
His teachers have told him that God is invisible and he should seek to touch him in everything he does, to which the carpenter can only turn and walk away. "The Color of Paradise" conveys a powerful message about those who we discard as insignificant and the last scene is both a wonderment and a source of consolation.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0191043/