Tala va mes

Apart from the two main protagonists -- the seminarian and his wife -- this film has a third, albeit inanimate, one. A hand-woven Persian carpet in the making, stationed expectantly on its loom in the main part of the modest family home in Tehran. When illness and tragedy befall the family in the shape of a degenerative illness, it is the husband who takes over (yet another) task, that of completing the carpet, that was ably -- and almost invisibly-- done by the wife. The carpet, with its rich floral pattern and skeins of wool in dozens of colours waiting to be knotted, then cut, symbolizes not only a cherished Iranian artifact and a symbol of Persian civilization, but also the family's own life as new migrants in the city, forever being crafted, inch by inch, and forever threatening to unravel.

The seminarian, a devoted husband whose faith is tested, but doesn't waver, gets little or no assistance from his colleagues and teachers at the seminary. The only fellow student who helps him does not seem to be a serious student. There is a also a hospital employee, perhaps symbolizing the modern Iranian woman, disdainful towards religious figures, whose life is touched by the ailing woman.

The voice-over in the last few minutes of the film, a Mullah reciting a moral lesson to the effect that 'love cannot be learnt from a book' has profound implications for our understanding of the relationship between individual compassion and character, and the capacity of faith to mould that compassion.