Homework

The Iranian documentary Mashgh-e Shab (1989) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title Homework. It was written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami.

Kiarostami is a great documentary director. I think he's almost at the level of Frederick Wiseman. However there are important differences between Wiseman and Kiarostami.

Wiseman never appears onscreen in his movies. Kiarostami is on the screen constantly. He's the one who asks the children each question. Wiseman lets the camera roll, records what he sees and hears, and presents us with the edited version of reality. Kiarostami continually (too often) shows us the cinematographer at work, reminding us that we're watching something that isn't organic. Both filmmakers create a reality, but Wiseman is subtle, and Kiarostami isn't.

The movie is dated 1989, but it was certainly produced earlier, because there are references to the Iran-Iraq war, which ended in 1988. It may have been made earlier than the great film Where is the Friend's House? (Where is the Friend's House is dated 1987.)

In any case, both movies feature the question of homework, and its importance in the Iranian educational system.

In this documentary, Kiarostami interviews about 20 first- and second-grade students, mostly about homework. He's especially interested in why they often don't finish their homework. Some of their answers are probably self-serving, but most of their answers appear genuine.

In the first place, about 1/3 of the students have parents who are illiterate. For many of the literate parents, the "new math" is beyond their comprehension. And, of course, the parents are tired from work and from caring for their large families. (Most of the children have multiple siblings.) Often the students get help from distant relatives. One child is helped by the landlord's daughter. One child is helped by his sister. He has scratch marks on his face. He tells matter-of-factly tells Kiarostami that his sister scratched him.

The problem is that teachers aren't interested in excuses. They're interested in homework. One student, who clearly has mental health issues, was punished by his first-grade teacher, who hit him so hard with a ruler that the ruler broke.

Most of the children expect punishment when they don't do their schoolwork. They get hit in school, and they get hit at home. (Often with a belt.) They are matter of fact about this.

The movie is enlightening, but very sad. My hope is that these children, who were becoming literate, would treat their children better than they were treated. However, I have no way to know if this is true.

We saw this film as an extra on the same Criterion DVD as Where is the Friend's House. It will work independently, but I'm sure that some people will find it boring or excessive. However, clearly most people enjoyed it--it has an very high IMDb rating of 7.9. I rated it 9.

Kiarostami exposes some of the hardships of being a young student in Iran. With a few simple shots and a few basic questions, he manages to sketch out both the problems and the joys of childhood.

Kiarostami (playing himself, or simply "playing director") sets up his camera for a few days in a grade school in order to find out about children and their attitudes and struggles with homework. Kids of every personality (from hyper to shy, bragging to quiet) all felt the need to lie about the importance of homework in their life. We laugh each time a young interviewee tells a small fib and says they prefer the difficulty of their homework to watching cartoons after school. But often the truth of the matter is they reason they struggle with their homework is because both parents might be illiterate, or older brothers and sisters provide little support as well. Homework often takes a back seat to the reality of life for these children who are torn between the obligations of being a child and the obligations of being an active member of a family struggling to make ends meet.

An excellent little film - hard-going for the the impatient moviegoer who might need EVERYTHING spelled out for him/her, but for the rest of us, it's a joy to pull out the many meanings and truths embedded in this film.

I hate the influence of Pluto in Scorpio on these children.

The problem is that teachers aren't interested in excuses. They're interested in homework. One student, who clearly has mental health issues, was punished by his first-grade teacher, who hit him so hard with a ruler that the ruler broke.

Wondering about current status of the education system of Iran, well, educational system is changed a lot in a good way, physical abuse is forbidden and homeworks are much less than before, but it is still far from an ideal system. Even today, we still read in news about physical abuse in school....

Comprised mostly of interviews of 6-year-old kids who've had problems getting their homework done at a public school in Tehran, patterns begin emerging that form the basis for a criticism of the education system in Iran in 1989. At the heart of it is learning by rote, with a sizable percentage of parents, illiterate themselves, ill-equipped to help their children at home. The kids painfully know what corporal punishment is, most often in the form of a parent hitting them with a belt, but few ever having received a reward or encouragement. They chant invectives against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, just a year removed from the eight year war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, and they chant religious dogma lauding Ali and their Shi'ite faith. At one point an adult is interviewed, and he comments that creativity and critical reasoning should be fostered, comparing the state of affairs in Iran to other countries, and fearing for the future.

It's certainly sad to see these little faces reveal their lives to Kiarostami's simple questions, and the film is not short on emotional power. On the downside, I didn't much care for the frequent cuts back to the cameraman focusing on the kids, even if the intent of this(?) was to remind viewers of the power dynamic, and why kids would be lying by saying they preferred homework to cartoons; regardless, it seemed overdone to me. I also didn't like the cruelty Kiarostami showed to the last child, who was absolutely terrified of being interviewed alone, and yet got badgered with questions. This was undoubtedly left in the film to show how traumatized and fragile a child could be in this system; his troubles apparently stemming back to having been beaten by a teacher with a ruler so hard that it broke. He only snaps out of his anxiety when asked to sing a religious song, which he then belts out with confidence, which was an ominous warning of what the system was producing. It's a brilliant moment, but the ends didn't justify the means, and I was left conflicted by what I had seen. It's a documentary worth seeing though, and I wish we could see how these kids, now nearing 40, turned out.

In 'Homework' Kiarostami, interviews children on their personal opinions to homework. It is a great documentary, funny, sweet, and so easy to watch. Kiarostami literally films the children and interviews them and that's it, but by doing this he captures the children in such a great way that you wonder that Truffaut, is not directing the kids from off camera! The children brim with the kind of charisma that we'd forgot children could do in a film let alone in real life, and seems to seek to remind us what being a child was all about. 'Homework' whilst being a fine film in it's own right also seems to serve as an important precursor for Nicolas Philibert's 2002 documentary on rural school life 'Être et avoir', and provokes the same positive feeling as that film and also of Truffaut's 'L'agent Poche'.