Crimson Gold

Crimson Gold, one of the best films of the year, is absolutely stunning from start to finish. It's gritty and captures the essence of the social struggles in Iran while consistently delivering messages on the struggles we all face in life regarding love and relationships. It's a humanistic film that is extremely subtle, which turned off several viewers (as does Taxi Driver, one of my all-time favorites). Jafar Panahi's slow pacing doesn't allow the film to go into incoherent territory, but again, some viewers may be turned off by this. The pacing is really what allows the messages to set in and provoke the viewers thoughts. It's worth every second of your time, don't miss this gem.

9/10

Jafar Panahi is one of the best directors of Iran,his works are upon the best movies of the world,showing the social problems of Iran,after wards Sohrab Shahid Sales is the best choice for watching movies,Crimson gold is the story of Hossein a soldier in Iran-Iraq war who got toxicated by chemical bombs is a mugger,and he delivers pizzas when doing his job he confronts completely different situations which his within is dazzled by them,he saw his friend which he wad a soldier too ,in a luxurious house,Hossein delivered pizza to his house and the price was 20.5 $,he paid him 21 bucks instead an d told him ,keep the tip,he saw the pain if society,he saw the pain within,every time he went to the jewellery's galleries he confronted with shocking prices, this movie is unrealizable for foreigners because they don't know the picture of our society and it's levels, first our society had three levels but the second level is vanishing and there will be only the level that lives in poverty ,and the level that is vomiting money, this movie is not the best movie,it's good but it has some boring scenes,but the direction,camera angles are good, this movie has somethings hided behind the scenes,you should know Iran to see this movie by the way i give it 7.2 out of 10

It's positively amazing what you can sometimes get with non-professional actors, basically playing themselves, especially compared to the many times that real actors flub things entirely. This film follows the sad trajectory of a disaffected pizza delivery driver in Tehran, but while his journey is rooted in reality and presented, aside from the cuts from one scene to another, in something much like real time including all the boring waiting periods (and without the comforting style of similar scenes in Chinatown), the story itself is almost fantastical, probably in part because the people Hussein meets are, to no small degree, more symbolic than anything. The story is heartbreaking and the visuals held my interest without being flashy in the least. Most interestingly, director Jafar Panahi provides us with a removed, rational view of modern Iranian society even as he shows his considerable skill in unobtrusively guiding us along with one man's unfortunate journey.

it is a kind of revelation. not only for acting or script - the Iranian cinematography is admirable source of remarkable films, but for the force of nuances. a film about need to change the society. and the price for that desire. a soft story, a great performance, melancholy in perfect slides, bitter scenes and a powerful careful work. the exercise of Hussein to escape from the circle of his condition, the delicacy of gestures, the first and the last scenes, the dialogs and the atmosphere are pieces of a movie who seems be not exactly a story but a touching confession. its force pillar - the status of universal fight against rules. so, an Iranian movie. who presents the soul map of each viewer.

Winner of the Jury Award at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival but sadly banned in Iran, Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold shows the growing chasm in Iran between rich and poor and the psychological effects of living under a regime based on fundamentalist religion. Written by famous Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, it is based on a newspaper account of a similar incident that took place several years ago in Tehran. The film opens inside a jewelry store where a robbery is taking place. As a crowd gathers, the robber is trapped when the security system is released and the bars close over the front door. Flashbacks then show the events that led up to the crime and the film speculates as to what might have led to this act of desperation.

Hussein (Hossain Emadeddin), an alienated heavy set man who hides his emotions, is a pizza deliveryman in Tehran who takes cortisone shots to relieve the pain of injuries sustained in the Iran-Iraq War. He is engaged to be married to his friend Ali's (Kamyar Sheissi) sister but they communicate little. Ali is a thief who snatches women's purses but is an amateur bungler who rarely scores a big take. On examining the contents of a purse with Hussein at a restaurant, they discover the receipt for an expensive necklace and their fascination leads them to visit the jewelry store where it was purchased. When the owner refuses to let them in the store because of their dress, resentment boils.

Another incident reinforces this hurt. Hussein is forced by security police to wait outside a building as they arrest people attending a party for allegedly violating the social code of the regime that prohibits men and women from dancing together. Though he good-naturedly hands out pizzas to the police and the detainees waiting outside the building, he is upset at the manner in which he is treated. A bizarre final sequence raises Hussein's anger to the breaking point. He delivers a pizza to a lavish penthouse apartment where he is invited in by the wealthy tenant (Pourang Nakaheal), a young man who recently returned to Iran after staying with his parents in the U.S. The man, who appears to be lonely, talks incessantly, complaining about the "city of lunatics" he has returned to. As the young man chats on the cell phone, Hussein wanders through the house amazed at its affluence. He finds a rooftop swimming pool and jumps in fully clothed, then sits on the roof simply gazing at the city below. Fuming inwardly, the very next day he walks into the jewelry store with a loaded gun.

Crimson Gold bravely depicts the powerlessness of the individual in an authoritarian society, yet Hussein's emotional repressiveness and the telegraphing of the final outcome dilutes the film's tension, almost to the point of lethargy. To his credit, Panahi makes a strong statement but does not wallow in polemics, making it clear that the crime results from a combination of both social and psychological factors. Hussein is not an ordinary individual beaten down by the system but a walking time bomb, a man physically and mentally damaged by the war, uncommunicative, and humiliated by each slight, no matter how minor. Like Hussein, Panahi knows something about the feeling of being trapped and humiliated and his experience lends immediacy to the film. In 2001, the director was detained, then chained to a bench for ten hours because he refused to be fingerprinted and photographed by US authorities at JFK airport, a reminder that assaults upon human dignity are not limited to a single country.