Sight to behold, beyond what sight can hold

Can't ever forget the hypnotic charm of the Majid Majidi masterpiece 'The Colour of Paradise' (wayward translation of the original Persian title Rang-e Khoda, "the Colour of God") led by the eight year old protagonist Mohammad (visually impaired Mohsen Ramezani), blind since birth, sensing the splendor of wheat fields, agony of a fallen bird, reassuring warmth of his grandmother's hands, and the guiding light of braille dots...

From the moment Mohammad's widower father Hashem (Hossein Mahjoub) reluctantly 'collects' him from the special school in Tehran, we follow Mohammad through the idyll - as he gradually comes to terms with the ensuing reality and eventual mortality of his life, with a stoic calm that belies his internal turmoil and utter despondency. Needless to say, his effortless act guided by Majid is very unlike the everyday performance of blindness many filmmakers swear by.

The father, desperate to remarry a woman from a nearby village, leaves Mohammad with a blind carpenter far from home. The doting grandmother radiates an unsentimental tenderness in organic protest that makes her eventual departure feel like the film's second-most powerful rupture, second to the one caused by Mohammad's demise.

Majidi's moving images, both in the literal and lyrical sense, sit in silence and trust you to feel the unsaid amid birdsong, running water, and wind in wheat. Nothing is underlined as profound meaning, it simply happens, first on screen, and then to the discernible viewer.

Hard to believe the same Majidi spun the Mumbai-set disaster called 'Beyond the Clouds', built around a so-called professional star cast, a muddled Vishal Bhardwaj script, and a nauseating formulaic plot mechanism.

Majidi's filmography is instantly recognizable, given his pet metaphors floating around in film after film with devotional regularity: shoes and photographs repeatedly caught, swept, or lost in the flow of gutter water and rain or buses, trucks, and motorbikes moving en route melancholic journeys. Yet, you don't mind it especially in his more evocative films like 'Sun Children' and 'The Song of Sparrows'

Having said that, it is very easy to rank his best and worst work. The former has to be The Colour of Paradise' and the latter is undoubtedly 'Beyond the Clouds'.