Crimson Gold (2003)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This was a very interesting and well done movie. I was impressed how the director was able to capture the class clash in the country and how he used Hossein to show the differences of people who live in the same geographical region. While Hossein is mostly used as the "camera" the director shows how the classes have distanced each other and how small a "midlle" class has become in Iran of post 1979. I was mostly impressed by the scene within the jewelry store how the store owner treats two couples completely different, without haven had a full 5 sentence conversation with any of them, but justifying his behavior and ' customer service' simply on the class of his customers.

Two unbelievable men, true humanists and visionaries have brought their minds together to create Crimson Gold and they have made universal story about social deprivation and humiliation that could be applied in any part of the world. Truly, this is an Iranian film that looks less Iranian than any other I have seen so far. The plot could be placed anywhere in the world where people live their cheerless lives, work for miserable salaries and get humiliated every day. Moreover, Kiarostami's scenario is based upon a true event.Hussein's job is poorly paid pizza delivery and it cannot provide him with enough money to buy simple jewels for his future wife, but can clearly show him that some other people do not have such problems. His customers often have fun with prostitutes, buy modern, expensive jewels from abroad, have parties in luxury apartments and obviously do not have money-related problems while Hussein and his best friend and future brother-in-law are not even allowed to enter the fancy jewels store. Simple man, excellently interpreted by Hossain Emadeddin, suffers quietly and does not share his frustrations with anyone, but in the act of pure despair decides to rob the store and steal the most expensive necklace. Like everything else in his sad life, this action turns the wrong way and does not bring any release but on the contrary, ends with suicide. The robbery is actual beginning of the film and it takes some time to realize that, in the real time, it is the end of the gloomy story as everything that happens later in the film progressively leads to the only possible ending.

According to the DVD booklet this movie can be compared to Taxi Driver. Well, the only thing I find similar is the pace of the camera-work and the speed in which the story unfolds. My god, what a very slow and boring movie! Normally, a slower pace can be an element of added value, or even a necessity. In this case, it's mainly annoying. It really doesn't add to the atmosphere of the story, its rather old-fashioned film-making. Maybe also because it doesn't lead anywhere. The storyline is thin, with a theme of wealth vs poor that I don't find very credible, mainly the ignorance of poor. The only positive point I can think of is that the movie gives some more insight in the environments of Teheran. Some newer good movies come from Iran, this just is not one of them. I watched the second part of the movie in fast-forward.

I will not lie, the beginning of the movie was very intriguing and it hooked me into watching the rest of it, but to be honest with you...I kind of regret it.The opening scene is very interesting and it's duration of about 5 minutes is the best part of the whole movie and the rest of the film badly fails to live up to its beginning.Maybe some North American viewers thought this was a great picture because they saw shocking things in Iran such as how a 15 year old boy is already in the army - well that's no news to me, I was born in a country where you get taken to the army at 18 for 2 years whether you want it or not. Another "shock", as I read in a previous comment to this movie, was how there are luxurious jewelry stores in Iran....umm yeah... There are always rich people in big cities such as Teheran and that's what they do - they buy jewelry.Most scenes in this movie were waaaay too long and some were completely useless and meaningless... What am I talking about? OK...how about when Hussein gives out pizza slices to the people he doesn't know (don't wanna give away too much) what was the point of that?...they spent like a minute of the movie on the main character walking from car to car giving people pizza slices. Or another scene I completely don't get is when Hussein sees that his co-worker suffered a bad crash on his bike while delivering pizza...A friend of mine tried to tell me that the point of this scene is for Hussein to realize how meaningless his life is and that being rich is better... How does it show that? If a rich guy crashed on a bike same thing would happen...he'd go to a hospital and the homeless guy would steal his helmet (you'll understand what I'm talking about if you watched the movie). The point is - that there is no point in that scene.Twice I looked at my watch during the movie, both times towards the end because I knew it was supposed to be ending soon and didn't understand where it was going.All in all, a disappointment. Great beginning, but everything else was bad. Too long, pointless. It would make a great short film though...shorten each scene by 10 minutes (yes they are very long) and you'll have the same movie without any loss in its message.