One of the most common pitfalls in film criticism arises when one admires a film more in theory than in what you see on the screen. This is especially true of films with a socio-political edge, where admiring the politics on display often precludes taking a sharp look at how the film actually plays.
A perfect example of this is "At Five in the Afternoon," which took the Jury Prize at Cannes last year. It's directed by Samira Makhmalbaf, a headstrong young woman director in conservative, patriarchal Iran, hence A Good Thing. Her film is a cinema verite look at the plight of women in contemporary Afghanistan, which is politically correct by the standards of anyone who's watching movies, not burning them. Her father, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, is one of Iran's most revered filmmakers, and Samira is his most precocious protege.
Her films -- "The Apple," "Blackboards" and "At Five," her latest -- focus on marginalized individuals who struggle to survive amid political, cultural and religious repression. Like many Iranian films, all her works are shot on location, using local people she scouts for the roles (or browbeats; see her sister Hana's making-of documentary, "Joy of Madness," for examples of her technique). While this approach definitely allows her to capture some of the reality of lives not often portrayed on the big screen, she has an oblique, poetic sensibility, dancing away from any overt big statements to find her voice in poignant details.
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