THE APPLE - MIFF 2011

Samira Makhmalbaf’s “The Apple” is an Iranian film that I had been wanting to see for a very long time (the film was originally released in 1998), however it is a film that is very difficult to find.  When I saw that it was being played at MIFF this year as part of their 60^th Anniversary retrospective, I jumped at the chance to see it.  Unfortunately I didn’t think that it lived up to its reputation and I was a little disappointed in the film.

While the film itself didn’t blow me away, the story behind the making of “The Apple” certainly does.  The film is based on a true story about twin girls, aged twelve, who had been locked in their house behind bars their entire life.  After their neighbours complained to welfare about the situation, a social worker came and removed the girls from the care of their parents.  The girls are then cleaned up, fed properly and checked over by doctors.  The parents come to reclaim their daughters and after assuring the social workers that they would no longer keep the girls behind bars, the children are returned to their parents.  All of the above is true and we have access to it all via poor quality video footage that was obviously shot while this ordeal was taking place.

From here on, the “film” takes over, but I believe it to be basically a recreation of events that happened after the girls were sent home.  The most amazing thing about all of this is that the actual family members themselves play out their own roles in the film.  Once the girls go home, the father goes against his word and again locks them behind bars, and when the social worker sees this on a visit to the house, she lets the kids out and proceeds to lock the parents themselves behind bars, leaving them with a hack-saw.  She explains that she will only bring the girls back when the bars are gone.  Meanwhile the girls are sent out to have fun for the first time in their lives and to try and make friends.

What is amazing about the film is that it doesn’t portray the parents as monsters.  The mother is paranoid (she constantly hers voices that aren’t there) and blind and because of this she refuses to let the girls outside for fear of their safety.  The father, on the hand, is just following teachings he himself was taught when he was young, which is to protect girls and not to let them come into contact with boys, as it is a sin.  Since the house next door has a couple of boys living there and who are always jumping the fence into this family’s property to retrieve their balls, the father keeps the girls locked up to protect them.  The social worker, with her visit and explanations, begins to break down these mental borders down, just as the father himself is breaking down the physical border that has been keeping his girls from going outside.

I will say that I thought the ending was just beautiful, with the father taking his girls out for the first time to buy them a watch each.  He actually seems so proud to be going on the street with his daughters.  While the film did disappoint me a little, there is no doubt that it is a stunning achievement.  Samira Makhmalbaf was only seventeen years old when she made “The Apple”, using left over pieces of film from one of her father’s pictures (her father is famous Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf), and to get the actual family to play out their own roles in the film is just astounding, so from this point of view, “The Apple” can be considered a success.

3 Stars.