Trailer for Baran on YouTube: http://youtu.be/T5UGItdsqUI
Hi readers. I’d never thought about it until I watched Baran on Netflix. How similar Iranians are to Americans. In this Turkish movie while building a site in Tehran, Turkish worker Lateef is drawn to young Afghan worker Rahmat, who is dangerously in disguise. A female illegal alien, refugee from Afghanistan.
And those Iranians don’t put up with anyone giving jobs to those wetback Afghans any more than Arizonians who aren’t needing yard work done don’t condone anyone hiring Mexican illegal aliens.
What’s surprising is the number of ways Mexicans and Afghans are similar outside the mere shared illegal alien status. Both are bad about shooting things up in their own countries, they’re both rather dark skinned, and they both speak languages the average US citizen can’t understand. Then there’s the matter of cutlery.
But the amazing corollary is the many ways other than their views about illegal aliens Americans are similar to Iranians. Each has a ‘special’ relationship with Israel and the Israelis, for instance. Each is preoccupied with nuclear weapons. Each sits atop one hell of a lot of oil. And each tends to go overboard over religion and religious matters sufficiently to get religion and government confused.
See it on Netflix: Baran, 2001 PG 95 minutes, starring:Hossein Abedini, Zahra Bahrami. Director:Majid Majidi
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 
Thanks, my brother.
Two movies that save me another Saturday night of binge watching “The Rockford Files” – not meaning to say, of course, that ol’ Jimmy still ain’t The Man, but I love foreign films and need to broaden my exposure to them.
Harris
Morning to you amigo. Thanks for coming by. I’d feel fairly guilty about watching so many movies on Netflix if I weren’t on a journey of seemingly worthwhile discovery doing it. Not something I anticipated …. it began just passing time I didn’t have the energy or stamina to spend even reading. But when I graduated to a LOT of foreign films the whole thing evolved into something I might have chosen to do even if I were able to do something seemingly more worthwhile. I’ve spent a fair amount of time lately consciously pondering my own mortality and trying to come up with some calibrated scale to measure ways I spend my time in a context of “would you be doing this if you knew you were dying tomorrow?” And arriving at the conclusion there’s no context sufficiently meaningful as a platform for the yardstick. Strange place to find myself. Decided foreign flicks are more valuable to my eternal soul than American ones, even the ones with Orson Wells and Marlene Deitrich or that gorgeous Kim Novak. What the hell boys, what the hell, is how Mehitabel would sum it up, were she able to comment. Gracias, J
Now hang on Jules, What is this about pondering what you would be doing if you knew you would be leaving this world tomorrow? I’m not one to ponder such things often. You did stop me in my tracks and I took a bit to ponder it. At first I though not much if anything different. Then I remembered my kids and realized I would be writing them a long letter telling them about my Lord and how they need to get their lives straightened out and on the right path, the straight, narrow and difficult one. Really that is the only thing of sufficient consequence to me is the two of them knowing Jesus as their Savior. Once that was done, I think I would just spend time with my husband, our dogs, cat and all my birds. And a few phone calls to my closest and dearest friends and my two remaining brothers. Blessings, M.
Mary: We all gotta do whatever we think is the best run for our money, I reckons. J