A Moment of Innocence :: essays papers

A second of Innocence When I walked into class that day I was heedless to the movie that we would be watching that evening. Five minutes into A Moment of Innocence (1995) by Mohsan Makhmalbaf, I was hooked. By taking a pseudo-documentary way of life Makhmalbaf lets us see the people as they are transformed into the characters from the movie house coachs departed. This style allows us to grow up with them and to relate to twain sides of the story. By taking a true event and fictionalizing, at to the lowest degree part of it, Makhmalbaf has us trying to figure out what parts draw been added to the narrative and which parts truly speak to history. A documentary does non strive to tell a story, it looks upon events unemotionally and tries not to colour our ideas some the event. A Moment of Innocence is not a documentary simply uses the truth function common to that genre to give us an sympathy of the events from both sides and makes us think about how our actions effec t others every day. If A Moment of Innocence had been a wholly fictional film I do not believe that it would have carried the same emotional impact. opposite faces in the film show us how Makhmalbaf is trying to reconcile his past actions with his feeling today. They also show how he is, while not in any way apologizing for his actions, trying to amend some of the damage he may have caused.There are several scenes in the film that stand out to me as important. The scene that caught me the most off-guard occurred when Makhmalbaf and young Makhmalbaf went to the directors first cousins home to try to enlist her daughter to play the roll her mother had played in real life. For ripe a moment the daughter and young Makhmalbaf step out of themselves and bring into being the characters that they are playing. They make plans to meet the next day for the misadventure with the policeman, both look nervous, Makhmalbaf returns and they resume their roles as if the exchange had never oc curred. This glimpse into what and how the incident was planned gives the audience a look into the type of people that Makhmalbaf and his cousin were as young adults, scared but sure in their purpose. The scene also allows us to step out of the knowledge that this is staged and shows us the characters as people, not actors.