The Silence

This esoteric art movie from Makhmalbaf senior is visually arresting, I suppose, in the self-consciously poetic manner of Paradjanov, but only if you can look past the stultifyingly whimsical nature of its allegory. Korshid is a young blind boy who works tuning musical instruments. Although his mother is in arrears with the rent, the lad allows himself to be led astray en route to work by an irresistible impulse to follow the sound of music. It is, one appreciates, a film directed from the inner eye - just what the world's been waiting for, a structuralist neo-realist art musical for blind kids.