FILM REVIEW
'The Apple': Daughters of Darkness Who Dream of the Light
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER
The New York Times
February 19, 1999
"The Apple" was shown as part of last year's New York Film
Festival. Following are excerpts from Lawrence Van Gelder's review, which
appeared in The New York Times on Sept. 30. The film opens Friday in Manhattan.
Potent symbolism linked to a bizarre story rooted in fact, set in Iran
and laden with political, social and generational overtones makes "The
Apple" one of the more intriguingly resonant features of the 36th
New York Film Festival.
This Iranian-French co-production about a repressive father and his
daughters is the work of Samira Makhmalbaf, 17, the daughter of the Iranian
filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose artful "Gabbeh" made a striking
impression at the festival in 1996.
Released as Iran is torn between the isolationism of religious fundamentalists
and efforts to open the nation to the world, "The Apple" re-
enacts the story of an uneducated, unemployed, impoverished 65-year-old
man with a blind wife; he kept his two daughters locked behind walls and
bars for all of their 12 years.
Understood on one level as an argument against the old ways and the
repression of women or on another as a plea for greater national freedom,
"The Apple" possesses a significance beyond the simple outlines
of its story.
These children can barely communicate, possess no skills and know nothing
of the world outside.
"They must have a future, a role in society," says the female
social worker who responds to a petition by neighbors for urgent action.
In answer to the complaints, the father insists that he has been slandered
and dishonored, especially when the story makes headlines. "It's all
lies," he says, making an assortment of excuses: his wife's blindness
and his need to earn a living; the possibility that neighboring boys could
defile the girls and dishonor him. The social worker extracts
a promise that the father will free them. When he reneges, she returns,
sets the girls loose and locks the father in his house. But she arms him
with a hacksaw and tells him that unless he cuts through the bars or breaks
the lock, the girls will be taken away.
As for the girls, their greatest dream is to possess an apple, and in
their journey outside home, they -- and eventually their mother -- meet
a small boy who tantalizes them with an apple laden with symbolism that
he dangles on a string from the end of a stick just beyond their reach.
Working from a screenplay by her father and using the actual family
involved in this case, Ms. Makhmalbaf elicits remarkably unaffected performances.
If there is a certain repetitiousness in the early part of this account,
there is also much natural humor and keen observation of the behavior of
children once the girls begin to venture into the world.
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