Homework

1989 [FA]

Action / Crime / Documentary / Drama

16
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 78% · 1 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 78% · 250 ratings
IMDb Rating 7.8/10 10 2319 2.3K

Plot summary

Young male students at a local Iranian school are asked about their feelings on homework.

720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
711.65 MB
988*720
Fa 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 17 min
Seeds 3
1.29 GB
1472*1072
Fa 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 17 min
Seeds 17

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by His Girl Friday 9 / 10

Cartoons or Homework? An eternal struggle...

Kiarostami exposes some of the hardships of being a young student in Iran. With a few simple shots and a few basic questions, he manages to sketch out both the problems and the joys of childhood.Kiarostami (playing himself, or simply "playing director") sets up his camera for a few days in a grade school in order to find out about children and their attitudes and struggles with homework. Kids of every personality (from hyper to shy, bragging to quiet) all felt the need to lie about the importance of homework in their life. We laugh each time a young interviewee tells a small fib and says they prefer the difficulty of their homework to watching cartoons after school. But often the truth of the matter is they reason they struggle with their homework is because both parents might be illiterate, or older brothers and sisters provide little support as well. Homework often takes a back seat to the reality of life for these children who are torn between the obligations of being a child and the obligations of being an active member of a family struggling to make ends meet.An excellent little film - hard-going for the the impatient moviegoer who might need EVERYTHING spelled out for him/her, but for the rest of us, it's a joy to pull out the many meanings and truths embedded in this film.
Reviewed by gbill-74877 7 / 10

Disturbing in more ways than one

Comprised mostly of interviews of 6-year-old kids who've had problems getting their homework done at a public school in Tehran, patterns begin emerging that form the basis for a criticism of the education system in Iran in 1989. At the heart of it is learning by rote, with a sizable percentage of parents, illiterate themselves, ill-equipped to help their children at home. The kids painfully know what corporal punishment is, most often in the form of a parent hitting them with a belt, but few ever having received a reward or encouragement. They chant invectives against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, just a year removed from the eight year war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, and they chant religious dogma lauding Ali and their Shi'ite faith. At one point an adult is interviewed, and he comments that creativity and critical reasoning should be fostered, comparing the state of affairs in Iran to other countries, and fearing for the future.It's certainly sad to see these little faces reveal their lives to Kiarostami's simple questions, and the film is not short on emotional power. On the downside, I didn't much care for the frequent cuts back to the cameraman focusing on the kids, even if the intent of this(?) was to remind viewers of the power dynamic, and why kids would be lying by saying they preferred homework to cartoons; regardless, it seemed overdone to me. I also didn't like the cruelty Kiarostami showed to the last child, who was absolutely terrified of being interviewed alone, and yet got badgered with questions. This was undoubtedly left in the film to show how traumatized and fragile a child could be in this system; his troubles apparently stemming back to having been beaten by a teacher with a ruler so hard that it broke. He only snaps out of his anxiety when asked to sing a religious song, which he then belts out with confidence, which was an ominous warning of what the system was producing. It's a brilliant moment, but the ends didn't justify the means, and I was left conflicted by what I had seen. It's a documentary worth seeing though, and I wish we could see how these kids, now nearing 40, turned out.
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