The director Mohsen Makhmalbaf made a number of acclaimed films in his native Iran over the Eighties and Nineties, but with the 1998 effort SOKOUT ("Silence") he moved farther afield for his shooting location: Tajikistan, where the locals speak a Persian dialect mostly intelligible to Iranians, but the culture is an exotic mix of Central Asian and Soviet traditions.Khorshid (Tahmineh Normatova), a blind boy aged around 10, is employed in the workshop of an instrument maker, tuning the instruments. His mother (Goibibi Ziadolahyeva), abandoned by her husband, urges him to work hard, for their landlord is demanding the rent and threatening eviction. Unfortunately, Khorshid is particularly prone to arriving late at work because he is easily distracted from his commute by the sound of music coming from the radio or street musicians. Nadereh (Nadereh Abdelahyeva), the adopted daughter of the instrument maker, tries to keep Khorshid out of trouble. This is a mystical film, by which Khorshid's desire to follow the beauty of music above all else serves as a metaphor for the renunciant's search for God.However, that mystical point is made quite subtly, and I suspect most audiences outside the region won't pick up on it. What will strike most foreign viewers is the beautiful imagery and soundtrack. Filming outside Iran in a country with less strict dress codes, Makhmalbaf's camera focuses heavily on female faces and the colourful floral prints of Dushabe's women. In Nadereh and another young cast member he captures that brief moment where girlhood gives way to womanhood. We hear a number of musical instruments from Central Asia, but besides the local folk music the dramatic opening of Beethoven's Fifth figures prominently, tying this exotic locale to a more universal ideal. Things are not entirely rosy, however. The innocence of the children is juxtaposed at a few points with the gritty reality of post-Soviet Tajikistan, now recovering from a bloody civil war and marked by poverty, child labour, and a reborn religious extremism.The running time is short at 72 minutes, which might disappoint some. Also, Makhmalbaf chose non-professionals to play the roles, and their lines are often delivered somewhat woodenly. However, such wooden dialog may have been desirable to the director, as that slow speech makes the film easier for his native Iranian audience to understand. Still, while not a major masterpiece, this is a visually and musically attractive film and worth watching for anyone wanting a slice of Central Asian drama (or at least one Iranian director's vision of it).

I saw this film when it was released, more than a decade ago, and I haven't seen it since. So I don't recall all the details. Directed by the famous Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the movie is set in the little known republic of Tajikistan. A former Soviet republic in Central Asia, Tajikistan became independent in 1991 and suffered greatly from poverty and civil war in the first years of independence (in one moving scene in the film, an elderly Russian resident of Tajikistan laments, to the point of almost crying, his economic troubles). The Tajiks are ethnically very close to the Iranians; some say that the Tajik language is just a dialect of Farsi. As shown in the film, Tajikistan seems almost frozen in time, while the movie is set in the late 1990s, a lot of the buildings and cars seem to belong to perhaps the 1950s or 1960s, the floor of most of the houses seems to be made of earth, and the factory where part of the action takes place has an abacus and an old telephone line, but not a computer (I hope that in the time since this film was made, Tajikistan has modernized a bit). The busy bazaars and narrow alleys add to the feeling of a strange place to a western viewer.The protagonist is a blind 10 year old boy, who relates to the world through sounds (the first chords of Beethoven's fifth symphony are a motif throughout the film). Coming from a very poor family, he works in a dilapidated factory tuning the instruments made there (I suppose being blind makes him more able to concentrate on the sounds). A beautiful little girl, who wears tresses and dresses in traditional multicolored Tajik clothes, seems to be his only friend. There is not much else in the movie in terms of action, I suppose that to appreciate this film you just have to sit back and enjoy what you are seeing. The amazingly beautiful color photography certainly helps. It is a poetic movie, but in a good way, unlike in other art movies, this film never feels forced or pretentious.

"The Silence" is not an ordinary movie even though it looks simple. It is the story of a blind boy Hursit who is trying to make both his and mother's living by tuning instruments in local traditional instrument shop.His father has apparently left his family to Russia and Hursit and the mother is having a hard time because they can't pay the rent and they are faced with the dancer of being thrown to the street. The movie uses Beethoven's 5th Symphony in the final scene. The scenery of bazaars,the local imagery of an Eastern town,the local instrument builders and vendors add so much to the atmosphere to the movie. And a little note for those who have just recognized the Iranian movie..Before the Islamic revolution in Iran, the director of the movie was a political activist and because of that he was jailed for more than 4 years, and was let out of jail only after the revolution. After the revolution he abandoned politics, because he had believed that the chief problem in Iran was the cultural one. The movie was also banned in Iran.If you like simple real stories about real life I suggest you see the movie.

This is simply the most beautiful movie I've ever seen. It revitalized all my senses. It helps to have some information about the cultural background of the movie. The fact that it takes place in Tajikistan an X-soviet republic, of Iranian ethnicity and Persian language etc.