When the battles start things do pick up a bit, but by then it’s a case of too little too late. There’s a lot of time spent on the efforts of the merchants and leaders of Mecca to suppress the growing movement, so much so that it’s almost two hours before we get a proper battle scene. Other than that, the story is told in a fairly conservative, straightforward way, hammering home the view that Mohammad’s opponents were driven by greed and that his message was just totally awesome and should have been immediately taken up by everyone. Consequently we get an epic biopic missing its protagonist, instead resorting to ridiculous workarounds such as showing his camel’s head (he’s supposedly just off-screen!) and shooting some sequences from his point of view (placing his staff in frame as though it’s a weapon in a first-person shooter game!). Therefore, the person of Mohammad will not be shown”. An opening card informs the audience: “The makers of this film honour the Islamic tradition which holds that the impersonation of the Prophet offends against the spirituality of his message. It tells the story of Mohammad and the birth of Islam but it’s hamstrung by its adherence to Islamic beliefs regarding depictions of Mohammad.
In a sense, the nearest comparison would be Ben-Hur unfortunately, this is no Ben-Hur. Roger reviewed his second Majidi film on June 2, 2000, giving three-and-a-half stars to " The Color of Paradise." Another story about children, as told with a refreshing gentleness, Roger also admired how Majidi's religious movie "feels truly intended for God's glory," with Roger making the point that "his film looks up, not sideways." Adoring its "delicacy and beauty," "The Color of Paradise" also returned Roger back to the "lesson" he took away from "Children of Heaven": "Any film not good enough for grownups is not good enough for children.If this movie is to be believed, most of Mohammad’s enemies died because they used rubber swords.Strange combination of historical epic and religious propaganda.
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"Children of Heaven" so impressed Roger that he programmed it as a Free Kiddie Matinee at Ebertfest 2000, stating in the festival's introduction, "I believe kids who can read are old enough for subtitles it's never too early to the best of world cinema." Roger later wrote of the experience: "I showed it at my 2000 Overlooked Film Festival at the free family matinee, telling the bigger kids it was all right to read the subtitles to the smaller ones-but there was not a sound, because the images held them spellbound." Why do we teach our kids to see through things, before they even learn to see them?" It lacks the cynicism and smart-mouth attitudes of so much American entertainment for kids and glows with a kind of good-hearted purity." He concluded his review with a striking sentiment, one as timeless as the story in Majidi's film: "In this film from Iran, I found a sweetness and innocence that shames the land of Mutant Turtles, Power Rangers and violent video games.
As Roger also stressed, this comedy/drama about impoverished Iranian kids and a pair of shoes also made for universal entertainment: "Children of Heaven'' is very nearly a perfect movie for children, and of course that means adults will like it, too. Roger only reviewed three films by Majidi, but his first review introduced a special connection of taste between the critic and the filmmaker-for all of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movies Roger had to see, "Children of Heaven" was a four-star reprieve, reviewed on February 5, 1999.