Salve

Last night I saw the movie Salve or "مرهم" in Farsi by Alireza Davoodnejad. It was a well-made movie. For the most part, I was shocked by the characters in the movie. How everyone spoke by yelling at each other, how the youth in Tehran entertained themselves, how they would betray each other, and yet despite all that how easily they trusted each other again. It was as if I was seeing a foreign movie myself, not one from my own hometown. I felt detached and experienced culture shock. However, the moral story of the movie and the way it was conveyed was a masterpiece.

Davoodnejad showed the power of choice, the difference between being an observer and active participant, and the power of love so beautifully. The love that does not know any barriers of distance or generation gap. The love of an old religious grandmother who shadows her addicted granddaughter just to be there for her if she needed her. The love that makes her go to the most unlikely places for a woman of her age. She is everything to the granddaughter who was punished by her own father and abandoned by her so called lover and friends. The presence of the old religious seemingly cold and detached grandmother is all that girl needs to be saved: someone who loves her and cares for her.