Amir Naderi's THE RUNNER (1984)

 (Continuing on with my Criterion Challenge for the year- this category is "Watch a film from the year you were born")

Welp.... he's sure getting his steps in! Anyway, you really can't be losing at life if you are surrounded by so much ocean and have such ecstasy every time a plane goes by (incidentally, this was originally titled "The Winner" when it was more of a rough concept film and Naderi got more money to make it into a feature film).

The Runner is one of the most vital films of the 1980s, from any country, but in particular regarding how a child has to navigate the world that they're stuck in.

One might want to try to think of another film around the time like it, like Pixtoe, or even Amir Naderi's colleague Kiarostami's own Where is the Friend's House. Naderi is working in a sort of tradition of filmmakers who keep to showing things as real as possible as far as the conditions that someone is in, but the difference between the Neo-Realists in Italy is that Naderi had the sort of upbringing he shows in the film (he was a street kid and shined shoes and had to run around... a lot, this comes from interviews with Naderi). This isn't meant to say this or that film has more authentic qualities as that would be silly; what makes the Runner so special is that Naderi is so charged by how the tools of cinematic grammar can bring us closer to a child's experience.

At the same time I say the director's experiences have an impact on what he is showing us on film, there is another Neo-Realism bond which is that the war in Iran was going on just miles (feet) from where they were shooting the film. There is always something so heartrending to consider that people were risking their lives to tell a story about survival, and that sense of how to make it in a life when there are few resources flows through countless moments and scenes here like at 10,000 beats per minute.

Niroumand is in every scene of this film, and his character is so empathetic because he wants to learn, he wants to know how to read and write and get educated, and everyone knows what it's like to see something that makes us feel alive as a young person - in this case it's airplanes but it could be anything - and he sort of becomes Amiro. He is not that kid, but it's like when you see any great Neo-Realist film where the line between performer and character is if not erased then made to be so transparent.

And what adds to the vitality is how Naderi is using real locations and real situations and people and those ships out on the sea (which Amiro also yells at over and over, will they get his attention, who knows, it doesnt matter except that he has that passion to yell at them as a way of keeping himself spiritually alive, that's my interpretation anyway), but this is not shot exactly naturalistically. He is not using hand-held and is often shooting with a tracking camera and with long lenses and with terrific framing that keeps the focus on how bodies move in a more poetic space than simply "here is how this is happening."

In other words, The Runner is so powerful because of what Naderi shows us how this boy is resourceful and quick on his feet and not about to get pushed around by anyone who may rip him off or steal his block of ice, and there is symbolism a plenty that hits your heart. The legs moving so much is one example (notice when he shows disabled/crippled folks).

That ice melting away is another prime example, where all that matters is getting this object that is going to evaporate (and in a desert sort of climate very quickly) but it has to get from point A to B even if it takes miles. It's not a story about desperation though, even if the boy finds himself in desperate situations and has to fight for himself; it's about how childhood (especially a lonesome, orphaned kind of childhood) is always going to bounce around from one beat to the next, and there are great highs and exhilaration to go with the emotional trauma and, if briefly, redemption.

One last thing: you see what this is about and you may think it's a film adults will watch primarily because, you know, art-house and Janus and oh of course there's a Q&A from the Film Forum in NYC on the Criterion disc, but this is something very good for children to watch (if they're patient enough for subtitles) and they will understand it intuitively regardless of any of the politics surrounding it.