The House is Black

The House is Black is one of the more depressing movies I've seen, but let me explain.  While this movie discusses a very sad, almost forgotten group of people, I found the themes of this movie much more depressing than the disease of leprosy itself. The most prevalent idea I came across in this film was this feeling of waiting. Through quick frames and clips, mixed with well-timed sounds (a man tapping on a wall, men playing a type of board game), I felt like the movie was almost counting down to something. The way the movie was filmed reminded me of a "tick, tock" kind of feeling, almost as if a clock was ticking away as the seconds passed by. I find this a commonality between many horror films as well. This style of filming was one of the contributing factors to my feelings towards this movie.

After reading the poems of the film's director, Forough Farrokhzad, I confirmed this theme of waiting. In my opinion, many of her poems were conveying pride in herself and in ways of living, but they also conveyed this idea of wondering when people would accept her for who she is and understand her way of life. According to the biography in the beginning of her collection of poems, she in a sense was waiting also. She was constantly waiting for her ways of life to be accepted and for her work in poetry to gain the respect it deserved.

I think that this idea was most upsetting because it made me wonder what the people in the leper colony were waiting for. Their condition to improve? For the outside world to accept them? Their was so much hope in the eyes of the children of the colony, but when you looked at their parents their was no hope...just, waiting.