To struggle, is to be human

Throughout Forugh Faurrokhzad's film The House is Black and the poems in Sin I felt a sense of varying extreme and passionate emotions that are only connected only by the fact we are humans who struggle daily, unfairly, and yet find a way to hope, love, endurance.

Watching the House is Black made me feel compassionate towards the lepers because of their disfigurements, and their sadness at being forced away from society. There are many times throughout history where people are removed from society when they're deemed unfit. Your race, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, mental health, physical abilities or disabilities can make others fear your differences, so through the influence of commanding authority figures, these different people are ostracized. For whatever reason, we seem to forget that all people are people. Faurrohkzad brought back the humanity to the lepers, forcing the viewer to feel both shocked and empathetic through the jump cuts of leprosy faces, amputations, deteriorating noses of the young and the old, men, women and children. Calm high angled shot of a single maple leaf floating in a pond relays the message that there is at least minimal, simplistic life, if not maybe something better and brighter. Images of the more able bodied with severely disfigured lepers worshiping show they believe in a higher power and appreciate the life they have, even as it is a separate life from the society they once knew, who no longer wants them. She succeeds in invoking the viewer to relate to the leper, to feel sorry for him, but also to understand that all humans alike suffer in one way or another, and all we can do to accept our fate is to try to keep living.

All humans struggle, and as Sin seemed to depict a more personal view of Farrokhzad's love life, that struggle is an essential theme in all of Farrokhzad's works. One poem “Wind-up Doll” describes a similar kind of numbness as was shown with The House is Black especially because the faces all seemed mostly lifeless, dull, unblinking. In the following stanza, Farrakhzad depicts exactly the kind of acceptance of a dark, unforgiving life many lepers appear to feel (27):

       Like a wind-up doll one can look out

      at the world through glass eyes

      spend years inside a felt box

      body stuffed with straw

      wrapped in layers of dainty lace.

Even though this poem talks about the entrappement of the body, many of her other poems are about love and lust and the wonders of one on one human interaction. Although some are entrapped by their ailing bodies, Farrokhzad seemed to be trapped by the desire to love, and to lose love deeply. In another exerpt of her poem “Summer's Green Waters” she talks about how even despite the pain and the hardships, it is worth the moments we can thrive in love (38).

      Alas, we are happy and serene.

      Alas, we are heartisck and silent

      Happy, because we love.

      Heartsick, because love is a curse.