The Color of Paradise

Hashem feels ashamed because he views his son's blindness as a burden and a source of disgrace in his community. As a widower seeking to remarry, he believes Mohammad's blindness will be seen as an ill omen and ruin his chances of finding a new wife. This shame drives many of his decisions throughout the film, including hiding Mohammad's condition and sending him away.

Early scenes show Hashem arriving late to pick up Mohammad and pleading with the headmaster to keep him at school, revealing his desire to avoid caring for his son.

Hashem fears that if the bride's family learns about Mohammad's blindness, they will view it as a bad omen and refuse to allow their daughter to marry him. He hopes that by concealing the truth, he can secure the marriage and maintain his honor in the village.

When Hashem approaches the woman's parents with gifts, he deliberately avoids mentioning his son's disability.

Hashem sends Mohammad to the blind carpenter to remove him from the village and keep his blindness hidden from the community. By placing him with another blind person, Hashem hopes to manage his son's care without the shame of having a blind child visible to potential marriage prospects.

This decision follows Hashem's failed attempt to keep Mohammad at the Tehran school for the summer.

Mohammad struggles with the contradiction between his teacher's lesson that God loves blind children and his own experience of living without sight. He questions why, if God loves him, he would be denied the ability to see God. This reflects his deep spiritual longing and confusion about his place in the world.

The carpenter's training includes religious lessons about God's love for the blind, which directly contrast with Mohammad's feelings of rejection.

The bride's family interprets the grandmother's sudden death while holding Mohammad's hairpin as a dire omen connected to the family. In their superstition, this tragic event seems to confirm their fears about Mohammad's blindness bringing misfortune, leading them to call off the wedding.

The grandmother becomes emotionally distressed upon learning about Mohammad's situation, foreshadowing her fatal accident.

Hashem experiences a moment of paralysis as he watches Mohammad fall into the rushing water. He is torn between his instinct to save his son and his lingering feelings of burden and shame. For a brief, haunting moment, he considers whether letting Mohammad drown would free him from the weight he has carried. However, his love for his son ultimately prevails, and he dives in to rescue him.

Throughout the film, Hashem's conflicting emotions about Mohammad are established through his attempts to hide and distance himself from his son.

The film leaves Mohammad's fate deliberately ambiguous. After the bridge collapses and he is submerged in the river, Hashem finds him unconscious on the Caspian Sea shore. When Hashem cradles him in grief, Mohammad's fingers begin to twitch, suggesting he may still be alive. However, this moment could also represent a spiritual experience, with Mohammad finally connecting with the divine he yearned for throughout the film.

Mohammad's constant longing to see God and his belief that sensing God should be enough foreshadow this ambiguous final moment.

The woodpecker's sound represents a potential moment of divine connection for Mohammad. Since he cannot see, he has developed other senses to perceive the world. The sound may be his way of 'reading' the world through touch and hearing, similar to how he reads Braille. This moment suggests he has found the spiritual connection he desperately sought throughout the film.

Throughout the film, Mohammad demonstrates an extraordinary ability to connect with nature through his non-visual senses.

The title refers to Mohammad's spiritual understanding of paradise rather than visual perception. Despite being blind, he experiences the world and nature deeply through his other senses. The 'color' may represent the emotional and spiritual richness he perceives, and the ending suggests he finally experiences a form of paradise or divine presence that transcends physical sight.

Mohammad's profound sensory experiences with nature throughout the film establish his unique way of 'seeing' the world.

The hairpin symbolizes Mohammad's connection to his family and his identity as Hashem's son. When the grandmother accidentally drops it into the pond while grieving over Mohammad's situation, it becomes the catalyst for her death. The loss of this personal object represents the breaking of family bonds and triggers the chain of events that leads to the wedding cancellation and Hashem's decision to bring Mohammad home.

The hairpin is introduced earlier in the story as one of Mohammad's few personal possessions from his mother.

Mohammad uses his other senses, touch, hearing, and smell, to perceive the world in ways sighted people cannot. He feels the rhythms and textures of nature, listens to sounds most people overlook, and experiences a profound sensory awareness that compensates for his lack of sight. This ability allows him to find beauty and solace in the natural world where others might see only limitations.

From his first moments of freedom outside the school, Mohammad eagerly explores the hills and engages with his surroundings using his non-visual senses.