Gilane (2005) User Reviews

About war,The facts of war

[sagharazi · 8/10 · 29 September 2005]

As an Iranian teenager who was born after Iran and Iraq war,i don't know much about it.but Gilane put me in the situation of war,like how horrible is explosion near one's house and how horrible is to see your son like a peace of meat after arriving from war. the movie was so emotional and make audience sad.But this sadness is so important to know many things.the movie says that the real loser of the war is the mother,who have to take care of her ill son without any support.and also it wants to say that war is not the end and its damages are living right now. At the end of the comment i have to praise the actors of the Gilane specially Fatemeh Motamedaria who shows a perfect performance in the movie.

Superb drama

[JohnSeal · 8/10 · 15 September 2007]

Do NOT be put off by the low (5.7 as of this writing) 'weighted average' awarded this film by IMDb. Gilaneh is yet another incredibly moving and powerful Iranian film, this time examining the after effects of the Iran Iraq War of the 1980s as filtered through the more recent 'shock and awe' campaign waged by the United States against the Saddam Hussein regime. As other reviews have mentioned, Fatemah Motamed-Aria is magnificent as the title character, who we see caring for a pregnant daughter-in-law in the film's first act, and for her mentally and physically scarred war veteran son Ismael (Bahram Radan) in the second. Just imagine: our crypto-fascist Western governments want to bomb Iran 'back to the stone age', and if that happens, you can be sure that we will lose some of the amazing film artists the Islamic Republic has developed over the last few decades. Read the headlines and weep, and then show this incredible film to the neo-conservative next door.

Great film from one of the best Iranian auteurs

[josantos-1 · 10/10 · 10 September 2007]

Although not as well-known as her male counterparts--Kiarostami, Majidi, Makhmalbaf--Rakhshan Bani Etemad is not only one of the best filmmakers in Iran, but also one of the bravest. Unlike her largely depoliticized colleagues, Bani Etemad tackles issues that are either taboo (a love affair) or neglected (the mothers of Iran-Iraq War) in Iranian society. Gilaneh, although as engaged politically as anything else, also works as great drama, an emotional depiction of a mother who suffers the greatest punishment after war: taking care of shell-shocked and invalid son. The change that the mother undergoes between the war in '88 and the Iraqi war 15 years later is nothing short of astounding, and many praises to Madjid Bahrami who played Gilaneh. The final image of the mother is quite possibly one of the most emblematic images in cinema today.