When was the last time you described an entire movie as beautiful? It’s not a common thing, is it? For me, it must be a movie that encapsulates an element of real life. Holds it, caresses it, and then lets it free. It doesn’t always have to teach a lesson or be intelligent. It just needs to look you in the heart and say, “I know what that’s like”.
Small brown feet clad in nothing but jandals, stumble across the open concrete roof. The boy, finally alone, bursts into silent, angry tears. He doesn’t belong in this world. This world was made for a certain type of person, and that person wasn’t him.
This is from Taare Zameen Par, also known as Like Stars on Earth. A film about an 8-year-old boy with dyslexia, trying to live in a world where adults only seem to care about academic subjects. His reading disorder is seen as disobedience and bad behaviour. My mother is a teacher for children with learning difficulties. I’ve known about dyslexia, dyspraxia, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and other disorders since I was very young. I’ve known kids who were older than eight stare blankly at letters on a page with no comprehension in their eyes. I’ve seen my sister start shaking at the thought of having to read publicly in Sunday School because she literally couldn’t. I’ve seen kids bash their heads against walls because the futility of trying to explain themselves is impossible. I’ve heard children scream endlessly just to try block out the outside world. These are all real-world things, and Like Stars on Earth shows all that without manipulatively tugging on the heart strings. It’s just… real.
All the children are asleep, except one. The bathroom is the best place to cry. Tears are hot and plentiful and mix with water perfectly. The pain in his heart erupts as he lets the world and walls crash around him. His family has abandoned him; there is nothing left to cling to. Pain pours out of his heart and down the drain, leaving him empty and emotionless.
America does not do real very well in my mind. Real in America is putting a messy, messed-up adult on screen, messing up their life, and ending on the depressing note of “this is how the world is”. It is in my nature to reject that reality, so those movies don’t speak to me in any way.
The boy stares at the school notice board, reading the words out loud phonetically, as he’s been taught. Unbeknownst to the boy, his father stands at a distance, hearing, for the first time, his son read words he never used to be able to. He’s failed as a father in so many ways and the tears in his eyes are a mixture of unbearable shame and pride. Despite not having seen his son for two weeks, the father can’t bear to watch further and walks away.
I’m a sucker for a happy ending, and it’s only predictable that this movie would have one. But how a happy ending is constructed was never something I thought a lot about. Now, I think I’ve been spoiled. The ending was love-filled without being cheesy. Something I didn’t think could be done. But it can! And it’s one of the best things I’ve experienced in my short movie-watching life. I would love to write out my final favourite scene of the film but even though I’m strictly against giving away movie spoilers or special moments, I wouldn’t be able to do the beauty of this scene justice with words. And I mean that in every literal sense I could think of. Because simply, a picture is worth a thousand words; probably more.