Amir Naderi’s memoir of his boyhood in Iran, The Runner is a remarkable feat, an objective, subjective and dedicated film. The Illiterate Streets, shot from his Kid’s perspective, Naderi uses the disciplined technique of a mature artist to celebrate a child’s newly crafted vision of his own hardscrabble world.
after a long time, “The Runner” Opens on Fridays for a two-week run at Manhattan Film Forum, It was released theatrically in the United States in 1991. Crisply restored with improved subtitles, the film is no less timeless.
Eleven-year-old Amilo (Madjid Niroumand) fishes beer bottles from the harbor, sells ice water at the market and continues his shoe shine business. A boy in a café on the wharf. His life includes dealing with bullies and dealing with deadbeat customers and their false accusations. Looking around, Amiro uses his earnings to buy old magazines with pictures of planes and races with his kids in his spare time.
The film’s self-owned young star, whom Naderi found modeling in sports magazines, inspired comparisons to neorealist child actors in “Shoe Shine” and “Bicycle Thief.” Naderi’s technique is equally noteworthy. “The Runner” is spectacularly slim and very well constructed. Sound design is intentional. In most cases, the placement of the camera at the height of the Amiro is accurate. Editing is ingenious. It was filmed during the war between Iraq and Iran, and it was impossible to shoot in the southern port of Abadan, Naderi’s hometown. Instead, “The Runner” seamlessly combines locations in nearly a dozen cities. (Naderi cites Orson Welles’ geographic patchwork “Othello” as a precedent.)
Naderi, now 76, is a pioneer of Iran’s new wave, having completed half a dozen works before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “The Runner” was produced by the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Youth, the same progressive organization that funded Abbas Kiarostami’s early films. Completed in 1984, it was the first Iranian film to receive international attention and was screened at the Venice Film Festival the following year. (Naderi, who left Iran in the 1990s, lived in New York for 10 years before moving to Japan and most recently to Italy. Niromand, who fled Iran at the age of 16, is the director of the recent short documentary, A Boy’s Own Story. ), grew up to be a university administrator in Costa Mesa, California. )
New York Times critic Stephen Holden, who reviewed “The Runner” when it was released here in 1991, used Amiro’s eyes to describe “the dingy sunsets of Abadan, the polluted harbor waters, the dusty praised the film for finding “the beauty and wonder, as well as the filthiness of the rail depot.” In fact, the film naturalizes the urban environment. The light is often dazzling. The array of bottles floating in the port is bewitching. While acknowledging that every object in Amiro’s world has a price, “The Runner” has a subtle fairytale quality. Amiro lives alone in an unmanned tanker. She has no politics and no religion — neither do women (probably for post-revolutionary convenience). The commitment to individual freedom seems absolute.
Paradoxically to the end, “The Runner” concludes with a near-silent mayhem of fire and ice, with a sense of triumph based on the realization that a grown-up Amiro made this movie.
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At the Film Forum in Manhattan until November 10th. filmforum.org.