Oh To Be an Ostrich

One of the things I do after watching movies in SignsNWonders is bing (no google here. O_o) the movie so I get characters' names down pat for when I blab about them. When I binged The Song of Sparrows, I naturally stumbled across a few summaries of the film.

 Practically each one of those summaries talked about a dad who failed, got fired, and started losing sight of his family and the real values in life because of it. And during the discussion after the film last night many of us talked about Karim, the father and protagonist of the film doing just that.

Now before I say that's all wrong, I will agree that I do think Karim began to lose sight of his some of his original priorities.

But I didn't feel like Karim came across that way. I don't think Karim ever became oblivious of his family's real needs, but rather took that vision to the extreme out of fear. I think most of Karim's quirks after the stability of a -ostrich rancher- job arise out of fear for himself, his future, but more importantly his family.

Karim ventures into the city (or the world in symbolic correlation) originally for his daughter's hearing aid to be fixed, only to find he has to conjure up the money for a new one. As he's leaving the city, he stumbles upon a pick-up job that can supplement for his lack of income after being fired.

Working in the city provides Karim with a lot of eye openers, knowledge, money, and things. Karim starts bringing home whatever he thinks might be useful for his family, whether his family needs it right now or not. Essentially he becomes a hoarder, a busy body, and selfish about whatever he works to bring home.

In the meantime, Karim's children are excited about the things their dad brings home, but Karim's wife, Narges, sees Karim is losing it. Karim also becomes more harsh as a father, discouraging his son's dreams of becoming a millionaire off selling fish, and even slapping his daughter when the kids get together on the roadside to try and make money selling flowers. I get the impression that Karim is worried about the safety of his children, a worry that has developed on the back of the anxiety from being fired.

Now, bouncing back to fear, I see Karim's stern paternal methods in regards to his son's dreams as Karim knowing what it's like to lose a dream and not wanting his son to have to feel that, as well as perhaps anger that his son has a dream and is trying with all he has to make it areality, something Karim is frankly terrible at doing.

Karim wants the best for his family, and I think that bringing more and more stuff home is Karim's sort of self-gratifying way of somewhat accomplishing the best he can at the moment for his family. Karim is afraid that losing his job mean's he won't be able to obtain the best for his family and keep them happy, but in bringing home all the stuff he can, he's trying to get the slightest grasp he can of keeping his family happy [even if he is very wrong in thinking this].

Among the vast amount of symbolism in this movie, the most striking for me was probably when the group of boys (including Karim's son) finally got their fish only to have the bucket the fish were in break and spill everywhere.

To me, this was symbolic of Karim's newly hatched dream that he'd been fostering for the duration between his employment and his accident shattering and needing to be let go.
It also struck as symbolic in Karim's hold on his children: he needed to let them fly too, he couldn't force safety on them and hold them back from where they need to go.

And last but not least, the runaway ostrich reminded me symbolically of Karim himself. The ostrich decided to take a gander throughout the world and realized it's better to be where there are ostriches who love and support it than running around laying eggs that get smashed and eaten all the time. When the ostrich came home at the end, so did Karim.

Because Ostrich racing is real, and I was really hoping that's where this movie was going at first.