RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Pierre Radulescu It starts like a film noir, a scene of robbery with an absurd outcome, excellently shot, with an incredible rhythm, with guts, and one could expect the movie will go on this way, kind of Quentin Tarantino on the steroids. Actually this starting scene, coming again at the end, is the moment of explosion in the story.Crimson Gold, released in 2003, with Jafar Panahi as director and Abbas Kiarostami as screenwriter; it is the second movie of this tandem that I've watched (the other was The White Balloon). Two films showing a society that rejects the people who don't fit in the canons. In The White Balloon it's the Afghan boy (only there the idea is subtly hidden up to the end). Here in Crimson Gold, it's Hussein, the pizza delivery guy, who is played by a non-professional, Hossain Emadeddin. Like his personage, he is in real life a pizza delivery man. Like his personage, he is under medication for a form of schizophrenia. His performance is remarkable. Looking always like he's carrying all his household with him everywhere he goes, while able exactly this way to induce the feeling that he is his own guy. Silent, quiet, apparently in total selfcontrol, while able exactly this way to communicate to us his terrible tensions that boil in himself and make him a walking time-bomb.As a schizophrenic, Hussein sees the society through his own mirror (and the idea of shooting him so often through the shield of his motorbike is genial). Actually, that shield acts both ways: Hussein is in turn the perfect mirror of the society surrounding him. It is a society sick of the same schizophrenia, an absurd universe where everybody is hostile to all the others, parents are denouncing their children, police arrest anybody for anything, simple people float freely toward petty crime, rich people are surrounded by a richness that is absurd by lack of meaning.Each sequence of the movie calls for a moment of disruption, you cannot stand to such absurdity, you have to explode, and there are small disruptions all along, culminating with the big one, the failed robbery.It's not only about Iran, as many reviewers consider. This film is a metaphor, and a metaphor is universal. The movie is banned in Iran while its director was not allowed to enter US to assist at the screening there. Director Jafar Panahi is banned in his own country and is suspected elsewhere as coming from his own country.The robbery scene that links the beginning and the end of the movie shows a universe that is circular with no way to escape (also in The White Balloon the first and the last scenes are the same). It's an extremely nihilistic movie: there is no superior order (cosmic or divine) to show us the way, to offer us solace, to teach us higher wisdom. The whole universe is a walking time-bomb.

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx In September of 1980, as pretty much the first military operation of the Iran-Iraq war by ground forces, Iraqi forces captured the border post at Shalamcheh. Shalamcheh was later to be the site of the largest battle of the war, Operation Karbala-5. A passing reference to Crimson Gold's main character, Hussein, having been at Shalamcheh is made in the film. So what's quite easy to miss here, for a casual Western viewer, is that protagonist Hussein Emadeddin, sometime pizza deliveryman, is a war veteran. An Iranian viewer would be expecting this anyway; it was a huge war that engulfed the generation that Hussein belongs to. Not that many Iranians will see this movie, all Panahi's films are banned in his homeland. Shalamcheh is a resonant name to Iranians, and now contains a war memorial which many travel to. Part of the battle involved "human waves" which is to say lightly armed men, in large quantities charging the well-fortified Iraqi positions, basically suicide attacks. There are stories during the war of young men, apparently volunteers, charging the minefields, in order to clear them for the more experienced soldiers.The Iran Iraq war was a particularly unpleasant throwback: commentators have compared it to World War One due to the predomination of trench warfare. In both wars for example there was the use of mustard gas, machine gun nests, shelling, and barbed wire. I think it's pretty much implied that Hussein has been a victim of the war. He's been taking cortisone on a long term basis. Due to the copious side effects, you don't do that unless there's something severely amiss, he would have to have a severe long term illness. Prolonged use of cortisone can be prescribed to treat severe lung disorders, I would suggest that Hussein may well have been gassed (hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers were gassed by sulphur mustard during the war, plus mustard was used at Shalamcheh during Operation Karbala-5, on civilian populations as well as Iranian troops). The side effects of long term cortisone use include insomnia irritability, depression, swelling, obesity, diabetes, and depressed immune response. At one point Hussein has to climb four stories to deliver a pizza when a lift is out of order and the tenant won't come down; in the light of his condition, this appears rather more tragic. The character is very easy to sympathise with because, Hussein Emadeddin is played by Hussein Emadeddin, also a pizza deliveryman with severe health problems. There's a lot of realism here.When thinking of post-war art in film, the term noir floats to the surface. Noir developed as an art form, if not necessarily an aesthetic, as a response to the zeitgeist of the Second World War's aftermath. An anonymous individual from the University Of San Diego has put it better than I can: "The historical setting is the contemporary world that has been corrupted and lost its moral certainty. The prevailing cynicism of characters reflects the reality of the atomic bomb, Cold War, totalitarianism, propaganda, Hollywood blacklist, corrupting power of the government and press. World War II fragmented men, caused them to feel adrift, insecure, alienated, a feeling of having "gone soft" and lacking power to control their lives. The liberal movement was in crisis, due to powerful forces of communism and materialism, causing a loss of faith in progress and man's innate goodness." Since the war there's been a crisis for the liberal cause in Iranian society, which is referenced at one point by Hussein's friend Ali, who asks what it was like in (pre-theocratical) times when women walked around naked (without veils). It's clear that there's not much fun in the Iran of this world, in one scene Hussein asks a fifteen-year-old policeman if he's ever had fun, the young chap isn't even sure what the word means, and I think that makes two of them.Despite Hussein having been pretty much left on the scrapheap, rotting in a dingy apartment to the tune of squeaking rats, he's a nice guy, and tries his best to be kind to folk. However, after a series of humiliations, he has had enough and commits a hideous folly. It's a film about injustice that manages to be, at the same time, warm-hearted, staggeringly beautiful and polemical. You can really take Hussein Emadeddin into your heart. Which is rare in a cinematic world where men are often armour plated and hard to love.My respects for a profoundly humane film. Quite ironically it appears that Jafar Panahi was arrested within the last week whilst giving a dinner party at his home, an absurdity that you might think would make a good scene in a Panahi movie.

marinelad Two unbelievable men, true humanists and visionaries have brought their minds together to create Crimson Gold and they have made universal story about social deprivation and humiliation that could be applied in any part of the world. Truly, this is an Iranian film that looks less Iranian than any other I have seen so far. The plot could be placed anywhere in the world where people live their cheerless lives, work for miserable salaries and get humiliated every day. Moreover, Kiarostami's scenario is based upon a true event.Hussein's job is poorly paid pizza delivery and it cannot provide him with enough money to buy simple jewels for his future wife, but can clearly show him that some other people do not have such problems. His customers often have fun with prostitutes, buy modern, expensive jewels from abroad, have parties in luxury apartments and obviously do not have money-related problems while Hussein and his best friend and future brother-in-law are not even allowed to enter the fancy jewels store. Simple man, excellently interpreted by Hossain Emadeddin, suffers quietly and does not share his frustrations with anyone, but in the act of pure despair decides to rob the store and steal the most expensive necklace. Like everything else in his sad life, this action turns the wrong way and does not bring any release but on the contrary, ends with suicide. The robbery is actual beginning of the film and it takes some time to realize that, in the real time, it is the end of the gloomy story as everything that happens later in the film progressively leads to the only possible ending.

Amine Jaber Great script writing, served here by brilliant movie making by one of Iran's major directors. As we follow this character (Hussein) through his day to day life, we start to understand the scope of the film, and we discover new and startling images of Iran.This film is a strong political pamphlet, a vivid critic of the actual political and religious regime in power.The style of the film is very minimalist, and is mostly steady shots, with little editing. But the action and the rhythm of the story comes from what is happening inside the image.A must see for any foreigner who wants to understand what everyday life is in Iran.