The Willow Tree Image
  • Summary: Blind since childhood, Youssef has a devoted wife, loving daughter, and successful university career, but his affliction fills him with secret torment. As if in answer to his prayers, a Paris clinic restores his sight - a miracle that is double-edged. Although this new world of sight and color floods Youssef with ecstasy, it also plunges him into a labyrinth of confusions and temptations. A pretty student begins to eclipse his dowdy, previously invisible wife. In one disturbing scene, he silently watches a subway pickpocket, who fixes him with a look of withering complicity. Eager to claim the lost life he feels he is owed but unable to take the next step, Youssef is inflamed with possibility and paralyzed with egoism. (New Yorker Films) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. 80
    Majid Majidi's exquisite film The Willow Tree"is likely to make a very brief stop in theaters en route to home video, so catch it when and if you can.
  2. Reviewed by: Julia Wallace
    80
    There's very little explicit exposition here; instead, Majidi presents us with a series of glistening tone poems.
  3. Although The Willow Tree occasionally suffers from a surfeit of portentous symbolism, it is ultimately a powerful portrait of a man who gets what he always wanted.

See all 4 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. JaredC.
    10
    One of the best drama movies of the decade. The idea is great, and it is full of imagination and wonder, activities in this film's plot continuously flows with the style of blind men. Expand
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