Tala va mes

The central theme in Gold & Copper seems to be: What is religion and how does one get close to God? Reza (Behrouz Shaibi) is a young cleric who has come to Tehran from a provincial town with his wife, Zahra, and children in order to study under a famed cleric. However things don't go as planned because very early on in the film he finds out that his wife is suffering from MS. This forces Reza to take on a lot more parental responsibility that he had bargained for, including cooking, washing, taking his kids to school, etc. Though he is initially very upset at missing many of the religious lessons because of his situation, he begins to think that perhaps God is teaching him the true meaning of religion and piety in a different way. Gold and Copper handles the universal issues that it deals with in a very delicate and sensitive way. It is helped greatly by the performance of Negar Javaherian (as Zahra) who is fast becoming one of the greatest Iranian actresses of her generation. The script is very inventive and injects the right amount of humor into what is a very serious subject. Recommended.