Stray Men Themes

The bottom line: filmmaking is expensive, and therefore, a film must be efficient in its conveyance of story. Classical Hollywood cinema depends on the idea that cinema is deliberate, pointed, driven quickly through a linear narrative by carefully orchestrated action and plot devices. Transitions are smooth and fast paced, dialogue is pithy and heavily directed, not one second wasted on narrative “blank space”. But what happens to this model when the story a film strives to tell is a story not of action but of wandering? This question is raised by Iranian filmmaker Marzieh Meshkini in her 2004 film Stray Dogs. In order to tell this gripping tale of two Afghani children living on the streets of Kabul, Meshkini employs some tools of conventional cinema such as symbolism and allusion, but deliberately manipulates the pace of her film, creating a …show more content…
Here, they decide on the details of their final attempt at robbery, and engage in a sequence almost identical to the end of De Sica’s film. However, Zahed and Gol-Ghotai’s narrative takes a different turn than that of De Sica’s Bruno and Antonio. Zahed acts as the active thief (Antonio) and Gol-Ghotai as his accomplice (Bruno). Aided by Gol-Ghotai’s screaming “thief!”, Zahed is quickly swarmed and apprehended for this theft. Unlike in Bicycle Thieves, however, Zahed is not liberated out of pity and responsibility to his dependent sister, serving as an analogous relationship to that of Antonio and his son Bruno. Instead, Zahed alone is arrested, leaving Gol-Ghotai behind. Despite his desperate attempts to take her with him, she is ignored by the crowd as Zahed gets carried away to prison. Using deliberate allusion, Meshkini has further developed the neglectful, unorganized nature of the society that has abandoned and mistreated our stray