A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

The gender feminine is so fair that it knows how to find the good in the bad and to make us block-out everything that's unethical, leaving visible an innocent yet powerful life-force. Ana Lily Amirpour's "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" is an example of how classy a situation of sheer-conflict can look on the screen and how those conflicting situations can be resolved with just the right amount of letting go.

The setting is that of a fictitious town in Iran, Bad City. There is a boy Arash (Arash Marandi) who is in the movie to take care of his addict father and would do pretty much anything to pull through this phase of his, given the right situation. But he is not what's really the interesting character in the story. That is  'The Girl' (Sheila Vand) - a classic reverberation of the "man with no name" if there was any. And she is plain awesome. There is charm in each and every move she makes- from the seductive solo dance as she prepares to go out at night to the strolls on the streets she makes on a skate-board to even when she is buying vegetables !! Why does she chase those midnight hours is something the synopses give up too easily but I wouldn't. Of course the two opposites will attract at some point of time in the movie but the intensity with which they do forces me to steal the internet meme- "A lot better love-story than Twilight".

Coming to art behind the movie, the best thing would be to say that it is as ambitious and as aspiring it can get. When you make your first ever movie, you put your everything in it- whatever you have learnt or acquired from your surroundings and whatever you have created on your own. Ana Lily Amirpour does exactly that leaving us with a black and white feature of lights and shadows.  And this is complemented by a soundtrack which keeps the movie cool and cold at the same time creating an atmosphere for a film that doesn't believe in speaking but showing.

The movie is a visual delight, most beautiful when it is most sensuous and  most frigid when it is most sinful. It doesn't worry over its scenes dragging sometimes but compensates for it gloriously with stunning sequences right after them. And isn't that what brave-cinema always does?

Bandwidth Verdict: The movie sums up in 100 minutes what others can't do in 609. To know what I am talking about, watch it now.