The Song of Sparrows and Other Quiet Things

The Song of Sparrows isn’t just about survival. It’s about noticing. About how life shifts when we stop running and start seeing.

On paper, it’s a simple story — Karim, a man working at an ostrich farm, loses his job and tries to keep things afloat for his family. But Majid Majidi doesn’t tell stories to give us answers. He paints them. Layer by layer, like sunlight falling slowly on dust.

This film is a quiet, poetic meditation on effort, surrender, and the unseen resilience that lives inside everyday people.

Karim is a fixer. The kind of man who doesn’t sit and sulk. Something breaks — he needs to fix it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a hearing aid, a water tank, or even a moment — he’s the type who believes motion is love. That doing means caring. That if he just works hard enough, nothing will fall apart. So when he loses his job, he doesn’t spiral. He jumps back on his bike, hustles to the city, drives for people, lies a little, limps in the end, but never stops.

He’s the ostrich. That metaphor isn’t subtle, and it isn’t meant to be. Ostriches don’t fly. They’re not built for skies. They run. Bold, fast, with purpose.

That’s Karim. He’s not trying to soar above his problems. He’s charging through them, like he always has. It’s not flight. But it’s still movement. Still strength.

But here’s where Majidi gently changes the rhythm — fixing everything becomes Karim’s obsession. His entire being is built on that. And slowly, without him noticing, he becomes deaf to beauty. To softness. To his own home.

And that’s where the hearing aid metaphor quietly settles in. He’s not just fixing his daughter’s hearing — he’s the one who has stopped listening. Earlier in the film, when his daughter asks if she can draw on an egg, he just brushes her off. Turns deaf to her voice, to her world. But later, when she lies about fixing her hearing aid with new battery, he doesn’t scold her or insist. Even during that moment, he calls her with his hands. Gently. When she loses the cap of the ointment.

And for the first time, we see him truly reach out — not just with words, but with touch, presence, patience. That scene, brief as it is, feels like their first real conversation between them.

His wife, meanwhile, holds the family like a quiet wall — strong, still, unnoticed. She doesn’t complain, she organizes. Feeds, mends, supports. She’s the calm in his chaos.

His daughter creates a world of colour with her pencils — fields that aren’t grey, trees that aren’t broken. Her art isn’t just art. It’s a mirror. It’s what the world could be, not what it is. That quiet hope seeps into the cracks of the film.

His son, the golden fish dreamer. Trying to raise fish in dirty water — it sounds foolish, even impossible. But that’s what hope is, right, Believing something can thrive where it logically shouldn’t. And that’s how kids are.

And all this while, sparrows flutter around the edges of the frame. We see them. Karim doesn’t. Because when you’re always in motion, beauty blurs. Grief gets buried. Joy becomes background noise. It takes him breaking — literally and emotionally — to finally stop. And when he does, when he finally lets go of the fixing, the running, the chasing — that’s when the sparrows appear to him too.

But they were always there.

That’s Majidi’s gift. He doesn’t deliver metaphors with fanfare. He places them like breadcrumbs. A little girl’s drawing. A runaway ostrich. None of it screams. But it all speaks — if you listen.

Karim’s journey isn’t about solving anything. He doesn’t suddenly become a hero. There’s no grand ending. Just… a shift. A soft beautiful return. He comes home — not just to his house, but to the people in it. To himself.

The Song of Sparrows doesn’t ask for your attention. It asks for your stillness. It reminds us to look around. The beauty is already here. We just forgot to see it.