Jameson identifies the use of color in magic realist films to be "the source of a particular pleasure, a fascination" (p. 130), and what is most immediately striking about Gabbeh is indeed its bold use of largely primary colors. All the women depicted in the nomadic Iranian tribe wear colorful robes, and the elderly woman and the young woman, Gabbeh, are explicitly linked by the similar bright blue robes they wear. A good deal of attention is devoted to the process of gathering and boiling flowers to make dye, and then of threading the colorful yarns into the gabbeh that the women weave to tell the stori

Color as a heightened presence is thus found throughout the film. It gains a more explicit and even magical purpose in two scenes involving Gabbeh’s uncle. In the first, the uncle gives an impromptu lesson to some itinerant school children. He points to red and yellow flowers, and magically, they appear in his hands. The same for green grass. He points to the blue sky, and his hand becomes blue, to the blue water and his hand drips blue, to the yellow sun, and his hand becomes yellow. The second scene adds meaning to the first. The uncle says "Life is color!" and a montage follows: "Love is color," "Man is color," "Woman is color," "Child is color," and finally "Death is…" followed by a shot of black yarn that is soon woven into the grandmother’s gabbeh to tell the story of the dead sister. The film’s complicated, many-layered dealings with color as a thematic element certainly satisfy Jameson’s requirement in that area.

Jameson also singles out as common to magic realist films a specific approach to the historical aspect. He says magic realist films present a history full of gaps and holes that are not explained. A prior knowledge of the historical setting is assumed, and historical exposition is almost entirely withheld. In Gabbeh, the viewer is given no insight into the precise historical era of the film, or the social or political backdrop. And yet the film is steeped in historicity – obsessed with it, in fact â

Some topics in this essay:
Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s, Fredric Jameson, realist films, magic realist films, magic realist, magic realism, jameson identifies, common magic realist, nascent capitalist, , magic realism film, gabbeh exemplifies, woman woman, films jameson, 136 gabbeh, realism film,