Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

sharky_55 A Moment of Innocence, or The Bread and the Flower Pot, closely recalls fellow Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up, which also sough to recapture real life with its own dramatic conviction. In his own retelling of the story of a politically charged attempt to disarm and take a policeman's gun in his youth, Mohsen Makhmalbaf has created something so unique and so layered that it at first baffles the mind. Makhmalbaf wields the camera with an intent to retell faithfully and truthfully, in true Cinéma vérité style - his stylistic choices represent a documentary that cannot tell lies, and yet it becomes increasingly unreliable. In once scene, he converses with the young actor who will play him in the car in long take, talking about everything from future ambitions to romantic crushes, and it puts on a mask of genuineness. They approach his cousin's household to ask if her daughter will play a part in the film. As the girl goes to serve tea to the young actor, she suddenly whispers to him as if he has Mohsen himself, and they are planning the events that will lead to the fateful stabbing. It has suddenly becomes a moment of artifice without any stylistic or directorial indication. Another technique that Makhmalbaf plays with is one that Kiarostami also used in his 1999 film, The Wind Will Carry Us. While the camera films in wide shot and the characters walk further and further away, the sound levels do not adjust accordingly and realistically, but remain in our ears, as if they were right here next to us. Such a technique throws our objectivity up into the air; surely this must have been dubbed later? And near the end of the film Makhmalbaf will slowly add a musical soundtrack to dramatise the climatic encounter, and replace the still long takes with more dynamic follow shots and closeups. One thing that remains abundantly clear however is the amateur nature of the young actors.This tension is what makes the film tick. You see, both Makhmalbaf and the policeman seem to have entirely different accounts of what happened 20 years ago, and slowly they begin to realise this as they are in the process of recapturing those events. The policeman wants a tall, handsome young actor to portray him, and sulks when he does not get his way. He vigorously coaches the kid on how to properly play himself, and freely interrupts the filming process to criticise and adjust (and Makhmalbaf also freely layers perspectives of the camera onto each other). And yet, the artifice does shine through. Twice, the policeman storms off, the second after that tumultuous discovery that the 20 years of longing for the girl had been all for nothing, a lie to keep him awake. Makhmalbaf does not attempt to document these emotions in closeup, yet he is also eager to use the soundtrack to imitate the reaction. And he does not relent when he has the actors right in front of him; the policeman feigning suicidal thoughts after the discovery, and the young Mohsen breaking into tears and refusing to commit the violence of the past.This becomes the key to that breathtaking final freeze frame. Makhmalbaf seeks to recreate the truth, but has become aware of the impossibility of filming an objective, unbiased version of the past. That politically charged activist youth is no more, and the post-revolution mindset becomes clear in the young actor's ideals of saving mankind, but not through violence. And in the young policeman, who does not want to wield the gun to shoot, even if both are just artificial constructs. So they instead offer the bread and the flower pot, a symbolic blossoming of the new generation, and a testament to the ability of film to be able to reconcile and transform the reality of these weary old men.

Gloede_The_Saint When the director Mohsen Makhmalbaf was 17 he stabbed a policeman, now that policeman has come to him to ask for an acting job. The work begins to reconstruct the actual incident and they both work on picking their younger selves. However the actors who are to play them are almost identical in their personality.In many ways it's comparable to the style of Jean-Luc Godard. It sets up absurd situations and plays with reality, even within the films own reality. The film is indeed an odd mix. It's basically about it's own creation. And some parts, as the actual incident happened in real life. Though many elements are played for laughs and could be classified as a comedy it separates from Godard in one major point. Instead of having sarcasm under it's surface we will her find humanity and suffering.In full it's a look at Irans culture and the old and the new generations view of violence and what it takes to be good. It's artistic style helps to enhance not only the absurdity but also the isolation that can be found in this society. A film about progress and memories that is sure to evoke emotions.

jacques_05 Makhmalbaf has arguably created one of the MOST interesting films I have seen in my entire life. Casting young men unexperienced in acting to portray himself and the policemen he stabbed when he was 17, the director separates himself and his young self from the policemen and his; they separately train the actors portraying themselves 20 years earlier during an anti-Shah demonstration.Culminating in the showdown between the young actors, the truths behind the situation unbeknownst to both director and policemen become evident. An extremely powerful film, and I advise you to stop at nothing to view it.

allyjack (WARNING - CONTAINS MILD SPOILER)The film ultimately freezes on the pivotal moment: the girl (a decoy, although the policeman didn't know it and had interpreted her proximity as romantic interest) in the middle; the soldier holding out the flower he wanted to give her; the young Makhmalbaf holding out the bread under which is shielded the knife with which the policeman was stabbed. An image of classic composition, frozen but alive with movement; the simplicity of the bread and the plant resonating against our knowledge of the underlying political tension (the young Makhmalbaf a radical protesting against the Shah; in one scene he and the girl talk idyllically of serving as parents to six billion people and of planting flowers in Africa).The film has a distinct melancholy - the adult policeman has a sense of wastage about the 20 years since then; finicky about his role in the film; although the theme of recreating old selves through the young actors has a strong undercurrent of renewal and redemption. And of course the film is about cinema itself, with the distinction between the filmmaking process and the film within the film, and between actors and directors, often provocatively unclear - this notion, amply explored in other works, is not where the film's greatest value lies specifically, although the restrained intertwining of cinema, politics, self-renewal and gentle anecdote is intriguing in this unfamiliar context.