Change Your Image
HereNoEvil
Reviews
Arranged (2007)
Sweet movie, but with major flaws in some plot elements and characters
Others have commented on this film's many assets and fewer flaws, many of which I agree with. Two flaws that have not been touched upon continue to bother me days after seeing the film. Both may be considered SPOILERS, though if I had known of them before seeing the film, it would not have reduced my enjoyment.
First flaw: After Nasira's Muslim faith becomes an issue for the children in the classroom, Rochel arranges, with Nasira's consent, a "Unity Circle" in the classroom to teach the children about the problem of labeling. The children get to choose a word that they think best describes them, hold the word up in front of them, and then in turn explain why it describes them. After each explanation, the other kids vote on whether that boy or girl should be allowed to stay in the circle. That works well enough for the first 2 or 3 kids, but then a boy is expelled from the circle for choosing "nasty" to describe himself. The kids agree that only after revising his word to something acceptable would the boy be allowed back into the circle. Rochel and Nasira look approvingly at each other at this turn of events as if some important lesson in tolerance has been taught and learned here, but what lesson is that? That we get to decide what labels are OK for others? What would have been unacceptable grounds for being cast out of the circle? If an African-American child had chosen "Black" to describe herself, would it have been OK to expel her, and to readmit her only if she revised her descriptor to something more acceptable to the group, like "White"? Would "Jewish" or "Muslim" have been acceptable grounds for being cast out? These questions are never explored, and so the point of this intended major exercise in tolerance was lost on me.
The second flaw I want to call attention to is the writing of the Principal's character. Rather early in the film, she has the two women in her office. She bemoans the fact that such fine teachers will be lost to students after just a year or two because they'll get married and start having children, and she tries to persuade them to modernize, even to update their wardrobes. All that makes sense in the context of the rest of her character, but not what she does next, which is to pull a roll of money out of her purse and offer to fund their shopping expedition. (As if a principal would carry a roll of money in her purse, anyway.) The rest of the conversation is in character. The money offer is not. Further (SPOILER ALERT), the Principal is in fact correct that when the women marry and have babies within the next year, it is, as she said, a substantial waste of the women's training, certainly from the institutional perspective of the school and the government, and perhaps also from the perspective of the two women.