ve the gun from the young policeman and the stabbing, yet in Makhmalbafs version we are left with a question as to what happened. We know that young Makhmalbaf had the knife hidden below the loaf of flat bread, as in real life, but we also know that, in the staged version, the young policeman gave the small white flower to the girl, unlike real life where he never got the opportunity. This scene is Makhmalbafs way of reconciling the two stories that are converging in this single event. Makhmalbaf leaves us with questions; Could a small change, like the flower being given, had made a difference in the outcome in real life? Could the reluctant young Makhmalbaf had changed his mind and found another way? In giving us these questions to grapple with Makhmalbaf makes us question our own past actions and wonder if we have effected others in ways we have not realized.We can neither repeat our past nor leave it behind us, it is something that we have to live with every day of our lives. A Moment of Innocence is Makhmalbafs way of attempting to reconcile his past actions with the way he feels about them now. Makhmalbaf has given us a film, based upon real events, involving real people, and has fictionalized part of it. Because we know that part of the film is the truth we search for it throughout the entire picture. One thing that I found interesting about this film is that I couldnt choose sides. Normally when you watch a film you can empathize with one person or another, in this film there was no clear-cut bad person. Even knowing that the stabbing was what was going to happen, I couldnt choose sides. When you see a documentary it only represents one point of view and you are not driven to choose a side, the only way this film is like a documentary is that it is based upon real events that happened in the not so distant past. A Moment of Innocence could have been called Atoning for the Past as it causes us to question each action we...
