"[5] To illustrate its point, the film contains ten animated shots, handled by Abdollah Alimorad and Mehdi Samakar, showing, among other things, little green tooth trolls pickaxing holes in a number of teeth.
Kiarostami would again take up this idea of the superiority of a "concocted reality [over] the real thing"[10] in his last educational short, The Chorus (Persian: همسرایان, romanized: Hamsarayan, 1982), where the benefits of the old man's hearing aid mirror the convenience of the father and grandfather's dentures.
Approaching the film from a formalistic angle, Cahiers du cinéma's Laurent Roth is reminded of Georges Franju's Les poussières (1953) by "Kiarostami's unsparing depiction of the devastating effects of the scourge in question.
[13] While Jim Knox of Senses of Cinema agrees with Elena that of all of Kiarostami's instructional shorts Toothache is—along Orderly or Disorderly (Persian: به ترتیب یا بدون ترتیب ؟, romanized: Be tartib ya bedun-e tartib?, 1981)—the one where "the pedagogical intention [...] is most starkly apparent",[14] he, not unlike Dabashi and Roth, also points out "its refusal of generic conventions", although in his eyes the film's stance is an unambiguous affirmation of the virtues of caring for one's teeth which he interprets as an appeal to the Iranian public to care for their health because "[f]or a young revolutionary state, vehemently opposed to both global Blocs, the health of its citizens is one guarantee of combat effectiveness" (strangely enough, he fails to mention the First Gulf War which had broken out just one month prior to the time setting of the film's plot).
Knox thus continues, still in the vein of New Historicism, by opining that "[f]or a theocratic state, the issue assumes a metaphysical significance; the health of the individual derives from adherence to the discipline of a strict moral code", while he stresses at the same time that Toothache is "[p]erhaps surprisingly" the first of Kiarostami's shorts to feature women (albeit in minor roles).