We will discuss on the
use of cinematography, the genres, and how effective they are. Moreover, we
will take aim at the characters, action, scheme and their atmosphere created,
and how these films aimed their target
audience locally and internationally.
Both films are made by
two different directors. No One knows about
Persian Cats produced in 2009 by male director named Bahman Ghobadi. Under the Skin of the City directed by a
female director named Rakhshan Bani-Etemad. No
One knows about Persian Cats is
an underground film produced without any permission from the Ministry of Islamic
Guidance. No One Knows about Persian Cats, shows the struggle of a group of Indie-Rock, Jazz, New-metal and
Rap bands, and the challenges they confronted in arranging preparation,
underground concerts or escaping the censorship and over protector guard of the
Islamic authorities. Through every corner and under tunnel of the streets of
Tehran, Ghobadi’s camera stayed on them to show where these young artists
create their music.
The film
start two reverse top shots demonstrating
two blinks of the eyes of an injured young man from whose standpoint the camera
shows the running lights of a hospital ceiling in a disorienting manner. The
interesting part of this scene it is also the last scene of the movie. The
person appeared in this named Ashkan. Although the story of the film is
fictional, the people or actors of the film, except for the professional actor
Hamed Behdad who plays the role of Nader, are real and use their own names in
the film. Most of the events that are depicted in the film have actually taken
place, one way or the other, but not necessarily in that sequence and not
exactly to the same people or characters. Knowing these factors is important in
order to understand, therefore investigate, the connection between the viewer
and the material of the film. This becomes more important in regard to
Ghobadi’s style that constantly moves between the self-reflexive documentary
and the fictional narrative film. This notion in the film is apparent in the
way in which he has used the camera, the various rhythms in editing, and the
selection of locations and with his deliberate casting of largely non-actor
real-life musicians.
In the very
first frame of the film we see the ceiling
with the sharp white fluorescent lamps moving across the frame that look like white
markings on a road at first, until you realise that the camera is actually
facing upwards. The sound that we hear is more like the muted and unclear
breathing sound that one can hear from under the water or over a sealed barrier.
The next shot is the reverse angle, this time ran out of focus top shot,
showing a young man’s bloody face, covered with an oxygen masque on an
emergency bed-on-wheels moving through what seems like a hospital corridor,
while another hand with a large piece of gauze is holding one side of his head.
We shall meet him again. But Ghobadi leaves his viewer with this bleak image
along with that eerie sound of breathing to make a jump cut to another
location. The second sequence is located in a dimly lit sound studio. the
political and philosophic metaphor or allegory that the film has to offer.
It is only
after this information has been given that we finally see the opening credits
running over the screen. The credits are set to the song that Ghobadi himself
was recording in that studio. The song, as I mentioned, is in Kurdish,
Ghobadi’s native tongue. It is called “The Youth” or “Jouwani”. Persian Cats[4] is not Ghobadi’s first film on the
subject of music or musicians. His Marooned in Iraq (aka The Songs of My Motherland,
2002) and Half Moon (aka Nive Mang, 2006)
are all based on a quest for music and musicians, restoring players and singers
(particularly female singers), and these are embraced as the central theme of
these films. In an interview in 2007, when questioned why music and musicians
are the central part of these two films, Ghobadi answers that:
“If I had not turned to be a filmmaker, I would have been a
musician. I love music. I make film with music[…].Music makes me dream. It
strengthens my imagination and creativity. I can travel with music. I close my
eyes and I travel with music all over the world. Stories come to me one after
the other[…].In the next two years I am going to begin recording and composing
music.”
What
follows the title sequence is a long shot of a street in Tehran with the tower
of a prison looming over the street. Ahskan, the young man whose face we saw at
the opening sequence, with a small bag in hand is crossing the busy street.
This is cut by another long shot of the Tehran skyline, over a rooftop where
the silhouette of a couple against the dying light of sunset is visible.
Nothing but the far away shadows of TV antennas soars across the free and empty
sky. There is no music played here, only the tranquil ambient location sound.
It is only through the next sequence that we learn, again within a course of a
conversation between a young girl, Negar, who introduces herself as “Negar &
Ashkan” with the same Babak—sound engineer—that Ashkan, now freed after 21 days
of imprisonment, was apparently among 250 other people who were arrested in an
underground concert. This is a fact that had actually happened to Ashkan Kusha
in real life. His crime: playing music! Once again, Ghobadi mixes his narrative
with documenting the real and reality. Another factual reality is that Ahskan
Kusha and Negar Shaghaghi, were invited to perform in a music festival in
Manchester. Ghobadi weaves that into the scenario of his underground film. The
fiction that he adds for the narrative of his film is Negar and Ashkan’s quest
to put together a band for the upcoming festival and another underground
concert before they leave their country for good.
Babak, the
sound engineer who also is a member of a jazz band introduces Negar to Nader, a
man of all tricks. Through Nader, these two young musicians get to meet some
other underground music groups who, just like them, are in love with music but
have hidden their art in the many infernos of Tehran. Nader persuades them to
arrange a concert before leaving Iran while helping them at the same time to
meet a counterfeiter who is supposed to get Ashkan a passport and the entire
band, the visas for their European tour. Along them and in their quest the
viewer gets to see and hear different musicians and musics in the underground
scene of Tehran of 2008-2009, jazz bands, Indi-rock bands, rap artists, folk
musicians, etc. etc. One major factor connects all of these musicians together,
although they practice different types f music. And that is fear. Fear from the
government, from being found, from being arrested, from the prison, from the
silence.
Every time
the young couple meets a group, we travel with them a few flights of stairs, spiralling
down below into dark tunnels, passage ways and corridors into some underground
rehearsal space of which there are many. One, for instance, is a made up space
with egg cartons, one put together with the excess material from a construction
site, one in a cow shed among hay stacks and cow dung, another in the basement
of a house with half acoustic walls, but all illegal spaces! In a conversation
between Negar and Babak we find out that the state TV has actually produced a
programme condemning the underground music scene of Iran calling them “Satan
worshipers who drink blood”, which in so many words bring them down to the
level of the subhuman. Within the structure of the Islamic Republic
“committing” underground music—and I deliberately use the term committing with regard to the true sense of the
term as a transitive verb suggesting the weight of a crime—and distributing
illegal music are both considered to be crimes. Therefore, these people are
criminals. The music of these underground rock bands is stamped as “Satanic”,
therefore inferior, by the government[6]. Accepting this as the
standpoint of the establishment and the state and assuming that the state has
the interest of its subjects in mind—although in this case it is quite
difficult to entertain such a position even hypothetically—Ghobadi, sets out to
follow the rebel, thecriminal as it were, from the very beginning of
his film while he, himself is committing a crime[7]! Following Ashkan, who
has just come out of prison, and regardless of the looming watchtower of the
prison, Ghobadi moves towards knowing the criminal in becoming one. Because
otherwise, his showing will not gain depth, and therefore perspective, to put
the “music” in the socio-political context of “identity discourse” within the
body of a regime, like the Islamic Republic. It is apparent that the state
rhetoric—established trough its media and ideology—situates the “presupposed
subject” (i.e. the criminal musician) as not “another human being with a rich
inner life filled with personal stories which are self-narrated in order to
acquire a meaningful experience of life, since such a person cannot ultimately
be an enemy. ‘An enemy is someone whose story you have not heard.’ [8] […] The ultimate criminal is thus allowed to present
himself as the ultimate victim.” [9] Once the suspect is removed from its “human” position, it
is easy to deprive “it” of its human rights! The terror, therefore, is
legitimate. Politics of fear “focuses on defence from potential victimisation
or harassment”. [10] The rubric under which the Islamic Republic functions is
that of defending and protecting its subjects from any contamination from the
blasphemous West! Therefore as Zizek says, its immediate justification is in
avoiding victimisation. This also justifies its many acts of implementation of
oppression, ambushing concerts and parties, arresting musicians for practicing
Indie-Rock or Rap music, etc. etc. Understanding this will make the mechanism
of the fear that pushes these artists to go underground more tangible for an
audience that has always lived outside such dynamics. This will also shed light
on the difference between the Iranian underground music scene and what in the
West one may think of an underground music movement. In most Western cultures,
underground music is not necessarily illegal or occasion for arrest and
imprisonment. But in Iran, Ghobadi himself attests to the fact that “like the
underground music gangs, I have to make my underground film.” [11]
Dying
for the Luck of Your Dark Hair[12]
It is the
music that situates, sets and composes the rhythm of the editing. This is
particularly true in case of music videos in Persian Cats. Whenever a particular band or artist is
signing a number, Ghobadi changes the structure of the film and transforms it
into the music video style. Suddenly the rhythm in editing and camera angles
leave the narrative sequence to enter a visual space that works like a blade
slashing the smooth movement of the celluloid as it were, to create a rhythm of
its own. One of the best examples of this is when Ghobadi features “The
Difference” (aka Ekhtelaf) [13] by “Hichkas”, with the singer and songwriter Soroush
Lashkari, composer and musician, Mahdyar Aghajani. We see them first in their
rehearsal session on the top floor of the skeleton of a building under
construction (yet another ‘secret’ rehearsal space!) when Nader (the man who
stitches all the pieces of this collage together) goes to visit Soroush in hope
of asking him to join Ashkan’s group to accompany them abroad in their European
concert. Sourush, answering in the negative makes it clear that he belongs to
Tehran and he has to “rap” in Farsi. He then explains that he is recording a
music video and wants to catch the sunlight before sunset. And that is when
Ghobadi’s camera leaves the narrative and enters the space where this music of
absolute revolt against all that Tehran encapsulates, commences.
The
sequence of “Ekhtelaf” by Hichkas begins with a base that is nuanced with
silence. The music is written in such a way that there is always a bar of
silence in between each melodic bar. When the melodic bars are played, the
shaky frame is a hand-held shot and when the silent bars come, there is cut to
black frame. The sequence is established first with long shots of Tehran
skylines, Tehran streets and gradually medium shots of people of Tehran on the
streets. The rhythm and speed of editing pick up in correspondence with the
subject of the “Rap” lyrics[14]. But
Sourush’s song seals his point of view as an artist and says it all, both for
him as well as, perhaps, Ghobadi’s film. Sourush’s lyrics, and I quote
extensively, read as follows:
This is Tehran,
A city where everything you see provokes you
Provokes your spirit in the dumpster
until it prevails that you are not a human but a piece of trash
Here every one is a wolf.
You want to be a lamb? Let me
enlighten you a bit!
This is Tehran, god-dam-it, it’s no
joke!
There is no flower or popsicles!
This is a jungle; eat before you are
eaten!
Here, folks are half oppressed half
wild,
Class differences are extreme.
It wounds and mars the spirit of
people
Side by side the poor and the wealthy,
jammed in a taxi,
None are willing to pay the cabbie
The truth is clear!
Don’t turn a blind eye,
I’ll make it more clear, stay and
don’t give in:
Oh God! Wake up! I have years of
talking to do,
Hey get up, get up,
Don’t get upset of my deeds
You’ve seen nothing! This is just the
beginning.
Oh God! Get up, I, a piece of trash,
need to talk to you
The peddler with his cart stands by a
Mercedes
His whole life and the cart together,
is just a tip for the Mercedes,
You and I and him were all a part of a united drop!
Now observe in between us the gap
The gravity is not the reason for
earth’s rotation
It’s the money that runs the earth,
isn’t it fun!
These days, there is first money then
the god!
For all; the master, the farmer, the
village keeper.
If a kid wants to play with an orphan,
his father will forbid him,
Why? The orphan wears dirty clothes,
his only clothes!
Oh yeah! We are all aware of these
misfortunes,
Even the angels will not cross these
terrains to save us from this fortune!
We don’t need help, Just a drop of
tear is enough for us!
How come the sick one understood me?
I didn’t finish what I was saying, I
gave up! Come back I am not finished!
Oh God! Wake up! I have years of
talking to do
Hey get up, get up,
Don’t get upset of my deeds
You’ve seen nothing! This is just the
beginning.
Oh God! Get up, I, a piece of trash,
need to talk to you
Have you ever been in love with a
girl?
I want to talk, let’s be blunt?
You tell yourself this is it, a
historic love!
Stop dreaming, she is with a rich kid!
Remember that he is the other,
Leave every thing behind,
You see all those around you as
nothing
And the other, as old as you, is
riding a care, when God sniggers as you!
Then you pray with bitterness that one
day you want to be rich and have a blast!
Don’t pray! It won’t do anything, no
one will understand you!
You wanna’ fall asleep? Come see the
nightmare awaken!
Let’s curse this world together!
You have to be blind not to see the
vanity everywhere,
On the sidewalks, not to see poverty
and prostitution!
God, get up! A piece of trash wants to
talk to you!
What if even you think whether it is worth it to
listen to me?!
Oh God! Wake up! I have years of
talking to do
Hey get up, get up,
Don’t get upset of my deeds
You’ve seen nothing! This is just the
beginning.
Oh God! Get up, I, a piece of trash,
need to talk to you![15]
By the time
the music ends we have seen all the nasty and unpleasant realities of Tehran,
the paradoxical city of polar contrasts. Considering that the film is entirely
filmed in Tehran—the first urban film that Ghobadi has ever made—this song,
that addresses the city directly, somehow finds an important place in the body
of this film. Nezamedin Kiaie, the sound engineer of the film (who is one of
the most established and well-known sound engineers in Iranian film industry)
in the “Special Features” of the DVD suggests that Bahman Ghobadi has paid a
tribute to Iran in Persian Cats. He believes that
“you see Iran in this film, all of it…, with its people; with its
tangible people…. If there are images that may not be pleasant for some, these
are the images that exist. They are in front of our eyes everyday. We may have
normalised them for ourselves or we may turn a blind eye to them. But when we
see them on film we will gain a deeper look. We all must be responsible for
each and every frame that we see here.”
I
Am Standing, Why Are You Sat! [16]
Between the
two book-ended, parenthetic marks of life and death, in the liminal space of
the last breath at the centre of a crossroad that leads to dead-ends, the
impossibility of telling writes itself palpably in shapes beyond the conscious
attempts of creation. Here a distinction needs to be made between truth and
truthfulness, real and reality, between the personal experience of these
artists and the factual events that had happened to them. Zizek, arguing the
reliability of a victim of a traumatic event mentions this important fact that
at the core of the narrative of trauma there is “confusion” and
“inconsistency.” Questioning the position of the victim he says
“if the victim were able to report on her painful and humiliating
experience in a clear manner, with all the data arranged in a consistent order,
this very quality would make us suspicious of its truth. The problem here is
part of the solution: the very factual deficiencies of the traumatised
subject’s report on her experience bear witness to the truthfulness of her
report, since they signal that the reported content ‘contaminated’ the manner
of reporting it.”
In Persian Cats, the
reality of the story takes place in the music that, in turn, is the crux, the
occasion, the excuse and the raison d’être of the film. As a line in the lyric
of one of the “New-metal” band’s songs of the film says, “dreaming is my
reality” ![18]
That is,
indeed, why Bahman Ghobadi enters the under-world and adopts the ways in which
the underground music finds its way of surviving the oppressive policing
presence of the state. As a traumatised filmmaker whose last film was banned,
who did not receive any permission to make his next film, Ghobadi assimilates
with the traumatised musicians of the infernos of Tehran in order to tell his
story through theirs. And in turn they tell theirs through his. This, I argue
and borrowing from literature, is writing against death. This is the space
within which the music of revolt and the attempt to find freedom, when freedom
is the last breath of a singer, a note on the line of a music bar, the
vibration of the string of a guitar or the words of a lyricist. That is the
muted breath that the opening sequence ofPersian Cats begins and ends with. That is the last
breath that Bahman Ghobadi took before he left his homeland for as long as it
is controlled by the tyranny of an autocratic fundamentalist religious regime.
In 17 sessions of filming with a very small team, on the back of a few motor
bikes, Ghobadi, remembers his experience with this film as one of the most
emancipating filmmaking experiences he has ever had. Is it the confessional act
of telling one’s personal stories through forbidden songs and music that first
renders and then makes communicable such an elevating experience? One can
always speculate, wonder and hope. “This is the voice of a man whose dream /
does not reside at a dead-end / […] my words were not criminal / but were hung
dead / The limits of your thoughts do not fit me /” as Nikaeen, one of the
musicians in the Persian Cats sings[19].
Towards the
end of the film, we see that the counterfeiter gets arrested by the Islamic
Republic police. Nader, realising the gravity of situation, loses it. Negar and
Ashkan who could not locate Nader for a few days, finally find him a few hours
before their underground concert opens, in a secret party. But the party is
ambushed by Islamic Guards. Ashkan, in his attempt to escape another arrest and
imprisonment jumps from the window. Next is a cut to a shaky frame of a
bird-eye angle showing a foetus like body of Ashkan on the ground. This is
followed by nervous jump cuts of medium shots of the underground concert with
the waiting crowd holding candles, and the bird-eye shots of people gathering
around Ashkan who lies still on the ground. On an extreme close up of Negar’s
face, we hear her voice, singing one of the numbers composed by her and Ashkan
together. The tense jump cuts between three locations continues until Ghobadi
takes his viewer back to the opening sequence. And that is when Ashkan blinks
for the second time from the emergency bed-on-wheels in the corridors of the
Tehran hospital. The music bar however, dos not go into silence.
The
everlasting effect of the revolutionary act of making music underground, or
making a film underground, is not the immediate “real” in the act of the making
music, and the real in their lives. But it is in “how” their reality, now woven
into the narrative of the film, appears to the observers and in the hopes thus
awakened in them. The “reality” of what went on in those basements and
forbidden studio recording sessions, the sublime moment that generated the
enthusiasm in these young people; that reality belongs to eternity. That is
perhaps why the hundred and six minutes of the film, between the two moments of
reverie, the moment of liminal existence between awareness and death, when we,
through Ashkan’s eyes look, from what can easily turn into a six-feet under
position, at the running lines of fluorescent lamps that pass before our eyes,
creating a sense of eternity. Perhaps this is a suggestion that their whole
life was worth it, if in reflection one can only remember and recognise the
effort, only the effort for creating something that is forbidden, creating a
symphony of sounds of revolt—against the state and its ridiculous yet
consequential punitive regulations—that are otherwise silenced for eternity.
The hope that is built in our minds come forth through following Ashkan and
Negar’s Dante-esque meanderings through the dark undergrounds of Tehran in
search of their music, their freedom; and that hope echoes in their voice and
is heard again, rearticulated in Persian Cats.
“The
memorable is that which can be dreamed about a place. In this place that is a
palimpsest, subjectivity is already linked to the absence that structures it as
existence and makes it ‘be there’… This being-there acts only in spatial
practices, that is, in ways of moving into something different (manière de
passer a l’autre).” [20] That is why the whole film is continuously meandering in
the past, perhaps in the memory of Ashkan in reverie, suspended between life
and death, through streets, quarters, corridors, basements and the hidden
studios of Tehran. We are hearing and visiting memories of a musician in
between two blinks of his eyes. We are traversing spaces that are haunted by
many different spirits that would have otherwise remained silent. This time,
Bahman Ghobadi in his quest for breathing the breath of a singer, invokes these
ghosts that emerge from their six-feet under basements of Tehran. It is indeed
that underground space that defines the art of these musicians. Their city
becomes the endless tunnels and staircases that lead them to the ultimately
subversive sound of their music, where all sounds, one would expect, are
destined to die. That is where the Persian Cats voice
their revolt.
of Iran within an underground culture that survives against the severest
odds. This is the last breath at a crossroad that leads to dead-ends in all
directions.
When I was growing
up, it was an article of faith that rock 'n' roll could change the world. These
days that faith has waned. You see, rather than overturning mainstream culture,
rock has turned into it. The Who didn't actually die before they got old; they
played halftime at the Super Bowl.
But there are places in the world where
pop music still does carry a transformative charge. One of them is the Islamic
Republic of Iran, whose leaders are still busy clamping down on the millions
who believe that the ruling government stole last summer's election. The
state's attempt to quash free expression lies at the heart of No One
Knows About Persian Cats, a jagged, energetic, touching new movie by
Bahman Ghobadi. Shot without permission using a small digital camera, this
thinly fictionalized portrait of Tehran's underground music scene uses real musicians
to re-enact the conflict between indie rockers who just want to make music and
authorities who find the Great Satan's horns in every riff and backbeat.
The movie centers on two mild-tempered
musicians, the bearded Ashkan and the scarf-wearing Negar, who've just gotten
out of prison for their musical crimes. He and she aren't radicals looking to
rock the Casbah, even if the Casbah were in Iran, not Algeria. No, they just
want to find some musicians for their band — it's called Take It Easy Hospital
— and get documents so they can play abroad. To do this, they enlist the help
of their wheeler-dealer friend Nader, an exuberant DVD bootlegger.
The three spend the movie zooting
around the city, often traveling in darkness and dipping into basement hidey-holes.
Along the way they encounter music producers, traffickers in illegal passports,
bullying magistrates and, above all, other musicians. There's the handsome
singer who teaches refugee kids from Iraq and Afghanistan; there's the metal
band that practices amid cows in a barn. And there's the terrific rap group
Hichkas, who insists that its songs can only have meaning when played for
people in Tehran.
As we listen to the various bands,
Ghobadi offers us video montages of that city — shades of early-'80s MTV. The
shots give us a feel for the texture of a sprawling metropolis defined by
wealth and poverty, exuberance and repression.
Negar Shaghaghi plays a musician who's
just been released from prison for playing the music she loves.
The great Polish philosopher Leszek
Kolakowski used to say that one of the most crushing flaws of communism was its
totalizing vision. It had opinions about everything — art and science and what
you ought to be thinking. The same holds true for a theocracy like Iran, where
the state weighs in on how people dress, what they do with their pets — Persian
cats, for example, can't be taken outside — and what culture they're allowed to
enjoy, a bullying well documented in Azar Nafisi's superb best-sellerReading
Lolita in Tehran and in Jafar Panahi's wonderful movie Offside, about
teenage girls who disguise themselves as boys to attend soccer matches because
women aren't allowed to attend. It's worth noting, by the way, that Panahi —
the key Iranian filmmaker of the past decade — is now in prison for protesting
last summer's election.
Now, you can understand why the mullahs
hate rock music, which doesn't merely possess an unruly energy, but enters
people's heads as the siren song of the West. They're well aware that rock 'n'
roll became one big way that Soviet and Eastern European dissidents showed
their rejection of communism. It was no mere coincidence, after all, that
Vaclav Havel, the king of Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, was a huge fan of
The Velvet Underground. That said, the Iranian authorities are stuck with the
same paradox that boomeranged on the communists: When you crack down on rock
music, you only make it a more powerful and alluring metaphor for freedom.
That's precisely what we see in No
One Knows about Persian Cats. Negar and Ashkan and their pals aren't
radicals. They're passionate young people who just want to play the alienated
music they love. But because the authorities won't let them, they believe, as
one says, "you can't do anything here." And it's this angry
disillusionment — far more than any rock song — that explains why hundreds of
thousands of young people have taken to the streets, and why the Iranian
theocrats should be worried that the times, they are a-changin'.
John Powers is film critic for Vogue.
This may be the
first Iranian blockbuster to be released in the U.S. It's not an art film, so
you won't see any smiling kids in the countryside. There's not much time for
philosophy, either. These are real people with real problems, none of which
will simply go away by wishing.
UNDER THE SKIN
OF THE CITY
Original title:
Zir-e poost-e shahr.
Directed by:
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad.
Written by:
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Farid Mestafavi Farid Mestafavi.
Cast: Golab
Adineh, Mohammad Reza Foroutan, Baran Kowsari, Ebraheem Sheibani, Mohsen Ghazi
Moradi, Ali Ossivand, Mehrdad Falahatgar, Mahraveh Sharifi-Nia.
Cinematography:
Hossein Jafarian.
In Persian with
English subtitles.
Maybe that's
why Rakhshan Bani-Etemad's "Under the Skin of the City" kept drawing
huge crowds long after its theatrical release in Iran. I remember seeing people
streaming in and out of Tehran's most prominent if not nicest downtown cinema
about this time last year to see it.
Anyone catching
it here will get a remarkably accurate portrait of life in the big T. There are
more than enough bribes, drug smuggling, contraband products and just plain
dishonesty to go around. But there are sweeter times, too. For all their
troubles, the working-class family headed by mother Tuba (Golab Adineh) and
father Mahmoud (Mohsen Ghazi Moradi) haven't lost the love and affection of
their children, in various states of engagement with the country's dynamic
social fabric. And they can still enjoy a night on the town at an upscale
pizzeria, courtesy of Abbas.
Elder son Abbas
(Mohammad Reza Foroutan) is overeducated for his spot as personal assistant to
his boss Nasser in a thriving shop in the clothing bazaar. That doesn't stop
him from dreaming. Unfortunately, to get a decent paying job most young people
in Iran dream of getting out — in Abbas's case to Japan. For that he needs a
visa agency, and for that he needs money.
Behind Tuba's
back, Abbas has conspired with his father to sell the family's humble house in
a poorer section of southern Tehran. (The train whistles and shots of the
tracks nicely localize their neighborhood.) To Tuba's relief, they haven't had
to move for a while as owners. Pre-asthmatic from her job at a textile plant,
she can use a break. She's the primary breadwinner, since Mahmoud is disabled
from an unspecified cause.
Tuba also has
to keep the house in order, cook and do laundry without much help from
high-schooler daughter Mahboubeh (Baran Kowsari), who prefers hanging out with
her rebellious (read: wears makeup and listens to foreign pop music) classmate
and neighbor Masoumeh (Mahraveh Sharifi-Nia). To the horror of the family,
college-age son Ali (promising Ebraheem Sheibani) is immersed in leftist
politics, which lands him in jail every now and then. There's also a married
daughter taking temporary refuge with them until she can stand to return to her
abusive husband.
The year is
1997 and politics are in the air. Even Tuba finds herself being interviewed
along with her co-workers for television about the upcoming elections, which
would bring the current reformist president to power. Tuba doesn't see the
point of getting too excited, and time has proved her right.
At home Tuba
suspects something's up, but she can't stop it. With most of the money from the
house sale in hand, Abbas forks it over to a visa agency so he can begin his
Japanese work adventure. It's a bad move, because when he reappears, the office
has vanished along with his money. Now desperate, he feels compelled to take up
a lucrative offer from Marandi, only this involves ferrying drug-laden wedding
gowns to the Turkish border. Abbas's first mission ends in failure thanks to
brother Ali's protective sabotage. With his life in free fall, he instantly
turns into the next fugitive from mafia-style justice.
The
plotline has enough drama for a clutch of neo-realist films. But the tragedy of
Abbas's well-intentioned but disastrous choices takes second place to the
resilient family structure that is the real subject here.
The plotline
has enough drama for a clutch of neo-realist films. But the tragedy of Abbas's
well-intentioned but disastrous choices takes second place to the resilient
family structure that is the real subject here. In the hands of another
director, the family portrayed in this film would have been from the core
religious-political enthusiast supporters of the current regime in Iran. Father
Mahmoud would have been a disabled veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. Instead of
religion and the "Sacred Defense" war, Bani-Etemad puts
non-ideological traditional values conditioned by economic necessities at the
fore. (One of the few nationalistic references is the patriotic song heard during
the credits, but its presence is ironic since the characters seem oblivious to
this line of rhetoric.)
There's a
wealth of realistic detail and references to social-political problems that at
times threatens to overwhelm. That's when it's time for the Abbas character to
break through with a new plot direction. Around these moments Bani-Etemad
strategically inserts fancy visual action passages to segment the domestic
narrative anchored by Tuba.
See this film
for the realistic story and portrait of a well-adjusted family (unlike their
neighbors). See it also for the accurate portrait of life in late-winter Tehran
with the snow-covered Alborz Mountains just to the north.
The acting has
less to recommend it. Mohammad Reza Foroutan is Iran's most overexposed screen
star with little in the way of acting skills to justify his ubiquity. (His
performance in a comparable role in Ahmad Reza Darvish's "Born Under
Libra" is even more wanting.) By contrast, the other lead, Golab Adineh,
brings a warmth and humanity to her character of the mother that Bani-Etemad
keeps in check to maintain focus on family relationships and the ramifications
of Abbas's moves.
Written by student: Donald
