May 6, 2008
Hemlock; directed by Behrouz Afkhami
In my continuing tour of contemporary Iranian cinema, I watched Hemlock last night. Directed by Behrouz Afkhami, and starring the wonderful Hedye Tehrani, it tells the story of a mid-level manager (played by Fariborz Arabnia) at a factory in Tehran - who is being bribed to sell the company to a bunch of exiled Iranians from Los Angeles - he will be made CEO if he accepts the bribe, and there's a shadiness to the entire thing. His partner gets in a horrible car accident (there is some speculation that it was NOT an accident) and is hospitalized. Now all of this is basically just prologue and context for the real guts of the story: Mahmoud (Arabnia) has a wife and kids, and lives in comfort in a middle-class suburb of Tehran. He begins to drive into Tehran every day to visit his injured partner in the hospital. While there, he meets and becomes captivated by a nurse in the hospital - played by Hedye Tehrani. Although Tehrani is a giant star in Iran, I only first became aware of her last year when I saw the lovely film Fireworks Wednesday (my review here). I sing the praises of Tehrani in that review, and I'll continue it here.
Hemlock is a melodrama, with serious issues being brought up - but in a kind of ham-fisted soap opera-ish style. If I had to come up with a word, I'd say it was "overwrought". It's basically the story of a man who has an extramarital affair - only in Iran they have a special name for it: "temporary marriage" (or sigheh). It's extremely controversial - and people on both sides of the argument feel very strongly about it. It's one of those weird issues where Iranian feminists line up with the conservative mullahs on the same side. Some feel that "temporary marriage" is akin to prostitution ... others feel that sex is a normal impulse, and people need SOME release, even if they are not married yet - due to whatever reason. "Temporary marriage" is a way to keep all sex within the bounds of legality. Elaine Sciolino wrote an article about temporary marriage which presents the issue pretty clearly. The pros, the cons ... and not just intellectual pros and cons, because, after all, this is not just an intellectual debate. It's an issue that actually affects real people's lives, for realz. I like Sciolino a lot - she wrote the wonderful bookPersian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran
Hedye Tehrani plays a modern woman, very unlike the more traditional wife, who is draped in the full black chador. Tehrani wears light flowered scarves around her head, Ray Banz, and long light-colored trench coats. She is independent (although we come to realize that she has a lot more complexity than is first revealed - her father is an opium addict, and she buys him opium on the black market ... she's basically his supplier. So there are these scenes of her careening around in a car with her drug dealer, a nice guy actually - she's smoking, and putting the drugs into her handbag ... It's a whole side of her that her "temporary husband", blown away by her beauty, never sees. Until the end, when it is too late). Mahmoud, who also seems like a modern man, reveals himself as traditional - when he suggests to her that they get a "temporary marriage" - basically licensing their sexual encounter - and she laughs in his face. "You believe in all that stuff?" she says.
A couple words about Tehrani. She is an actress. Many Iranian films use non-actors, and that has its uses - but when you see a script in the hands of an actress, who knows how to create a character, and make a scene happen - and have a subtext ... you can see the difference. Tehrani, like I mentioned in my review of Fireworks Wednesday, seems uninterested in being liked. And that's so rare in actors - especially gorgeous ones, and she's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. So far, she has revealed herself, as an actress, as willing to go where the character goes, do what the character does, and not protect herself. She is not particularly sympathetic in Hemlock, although eventually your heart does ache for her. She's a liar. She has not told Mahmoud the truth about who she is, and what her life is like. She makes up a story about being abandoned by her first husband, you know - to "up" the sympathy factor. She sneaks around, meeting her buddy who is a drug dealer. And as the film goes on, the "temporary marriage" she is in begins to grate. And then, not just grate - but drive her out of her mind. She wants to be validated, she wants to be accepted into his life. His wife doesn't even know. Tehrani shows up at their house one day, when he is not there, and sits chatting with the wife, making up a story about how Mahmoud was going to help her get a visa. Mahmoud begins to realize that, by letting her into his life, he has perhaps sown the seeds of his own destruction. He tries to cut it off. She threatens suicide. He pays her a settlement (which is part of the whole "temporary marriage" deal) and she stands in her kitchen, alone, looking at the coins on the counter, weeping. Tehrani is wonderful. The material is not worthy of her - it's all pretty conventional, the way it is filmed ... but I just love watching her act. She's unpredictable. She appears to be alive, rather than acting.
In one scene, she and Mahmoud sit and have a picnic in a park. She teases him about being a good Muslim. He says that yes, he does pray 5 times a day. She seems surprised. The thing about temporary marriage is that - as it is presented - it is little better than a sneaky affair. And she eventually, with the coins on the counter, realizes she is in the role of a whore. But she loves him. In the picnic scene, she asks him if he could teach her how to do the daily prayers. You get the sense that she is not interested in it for religious reasons, but as a way to being close to him. Tehrani is never playing just one thing. There's always a deep coursing river going on beneath her external actions ... she's fascinating to watch.
They have a date that night. She is going to cook him dinner at her house. We see her shopping beforehand, buying produce, and fish ... and then she goes to an upscale clothing store. The first floor has "modern" clothes - you can see that there are colors in the clothes on the racks. But she goes downstairs ... to where the traditional chadors are sold.
To me, this was the most subversive scene in the film (which, like I mentioned, is pretty conventional - and even with the "temporary marriage" thing is basically a Lifetime Movie - Iranian style - about infidelity). Tehrani tries on a black chador, staring at herself in the mirror. We watch the transformation occur - her shape obliterated - but because of the context in which she tries it on it becomes almost unbelievably provocative. She's not trying on the chador because she wants to become more devout, and show her devout feelings. Tehrani plays the scene so that we know she's doing it as a joke. A sexy joke. Mahmoud will arrive at her place, and see a black-clad woman waiting for him, and he will laugh, because it is so unlike her. It's not an expression of religious feeling - it's a costume. It's akin to buying a little sexy Frederick's of Hollywood number and answering the door in that get-up when your lover arrives. THAT is what Tehrani is playing in the scene.
Tehrani slowly drapes the folds over her face, her eyes mesmerized by her own reflection ... At one point, she starts to laugh to herself, laugh at what she looks like, and then, with mischievous glimmering eyes, she pulls the black veil up over the bottom half of her face, so only her eyes are visible. The typical image we have of Islamic women. But look at what is going on in her eyes. She is laughing. She is eager to show off her costume to Mahmoud, because he will think it funny, too.
A pretty ballsy scene, I'm thinking.
The film is drenched in pathos and tears, but once I succumbed to the fact that it was a Lifetime movie - I enjoyed it.
But mostly I enjoyed watching Tehrani at work. She's something else.
May 3, 2008
The Day I Became A Woman; director: Marziyeh Meshkini
Iranian film The Day I Became A Woman (2000), directed by Marziyeh Meshkini (it was her first film, although she had worked as an assistant director before that on husband Mohsen Makhmalbaf's films) won awards around the world, it was a ringing success.
The film is broken up into three stories, seemingly unconnected, but on a closer look, there is a thread tying them all together. The theme is pretty clearly stated in the title of the film, but there is nothing rote or predictable about this film ... I'm a huge fan of Meshkini now, and eager to see whatever she does next. It's stunning. And the last story earns the right to be called Fellini-esque - there are images there that are so arresting that they verge on poetry. It's a dream-space, and there are moments where I couldn't believe what I was looking at. Beautiful!! And the final image of the film ... I won't give it away - you'll just have to rent it. I watched it with dropped jaw. Fantastic. A fantastic debut.
I've been watching quite a few Iranian films recently with strictly Tehrani settings, like Offside (review here), or The Circle (review here). The Day I Became A Woman is set on Kish Island, off the coast of Iran in the Persian Gulf, a spectacular place of white beaches and crashing surf. It's apparently a resort island, a vacation spot for the Iranian wealthy - and a place where it's a bit more relaxed for women to hang out. But the world of The Day I Became A Woman does not show that side of Kish Island. You would never know it was a resort spot from what we see in the film.
The first story is about a little girl on her 9th birthday, the day she is slated to "become a woman". Meaning, she will have to put on the chador, not play with (or talk to) boys anymore, and basically begin her training to become a woman. Hava (the little girl) is a wild urchin whose best friend is a little boy named Hassan. But on this day, her birthday, she has to say goodbye to him as a friend. Her mother and grandmother give her a break, and tell her she can go off and see Hassan, but they put a stick in the sand and tell her she has to be home when the shadow of the stick disappears. Hava races off to find Hassan. Throughout their interaction (they share a lollipop, smacking their lips because of the sour-ness), Hava keeps racing back to check the shadow of the stick. She gets kind of frantic. She doesn't question her "plight", she just knows it's unfair, because she loves Hassan. But you know, she's a kid. She does what the grown-ups tell her to do. Like most Iranian film-makers Meshkini uses a light touch with filming children. She does not overburden them with metaphor and meaning. They are uninhibited, and seem like the most child-like of children in film. Hava does not see herself as a victim of a patriarchal theocratic society. She sees herself as living in an unfair world because she can't play with her best friend. It's no different from other children wailing about how "unfair" it is that they can't sleep over a friend's house on a school night. I'm not saying the two things are equal, of course I'm not - but it's equal in the way it is portrayed. Children are innocent. They may be mischievous, and capable of the full range of human emotions, but they are not aware of the larger societal issues that make life the way it is. And so Hava is pissed at the unfairness of life. She is too young to rebel in any meaningful way, and the whole thing is unFAIR because she wants to go outside and play. She doesn't see purdah itself as unfair. She's too little for that. It's why the first segment of The Day I Became A Woman is so devastating, because Hava is too young to understand. But she will submit, because ... that's what you do when you're a kid. Little Hassan, sucking on a sourpop with his friend, is also an innocent ... he doesn't understand why things have to change so drastically. Yesterday you were my friend and now you can't walk on the beach with me? Why? The use of strictly non-actors gives the first section an almost documentary feel to it. The kids are 100% unselfconscious in front of the camera. They aren't saying lines, they aren't acting at all.
The third story in The Day I Became A Woman (I'll come back to the second one momentarily) shows an old infirm woman going on a shopping spree. She is a widow, she has a little money, and has decided to buy all the things she wanted to buy during her life but never did. Her own things. She is so frail that a small boy pushes her wheelchair around a glittery mall (not her grandson - he is black - and from a couple of comments she says to him, it becomes clear that once upon a time she was in love with a black man, but was not allowed to marry him ... so she feels like the little black boy could be her dream-son). She buys so much stuff that an army of small boys are gathered to roll her purchases down the street on carts. The little woman has pieces of cloth tied around her fingers, to remind her of what she wants to buy. I kept expecting the little boys with the carts to bring them to a house or an apartment complex ... but no ... they take them to the beach. And set all of the stuff up on the white sand. A huge bed. A refrigerator. A clothesline, with pots and pans hanging from it. A free-standing tub. A couch and a couple of armchairs. With the blue gulf beyond. I'm still thinking about the scene, and the amazing images of it. It was stunning. There were moments when I thought of Fitzcarraldo, with the boat going over the mountain. What I was looking at was real, and was obviously really happening. But it had such a surreal edge, and ... I guess I'm used to seeing the same images, just in different movies. Even very good movies. You know, you see apartments, and close-ups of faces, and shots of sunsets. I'm simplifying, but still. In The Day I Became A Woman, I saw new things. A clothesline suspended on two poles that were offscreen, with pots hanging from the line, and empty glass bottles ... the blue sea in the background. The grandmother and two women sitting on the couch and armchair, chatting, surrounded by white beach. Then, odd scenes: the little boy putting on makeup in the mirror. Smearing lipstick over his lips. Another little boy trying on what was obviously the grandmother's wedding dress once upon a time. A little boy dancing on a beach, wearing a wedding dress. Seriously, there were so many fantastical stunning images I couldn't process them at first. And it's all in service to that particular story. None of it seems imposed ... which is why "Fellini-esque" is the term thrown around in every review. It's artificial, the set-up is way out of the everyday - it's surreal, the classic sense of the word ... but with a rough edge, it's not a static image - people are alive in that surreal scene. It's a theatrical psychological moment - and film is the perfect medium for something like that. The whole thing took my breath away.
But it was the second story that is the masterpiece of the film. As monotonous as it will sound, I could have watched an entire two-hour movie of that particular story-line. It was brilliantly executed.
It starts with a sandy expanse of land, and a man on a horse. He sets off galloping across the land, and he rides like a bat out of hell. The horse is a gleaming black stallion, and the vision of the black stallion, and the white sand, and the man in the billowing white shirt - riding the horse as it flies across the earth - is stunning. And it sets up the mood and the pace for the entire storyline. The first story was somewhat static. We remained mostly on Hava's little face, as she chattered up to Hassan in the window, and they shared the lollipop. But this one is all movement. The camera never stops moving - until the very very end ... and as it slowly glides to a stop, it is shattering, because you know it's over. As long as there was movement, there was hope. I have no idea how they got some of these shots. The camera is obviously on a truck, going alongside the galloping horse at the same speed, but there is no jostling, no ups and downs or jerks ... it is a smooth and fast tracking shot, and at times it pulls back and swoops around in a curve, as the man takes off in another direction, giving us an even wider perspective. The choreography of the camera in episode 2 is remarkable. We aren't sure at first what the man is doing, but it is pretty obvious from his body language that he is not out for a leisurely ride. He is looking for something. And then in the distance (the land is absolutely flat), we can see small figures - moving in a horizontal line ... He gallops towards them. (Again, the camera is never once still. We never have a shot with the camera on the ground, and the man galloping by it. It is always in movement and so are the characters ... it's breathless, we are just trying to keep up with everyone. I need to own this film just so I can watch this sequence over and over again.)
As the man approaches the distant figures, we can see the sea beyond them, blue-green, crashing surf. There is a road along the sea. And along that road bicycle black-clad women, 40 of them, 50 ... pedaling furiously, black chadors billowing behind them. It's a stunning visual. We can hear the whizzing of the bicycle wheels, and the crank of the gears, and the little ringing bells when one wants to pass. It's a race. The women look identical, black cut-out silhouettes against the sea, but all wearing jeans and sneakers underneath - and this, like the man on the horse, is not a leisurely ride. They hunch over the handlebars, making themselves streamlined, small, their veils flying up and out behind them like crazy bat wings. Sometimes one surges ahead, and you can feel the others start to work harder, like, "Oh shit ... where does she think SHE'S going?" I just couldn't get enough of what this all looked like. Fantastic. There is obviously, again, a truck with a camera zooming along beside the women bicyclists - but there's no bumps, just a smooth fast procession. But then sometimes, we're in the thick of the race, and there's a handheld camera, and we can hear the heavy panting breaths of the women, the whizzing wheels, the clink-clink of bicycle bells ... the camera moves in front of the procession sometimes, almost leading them on, pulling them forward. The blue surf crashes on their right, and the desert spreads off to their left. The man on the horse makes a beeline for the race, and gallops along beside the women, peering at each one.
But of course they are indistinguishable from one another, because of the veils. He has to move a bit ahead of each woman, and peer back at her face. To see if it is her. It eventually becomes clear that his wife, Ahoo (played by the wonderful Shabnam Toloui - she has two lines, I think - "Hello" and "No" - after all, she's in the middle of a bicycle race, she's not up for chatting - but she's fantastic. Tragic.) has disobeyed his orders to not participate in the bicycle race. He's furious. All of this takes place as he gallops alongside her, and she pedals furiously, glancing up at him occasionally, but never hesitating, never faltering.
He's shouting, at first about how she hurt her leg and she promised him not to bike anymore with her bad leg. She ignores him. There's something frantic in her face. He soon starts to shout about the shame she has brought to him, and that if she doesn't stop the bicycle race he will divorce her. Ahoo keeps pedaling. Finally, he realizes it will do no good, and he gallops off. We think that might be the last of him, but sadly, it is not.
The race careens on at breakneck speed. There's a rivalry between Ahoo and another woman, who's listening to a Walkman as she rides. They are neck and neck. All we hear is her breathing, and the sound of the gears and the wheels. Sometimes a crash of surf. When music finally comes into the segment, near the end, it's horrible. Your heart breaks. You know it's a sign. An eerie portent. But up until then, it's human, and clashing, and fast, and pumping legs and panting breath. Life!
Her husband is not going to give up easily. He gallops back, this time with the village mullah, also galloping on a horse. The mullah gallops alongside Ahoo, shouting at her that that is not a bike she is riding, but "the devil's mount" and she is bringing shame to her family ... Ahoo keeps riding. Faster, faster, never stopping. The two give up and gallop off. We know now that they will be back.
Ahoo is so pumped full of adrenaline, and rage, and competitive spirit, and fear, that she surges ahead, far ahead of the others. She is a singular small black figure, all alone on the road. We still hear only her panting breath and the bicycle wheels.
We grow to hate the sound of hooves and whinnying, and the sound is brought in beautifully - sometimes we hear the hooves and the whinnying before we see the horses, and our hearts sink. The husband keeps returning, with other figures, all male, galloping on horses. Her father. Screaming at her. He tells her he will count to seven, and then she will stop bicycling. "Our tribe doesn't divorce!" He threatens to sic her brothers on her.
Ahoo, crazily pedaling, becomes one of the most heroic figures I've ever seen in cinema. She has no lines. She's an awesome athlete, first of all, with great endurance. She persists, she pushes on, she ignores the shouts and taunts ... but there are times when you can feel it's starting to get to her ... and that's when the other women start to catch up to her, and zip by her. This wakes Ahoo up to her situation, and she pushes forward, a burst of energy and speed.
Again, the camera is never still. It swoops ahead of the race, plunges itself into the middle of the race, sometimes catapults itself far back, so we can see the figures against the sea ... I eventually realized that the speed of the camera in the entire sequence reflects Ahoo's commitment. I became invested in how fast that camera was moving. As long as we zoomed along in a blur, there was hope.
Made even more tragic when you know that Shabnam Toloui, the actress, was banned by the Islamic clergy once it was discovered that she was a member of the Baha'i faith (the Baha'is are persecuted in Iran, sometimes even executed). She was banned from working in film and television in Iran, and finally couldn't take it anymore and moved to Paris to pursue her acting career. I wish her the best of luck. She's terrific.
The bike race/stallion pursuit is an absolutely spectacular and exciting bit of film-making - not just for a director's debut, but period.
Brilliant on every count.
Some screenshots below - but they just can't capture the sense of speed, and movement!
April 21, 2008
The Circle; director, Jafar Panahi
Recently, in a discussion about the film Leila, the Self-Styled Siren reminded me of the 2000 film The Circle, with its overt critique of the plight of women in Iran ; it was a movie I had seen in the theatre, and was stunned by, so I put it on the Netflix queue to have a look at it again.
Jafar Panahi's 2000 film The Circle is a shattering and unflinching piece of work dealing directly with the overall restrictions on the lives of women in Iran. Panahi's most recent project was 2006's Offside, a comedic film about a group of tomboys in Tehran dressing up as boys and trying to get into a soccer game (my review here). In Offside, Panahi treats the restrictions (women not allowed to go into a stadium) with humor, pointing out how unbelievably absurd it all is, even laughable. The tone of Offside is light, frantic, and hilarious. Sometimes the best resistance to a stupid rule is to laugh at it. It may not change the rule, but it certainly takes the edge off.
In The Circle, that hilarious atmosphere is gone. Panahi pulls no punches, from the first devastating scene to the last devastating image. But, in true Panahi fashion, the issues are not presented in a maudlin Lifetime Movie Of the Week style. He launches us into the chaotic loud streets of Tehran, using handheld cameras, which circle the participants in the drama (there are very few hard edges in the film, something to take note of when you're watching it: look for all of the circles and curves). It appears that the film crew are just grabbing shots, filming their actors in the midst of a real-life busy street, using non-professional actors for most of the roles. Panahi is not interested in detailed character analysis, he says as much himself. He is more interested in "types," or perhaps "archetypes" would be more accurate. Characters are drawn in bold primary color strokes, and we can recognize them within moments: the crybaby, the bitter one, the sassy one ... Panahi casts based on looks. He does exhaustive casting sessions, casting a wide net, and then also has been known to just approach a woman he sees in the park, who has the perfect look - and asks if she would be willing to do a screen test. (This was how he found the wonderful Nargess Mamizadeh, one of the main characters in The Circle. She's the one in the poster. She's not an actress - at least not professionally, but her looks - her deep kind of scrunched-up beautiful face, with thick eyebrows, was just what he was looking for for that character. She has a black eye throughout the entire film, and it is never explained. It gives a backstory to the character, and makes us wonder from the get-go: Where did she get that? What is she running from?) Panahi only used two professional actors in The Circle, the rest were people he found who had the right "look". It's quite amazing, because everyone is great. There isn't a huge gap between the non-professionals and the professionals. Granted, Panahi is not looking for big cathartic scenes or delicate character development - something that is best in the hands of professionals. He's going for the message, and for the hyper-realistic atmosphere. And also, it seems to me, the pace. It's breakneck.
The women of The Circle tear their way through the streets of Tehran, coming across obstacles and problems, hiding in alleys, crouching behind cars ... the sense of being hunted is palpable. The women are right to be afraid.
There is not just one story in The Circle, we get many. And sometimes they intersect, we're following one group, and then suddenly another woman walks by and we find ourselves following her, and she takes up the story. Panahi's points are clear: this is not just about one individual woman. It's about Women(tm). And the circle of restrictions that make up all of their lives.
The film opens starkly. The screen is black, with the credits rolling. And throughout, we hear the sounds of a woman in labor. She's screaming and grunting and howling, and the nurse and doctor are saying encouraging things. In the last moment of the credits, there's a pause - and we hear what we have been waiting to hear: the indignant yowls of a newborn baby. Next thing we see is a blinding white wall, with the back of a woman's head standing there - and she's draped in the full black chador. You can hear the screaming newborns behind the wall. There's a tiny slot that can be opened by the nurses - and our chador-ed figure knocks on the slot. A nurse's head peeks out. The black chador asks for the status of Solmaz's baby. The nurse says, "It's an adorable little girl!" Black chador has no response. Says again, "A girl?" Nurse says, "Yes!" and closes the slot. Black chador doesn't move. She stands there, still, a domed black figure ...
She knocks on the window again. A different nurse opens it. "Yes?" Black chador says, "I'm here for Solmaz ... I know she had her baby but I don't know what kind ... could you check?" A chill went through me when I saw that. If you ask enough times eventually you'll get a different answer? Suddenly a girl will become a boy if you ask a different nurse?? Apparently the ultrasound said it would be a boy, and everyone had heaved a sigh of relief in the family. Phew! A boy!! But now, with the baby being a girl, it's valid grounds for divorce, the in-laws will be furious, the black chador lady is the woman's mother ... There is no joy at being a grandmother. Just terror at what the in-laws will do now that it is apparent that the ultrasound was wrong and it is a girl. The casual-ness with which this despicable attitude is portrayed - in pretty much everyone (except the nurses who are just happy the baby is okay) - is brutal. Of course no one is happy it's a girl. Of course. But as Panahi's film goes on, fast and furious, girls in chadors running through bus stations, yearning for a smoke, huddled in a doorway peeking out ... you begin to see another side to the "Oh no, it's a girl" phenomenon. It is quite subversive, and really comes to fruition in the heartbreaking story of the single mother planning to abandon her 3-year-old daughter on the streets of Tehran. She says she hopes that she will be adopted by a rich family who might take her away from this life: "How can she have a future here? What is there for her in this life?" The woman had tried to abandon her child 3 times before getting up the guts. It rips her heart out. But watching her scenes made me go back to that first scene, with the open dismay at the baby being a girl. The critique is circular, as well as the structure of the film. With the world welcoming your birth with disappointment, what chance does a girl have? A baby absorbs love. Why wouldn't a baby absorb that attitude as well. We may be horrified and pissed at the attitude, but by the time we get to the woman abandoning her daughter, we have to admit: we see her point.
The Circle is not a soap opera-ish litany of complaints, and the fact that I even have to make that clear is just evidence of how privileged I am. 5 or 6 women skulk through the streets of Tehran. They are unconnected (or so we think, at first). It eventually becomes clear that all of them have one thing in common: they have spent time in prison. The repercussions of such a stain on your life are long-lasting (in this country and in others!) Only in the world of The Circle, you can't be sure that these women didn't do hard time for, you know, hitchhiking, or letting her scarf fall off her head, or driving in a car with a man who is not a relative. These aren't people who've murdered someone.
A couple of them have just got out. A couple of them broke out of prison with a larger group and are now on the run.
One was in prison, but she is now a nurse, and married to a Pakistani man who has no idea of her past, and he can never know. He doesn't know why she won't go to Pakistan to visit his family, but she knows she will be stopped at the border.
These are women who are on their own, even when they are married. And the restrictions of their society makes it nearly impossible for them to survive and be self-sufficient. They need to travel with IDs at all times. They cannot travel alone. They cannot board a bus without a male companion who is also a relative. They cannot check into a hotel by themselves. The pace of the film is frantic, like I said - nobody has time to linger or cry self-pitying tears. Things are urgent. The police appear to be everywhere. Everyone has problems.
One of the women comes home once she gets out of prison and it is clear that her brother means to do her harm, for the shame she has caused her family. She flees. But where can she go? She has no money. She can't check into a hotel. She can't jump on a bus and move. To make matters worse (unbelievably worse), she is pregnant. And not married. And she wants to have an abortion. Her lover was executed. What is this now-homeless woman supposed to do? Her family members are just as dangerous as the authorities. She has nowhere to turn.
One woman spent 2 years in prison and when she got out found that her husband had taken a second wife. She is grateful to the second wife, because the second wife took care of her kids while she was inside ... and we meet the second wife, and she seems like a nice woman. But the betrayal is clear. NOWHERE is safe.
Meanwhile, it appears that everyone in Tehran is getting married that day. Cars decorated with flowers and streamers meander by, we see a nervous groom spilling water on his nice shirt, we get a brief glimpse of a veiled bride in the back seat.
What is there in marriage that can offer sanctuary? This question is not asked overtly in the film, but it doesn't need to be asked. All we need to see is the procession of blushing veiled brides in the backseats of cars, viewed by women on the sidelines who have nowhere to turn.
One of the things that Panahi is so good at, and I noticed this in Offisde as well, is that on an individual level - person to person - things aren't so bad all the time. Man and woman can greet one another without all of those restrictions between them. The sales guy in the shop in the bus station, who helps Nargessa with her purchase, teasing her about her boyfriend, and doesn't she know what size he is? The bantering is good-natured, easy, friendly. In Offside we had the characters of the guys hired to guard the girls, and we watch as they slowly break down their authority, and finally the guys just succumb to the fact that this is a stupid rule, and we're all soccer fans, and Iran just won, hooray!! The girls did not cower in fear at the sight of the males. They basically thumbed their noses at them. Even the spectre of the morality police and their scary van doesn't dim the girls' spirits. Or if it does, it is just because now they can't hear what's happening in the game in the stadium. So tyranny - and a "regime" - can never ever so atomize a population that human beings cannot connect. They may try, and boy, they do - but Panahi, in his subtle way, shows how the restrictions are not just bad for women, but bad for men, too. Because aren't we all just human beings? And aren't women our sisters, mothers, wives, sweethearts? They aren't a scary "other" - not face to face. They're just chicks we either like or are indifferent to. But the top-down rules cannot let this stand, and so morality itself is policed. And of course morality means: "How Women Behave". That's it. That's all morality is. If women would just act like LADIES, and keep their LEGS CLOSED, and did what they were told, so that none of us men would ever EVER be confronted with our own animal instincts and have to actually negotiate them, as opposed to denying them outright, we wouldn't have such problems in our society! Men have to police themselves as well, but because sex is at the heart of the morality issue, women are the focal point. The "morality" of women becomes a national concern. Women can't be allowed to drive in cars with men they aren't related to. What would happen next? Open anarchy!
But like I said, Panahi is not a black and white kind of guy. He messes with our assumptions and preconceived notions. In this wonderful interview with Panahi (highly recommended), Stephen Teo writes:
Like the best Iranian directors who have won acclaim on the world stage, Panahi evokes humanitarianism in an unsentimental, realistic fashion, without necessarily overriding political and social messages. In essence, this has come to define the particular aesthetic of Iranian cinema. So powerful is this sensibility that we seem to have no other mode of looking at Iranian cinema other than to equate it with a universal concept of humanitarianism.
Yes. That is just right.
When a woman's hair tumbling out of her headscarf becomes a national concern, it concerns all of us. And so while the men in The Circle are few and far between, they also are omnipresent. The women are either running from men who want to trap them and punish them, or mourning men who have also been persecuted by the regime. The circle continues.
The evolution of the film's journey is clear. We begin with black and white - black chador against white wall. Quiet and still. No movement. But soon we are out on the streets, and then we have nothing but movement, for most of the film. People running and waiting anxiously and hiding and whispering and hugging. At the end of the film, we come across a girl who has been arrested for prostitution probably, although it sounds like she was just hitchhiking. But there must be more going on in the scenario. We have never seen her before. She's a new character. She's been hauled out of the car and is made to wait for the morality van to show up. She's kind of a hottie, truth be told, with sassy red lipstick. She calls the cop "honey", in a contemptuous way.
The van arrives, and she takes a seat. She goes to light a cigarette and she is told there is no smoking in the van (the whole smoking thing is an ongoing theme throughout the film. Everyone wants to smoke, but she, at the very end, is the only one who actually gets to the point where she can light up). I saw an interview with Panahi and he was laughing, saying, "In the West, of course, smoking is seen as dangerous - but here, in this film, smoking is seen as the ultimate freedom." The one other prisoner is a man, and he cajoles the guards to let him smoke. And they cave, say "sure". All the men light up. She glances around her (oh, so it's okay that they smoke, and it's not okay that I smoke?), and with a "Fuck this" expression, she lights up. For the rest of the drive, the camera is on her. The men all talk to each other, bantering, laughing, whatever, it's unimportant. She has a flowered headscarf on, her face is impassive, she stares out the window, and smokes. It's a long scene. It struck me, as I watched it this last time, how quiet and still the film got. No less brutal, but no more movement. She's a statue in profile. Archetype. Her situation is frozen. Stasis.
What will be next?
Panahi says in that interview, revealing that what I perceived in the movement of the film as a whole was (of course) deliberate:
Coming back to your first question: why is Iranian film so beautiful? When you want to say something like this and then you add an artistic form to it, you can see the circle in everything. Now our girl has become an idealistic person and thinks that she can reach for what she wants, so we open up a wide angle and we see the world through her eyes, wider, we carry the camera with the hand and we are moving just like her. When we get to the other person, the camera lens closes, the light becomes darker and it becomes slower. Then we reach the last person, there's no other movement; it's just still. If there's any movement, it's in the background. This way, the form and whatever you are saying becomes one: a circle both in the form and in the content.
An important film. Banned in Iran (naturally), but look. "It" got out. The Circle got out and found its audience worldwide. It doesn't make a difference on the ground, not yet (although, in reference to one of Panahi's other films, Offside, there were protests outside of soccer stadiums last year, with women holding up signs saying "WE DON'T WANT TO BE OFFSIDE", demanding that they be allowed into the game). Obviously the authorities are right - in their warped world view - to ban Panahi's stuff. It's subversive, in the truest and best sense of the word. Movies like this have the potential to change the world. "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."
So perhaps it's like a message in a bottle. A time-traveler. A flashlight in the darkness (a little candle throwing his beams far!). And so all I can say to Panahi is, "More, more, more, more."
April 20, 2008
Taste of Cherry; dir. Abbas Kiarostami - The Taboo of Suicide
Suicide is (and always has been) a cross-cultural taboo. No religion is indifferent to it. I think the ancient Egyptians might have been a culture that thought it was a valid way to go, if you wanted to escape this life and move on into the next (I think I learned that in my humanities class a billion years ago) ... but in general, suicide is a big fat no-no. Everywhere. I'm not talking about political suicide - ie: kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers. That's something different, although, in its own way, it totally upends the natural order and sends those facing it into total chaos and fear. Who would do that?? Who would make that choice?? Etc. If you choose to commit suicide, then you basically don't get into heaven.
Due to the openness of our society, we can debate these things. No one is indifferent, but the word itself can be spoken and acknowledged. This is not the case in Iran - and so Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, in a which a suicidal man drives around a giant construction site - trying to find a laborer who would be willing to bury him after he committed suicide - is a brave and almost political film. It's weird - perhaps Iranians would not agree with this, but I am an outsider: It seems that most films, even domestic dramas, are political, when seen in the light of the theocratic society they live in. The role of women, the strict morality rules, all of that top-down mullah stuff ... which affects the lives of everyday people to such an extraordinary degree ... That's REALLY what "the personal is political" means. So again, I'm an outsider and I think I might read a lot more into these things than might be there ... but I'm not quite convinced of that. Taste of Cherry was a massive international hit, and won the Golden Palm at Cannes in 1997. It was a HUGE deal. Kiarostami was allowed to attend the premiere at Cannes, which was also a huge deal - again, with the political implications in even things like movie premieres ... He was given a standing ovation by the very tough crowd there, who won't hesitate to boo you off the stage if they don't like what you've done (just ask Vincent Gallo!!). Taste of Cherry is an enormous feather in the cap of the Iranian film industry.
I read some of the reviews at the time and wondered if those folks had seen the same film I had. I'm a fan of Iranian film, as should be obvious by now - but Taste of Cherry left me a little bit cold. And for me, just the fact that Kiarostami was addressing a hugely taboo subject in his culture, is not enough for me to give the film a pass. I think the context is interesting, don't get me wrong, and I will watch pretty much anything that Iran generates - but films must also be judged on their own merits. Does it work as a story? I think about a film like Fireworks Wednesday (my review here) - and how much it works, just being itself - good story, good characters - Or a simple story like Children of Heaven - which is one of my favorite movies of all time ... and it just works as a story, first and foremost. The details of the story - the sibling relationship, the lower-class family's financial worries, the way the kids hide their plan from their parents, how clever they are in trying to get away with it ... just every bit works. It's funny, it's touching, it's suspenseful, it's poignant, and it ends with a running race through Tehran that is so exciting that the audience I saw it with at The Angelika (with Kate) burst into cheers periodically - as our hero surged ahead, straining to come in second. He is the best runner in his age group - but in order for his plan to work - he has to come in second. How on earth would you make that happen?? God, I love that movie. It's one of the best "family films" I've ever seen.
Taste of Cherry reminds me of reading a stilted translation of Hafiz or Rumi, Iran's major poets. The poems come off as almost treacly. Trite. I have pretty good translations of both poets, and I can kind of get why they are national heroes ... but it wasn't until I went to a Persian poetry reading at Bowery Poetry Club a couple years ago - and heard the folks there recite Hafiz and Rumi in Farsi (by heart, mind you) - that I could actually hear the poetry. And I didn't understand a word they were saying!! But it sounds gorgeous - in a way that it just canNOT when translated into English.
So I'm wondering if outsiders projected onto Taste of Cherry something that was not actually there. That's my experience of it, anyway - and it looks like Roger Ebert felt the same way. He writes:
Defenders of the film, and there are many, speak of Kiarostami's willingness to accept silence, passivity, a slow pace, deliberation, inactivity. Viewers who have short attention spans will grow restless, we learn, but if we allow ourselves to accept Kiarostami's time sense, if we open ourselves to the existential dilemma of the main character, then we will sense the film's greatness.But will we? I have abundant patience with long, slow films, if they engage me. I fondly recall ``Taiga,'' the eight-hour documentary about the yurt-dwelling nomads of Outer Mongolia. I understand intellectually what Kiarostami is doing. I am not impatiently asking for action or incident. What I do feel, however, is that Kiarostami's style here is an affectation; the subject matter does not make it necessary, and is not benefited by it.
Mr. Badii, the lead, played by Homayoun Ershadi, drives around, peering out his window at the various laborers he sees - quizzing them on their financial status, do they want to make some extra money?
There's something creepy about how this is played, and I do think that part of it is effective. Until we know what he wants, he either seems like a sex offender or a serial killer. He comes off as totally nosy. Some of the guys he talks to say to him, "Buzz off." Others get sucked in, because they're curious about what the job would be, and they need the money. He finally reveals his plan - to a young Kurdish soldier he picks up. They're parked on a mountain of earth in the industrial wastelands of Tehran - and Mr. Badii gets out of the car and points to a grave he has already dug on the side of a hill. He wants the soldier to drop him off there, and come back at 6 the next morning. He wants the soldier to then call out his name twice. "If I answer, help me out of the hole. If I don't answer, shovel earth on top of me." He has sleeping pills, which he will take. His plan is to die in the earth. The grave is already dug - he just needs the burial. Naturally, he runs into some resistance when he tells this plan. The Kurdish soldier (played by a non-actor - wonderful) balks. "I can't shovel earth onto someone," he says. Mr. Badii assures him that he will be dead - he won't be burying him alive! No, no, no ... the Kurdish soldier flees, running down the mountain of earth, away from Mr. Badii and his wack-job proposal. I don't blame him.
The film is made up of 4 or 5 of these proposals - to different folks ... and in between Mr. Badii circles through the dirt, driving, staring out the window, looking for someone who will agree. The scenery is monotonous - not just because of the monochromatic desert color-scheme - but also because it's the same spot, seen over and over and over again. I thought the film itself was shot beautifully, with long views of Mr. Badii's car, driving along with piles of dirt towering up over him. There are flocks of crows which take flight in front of his car, cawing indignantly. Mr. Badii stares up at them.
The symbolism is a bit heavy-handed and trite. There are no buildings where Mr. Badii drives. Just mountains of earth and a dirt road cut into the side of it. Mr. Badii is surrounded by earth. The scenery looks like one giant grave. There's even one shot where he stands on the side of the road, watching a huge tractor dump earth into a giant hole - and his shadow is seen against the other side of the hill, with the shadow of the falling dirt projected beside him. A gorgeous shot, but so obvious I thought - Come ON.
But my main issue with the film was in the performance of the lead. He is mainly seen in profile, as he drives along - and I just didn't feel the underlying despair at all. We are never given a reason for why he is suicidal. We don't know anything about Mr. Badii, and I'm not saying I needed it spelled out for me ("My wife died. Therefore I am suicidal") - but give me something. And if you're not going to tell me why, then the actor playing the part had better make me believe that he has a damn good reason. That he means business. I am thinking of Sissy Spacek's haunting performance in 'Night Mother - where she announces, in the first 5 minutes of the film, "I'm going to kill myself at the end of the night, Mother ... and I'd really like to enjoy our last night together." ???!!! Anne Bancroft, as the mother, of course goes apeshit. The thing that is chilling about that script is that the daughter does not give a reason. She's epileptic, if I remember correctly, she is divorced, she can't hold down a job, she lives with her mother - she has social problems. You know, she's had a shit hand dealt to her - but nothing outrageously out of the ordinary. She is not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She's not even really that unhappy. As a matter of fact, having made the decision to commit suicide cheers her up, she feels a lightness, a sense of purpose. She is happy with her choice. Her mother begs her - why? why? why? What can we do to change it? What are you unhappy about? Let's make it better! The daughter is basically like, "Nothing needs to be changed. I'm just opting out of life, that's all." She is calm, happy, and ready. She's done. She's done with life. So there's an example of how you don't need to have an A to B set-up, you don't need to bash me over the head with motivation or Freudian impulses, or childhood trauma. But give me SOMEthing. Mr. Badii seems pretty indifferent. His main concern is to get someone to bury him - and yes, I totally got his growing desperation to find someone to take on that task. That was quite real. But since we are given no background information about him - nothing - we don't know if he has a wife, kids, what he does for a living ... NOTHING. And the actor isn't revealing a deep chord of either despair or intense joy (like: I've made my decision to die, and I feel good about it) - He is not looking for advice, he doesn't want a lecture ... His performance left me cold. I wanted to tap into his experience, I wanted to have a more complex response to him ... but I just didn't. He's not a whiner, he doesn't over-act, he doesn't gnash his teeth or weep and wail. What I saw was a man driving around in circles, looking out his window, occasionally talking to people on the side of the road. That's it. If the actor had been actually playing something ... something that I got, anyway ... it might have been a different film for me. But he didn't appear to be playing anything. It's my opinion that he's gay and can't deal with it. I'm not just making this up out of thin air, there are clues along the way - and I've got to believe that Kiarostami knew what he was doing in that regard. When he sets off to go kill himself, we see him in his apartment - through the window. He's in silhouette. He walks around, washing his face, putting his coat on, ready to go. There is no wife, no children - at least not that we see. He lives alone. Why? What's going on? Then, there is the opening sequence with the Kurdish solider - before we know what Mr. Badii wants - and there is definitely an impression given that he has picked up the soldier and will pay him for sex. He is vague about his intentions, purposefully so - and Kiarostami allows the ambiguity to just sit in the air for a while ... until we learn more. The soldier tries to get more information out of Mr. Badii - what kind of job is it, what does he want him to do - and Mr. Badii replies, "It's your hands I want. Not your tongue." If this is an accidental bit of subtext, then boy, that's some accident. Obviously he's saying, "I don't need a lecture, I don't want you to talk ... I just want you to pick up a spade and shovel some earth..." Perhaps it's a matter of faulty or inaccurate translation, but I honestly don't think so. I honestly believe that that impression is given for a reason. Mr. Badii never divulges what his problem is (and of course, in Iran, being gay is even more unspeakable than being suicidal) ... but I'm going with the gay theory, and I'm sticking to it.
He eventually picks up a guy who works as a taxidermist at the National Museum. Kiarostami is known for working with non-professional actors and children - and many of the people picked up by Mr. Badii show Taste of Cherry as their only credit. They did not try to act. Sometimes there is awkwardness - like they speak over each other, and have to repeat themselves - the way it is in real conversations - but stuff like that is usually edited out. Here it is not. It actually didn't bother me. I liked it. The passengers he picks up (the Kurdish soldier, the seminary student from Afghanistan, and the Persian taxidermist) are, on the whole, played in a lovely, understated, truthful way. They don't seem like amateur actors. They seem like real people.
So the taxidermist is not an actor, but he has a giant monologue as Mr. Badii drives him through the mountains of earth. There is a trite-ness to the sentiments expressed here, but the down-to-earth way in which he plays it - makes the monologue worth the price of admission.
Taxidermist: I'll tell you something that happened to me. It was just after I got married. We had all kinds of troubles. I was so fed up with it that I decided to end it all. One morning, before dawn, I put a rope in my car. My mind was made up. I wanted to kill myself. I set off for Mianeh. This was in 1960. I reached the mulberry tree plantations. I stopped there. It was still dark. I threw the rope over a tree but it didn't catch hold. I tried once, twice, but to no avail. So then I climbed the tree and tied the rope on tight. Then I felt something soft under my hand. Mulberries. Deliciously sweet mulberries. I ate one. It was succulent, then a second and third. Suddenly I noticed that the sun was rising over the mountaintop. What sun, what scenery, what greenery! All of a sudden I heard children going off to school. They stopped to look at me. They asked me to shake the tree. The mulberries fell and they ate. I felt happy. Then I gathered some mulberries to take them home. My wife was still sleeping. When she woke up, she ate mulberries as well. And she enjoyed them too. I had left to kill myself and I came home with mulberries. A mulberry saved my life. A mulberry saved my life.
Mr. Badii: You ate mulberries, so did your wife, and everything was fine.
Taxidermist: No, it wasn't like that. But I changed. Afterwards, it was better, but I had, in fact, changed my mind. I felt better. Every man on earth has problems in his life. That's the way it is. There are so many people on earth. There isn't one family without problems. I don't know your problem - otherwise I could explain better. When you go to see a doctor, you tell him where it hurts. [Long pause.] Excuse me, you're not Turkish, are you? [Mr. Badii shakes head] Here's a joke. Don't feel offended. A Turk goes to see a doctor. He tells him: "When I touch my body with my finger, it hurts. When I touch my head, it hurts, my legs, it hurts, my belly, my hand, it hurts." The doctor examines him and then tells him: "You're body's fine, but your finger's broken!" My dear man, your mind is ill, but there's nothing wrong with you. Change your outlook. I had left home to kill myself but a mulberry changed me, an ordinary, unimportant mulberry.
Near the end of the film, we suddenly see the film crew filming earlier sections of the movie - the soldiers running by on drills, stuff like that. We see the camera guys setting up, it is as though we are watching a video monitor, we see Kiarostami standing by his camera man, we see the lead actor hand a cigarette to Kiarostami ... Nothing in the film has set us up for this kind of commenting-on-the-fact-that-we-are-making-a-film style. Nothing. It's fine if you comment on the fact that you're making a film - it's very much in vogue!! - but this? It doesn't fit, and seems to serve no purpose. What we are being told is: It's only a movie. What you just saw was a movie. To say that this approach does not work in this particular film is a vast understatement. To my mind, it's a cop-out and a huge error. The film collapses in on itself immediately, when we are pulled out of it. Kiarostami should have stuck to his guns, and just ended the damn thing, on its own merits. I was left hanging in the wind, by that ending, and it doesn't serve the film at all (regardless of what interpretation or spin you put on it).
The last shot of the film is self-explanatory, I suppose, but it's baffling to me why Kiarostami made that choice. Much of Taste of Cherry has to do with distance - so I get that part of it. We get long long vistas, of Mr. Badii standing on a dusty dirty hill, staring into the smoggy panorama of Tehran. We see FAR in this film. Even when we're in deep close-up with Mr. Badii driving, out of his window you can see vistas and dirt-mountains ... Nothing is claustrophobic or urban here. There's lots of building going on, but there are cliff-faces and you can see across ravines - and the people look like miniature figures, the cars like Matchbox cars. Sometimes we just get a long long shot of Mr. Badii's car circling the dirt cliffs - and we hear the conversation going on in the car from that remove. Much is seen via long long distances.
So there's obviously a style being used here, an approach - which doesn't serve the film, in my opinion, although it is quite beautiful to look at (screenshots below. Just gorgeous). And so to suddenly get a meta-moment when we are reminded that this is a film we are watching, and we see the director in sunglasses, and hear the walkie-talkies buzzing ... it's jarring. It doesn't work. At all.
The more distant we get from Mr. Badii, the more we realize the hollow performance at the center of Taste of Cherry.
If you're interested in Iranian cinema, and you don't know much about it, then you really have to see Taste of Cherry - it has its place in the history books, just because of the brou-haha surrounding its tour of the festivals - the fact that it was so honored (and that Tarantino is such a fan-boy about Kiarostami) is a big deal, a groundbreaking moment in the late 90s which catapulted Iranian film into the world limelight. And rightly so. Kiarostami is one of the major players in Iran, and his work needs to be dealt with on its own terms - because he's that good. I love Ten - and it has a gimmick to it as well (much of Kiarostami's films are gimmicks, experiments) - but in that case, it works. The gimmick is set up from the start, and it ends up serving the film as a whole, instead of detracting. So to me, Taste of Cherry falls short, for Kiarostami - even though it is the film that he is most known for. I applaud any addressing of a taboo subject. I applaud any courageous confrontation with censorship. Taste of Cherry has all of that. But, in the end, it did not have the courage of its convictions. It reassures us: It's only a movie, it's only a movie.
I know that. I know it's only a movie. Pointing it out to me adds nothing.
And I just wish I cared more!
April 14, 2008
Deserted Station, dir. Alireza Raisian
Deserted Station is a haunting quiet (at times too quiet) film based on a story by Iranian great Abbas Kiarostami, and directed by Alireza Raisian, it tells the story of a husband and wife (the wife is played by the wonderful Leila Hatami, who starred in Leila - my thoughts on that film here), on a pilgrimage to Mashad (presumably from Tehran). They bicker a bit in the car. She tries to tell him a story about the nastiness of their neighbor, and he brushes it off. She says, "You don't understand the poisonous darts women can throw at each other." The anecdote has something to do with having children, being pregnant. We get the sense that there might be trouble in that arena, for this couple. He is a photographer. He continually stops the car to shoot the scenery, and when his wife takes a nap, he takes pictures of her sleeping.
It's never expressly said (because things are rarely expressly said in Iranian films) that the husband is kind of useless - but the impression is given that he's intellectual, distant, always looking at the world (and his wife) through a camera lens. And then when their car breaks down, he is unable to fix it, and has to go for help.
it is as much about the windy desert landscape as anything else. The scenery does not need to be editorialized, or shot in a specific way - it is just there - the salt plains, the mountains, the towns cut out of the rocks ... All Raisian needs to do is place his characters in that context, and feelings are evoked.
The town is full of women and children - no men. All of the men work in the cities as laborers, and the kids never see their fathers. Maybe once a year. Many of them dont have mothers either. Mahmood wanders around, for a while, asking for help, but the women keep walking by, many of them struggling under heavy loads. We see him dwarfed by the landscape. He is a solitary black-clad figure, surrounded by bleached tan rocks, crumbling doorways, strange unearthly rock formations.
Finally one woman stops, and she tells him to go find Feizollah - he should be able to help. She asks him where he was headed. He tells her to Mashad, on a pilgrimage. She looks at him and says, with no provocation, "You were not called then." Meaning: it's meant to be that you would break down here. The saint did not call you. Mahmood doesn't quite like that comment, you can see him balk. There's trouble in paradise. What does it mean to 'not be called'? Feizollah is found. He's a great character. The only man left in the town, he has taken it upon himself to set up a school for the village children. He has procured notebooks. He teaches classes in history, dictation, mathematics. He also cuts the children's hair and nails (which is what he is doing when we first meet him). He takes care of these kids. Many of them are staying with relatives. They have been forgotten. "Deserted", to coin a phrase. But Feizollah gives them structure to their days. There is recess. Class. He also is a mechanic. And he also ran for office - for a city council seat or something like that. Mahmood gets the story there, and sees the campaign photos that Feizollah has circulated - tells him that the photos are amateurish, he should get new photos done - and Mahmood would be happy to help. This gives Feizollah a launching-off place for a diatribe about politics, which - seen in the context of Iran's political landscape at this time, the censorship, journalists in jail, random crackdowns on students, etc. - is breathtakingly courageous. "The people don't want 'real'," says Feizollah. It's all about the "spin", and the image. Feizollah and Mahmood ride to where the car is broken down on Feizollah's motorbike. The situation is more complicated - Feizollah will need to dismantle the truck, go for parts, etc. etc. He suggests that Mahmood and his wife go catch a nearby train to Mashad, and come back later for their vehicle. They don't want to do that. Eventually, it is decided that the wife (who has no name, not that I can remember, anyway) will go back to the little town - and be a substitute teacher for a day - Feizollah is worried about leaving the kids unattended. She will do that - while Mahmood and Feizollah deal with the broken-down car.
So that's what happens. The wife finds herself surrounded by children (and God. You just love all of them. They're typical for Iranian films - which often have to do with children. They are scrappy, real, rambunctious - and don't seem like actors. They probably aren't actors. They are a GANG, these kids. Awesome).
There's one little girl who is deformed, she can't walk, and she is at the head of her class. The other kids in the class take turns carrying her around in a little backpack. They're all quite casual about it.
We don't know, at first, what is going on with the wife, although we know that she is sad. Something's wrong. We got that from the first conversation with her husband, when she was trying to make him understand how much the neighbor gets under her skin. Near the end of the film, she says to her husband (a great line): "I don't know myself yet. Don't tease me, Mahmood." He gives her a look, suddenly gentle, and backs off. Okay. I won't tease. Mahmood is so self-involved that he can't really fathom what his wife is going through (we learn that she has had two miscarriages, and is pregnant yet again, but of course filled with fear that this one will end as well). He confides in Feizollah about the situation, and brushes it off, like, "You know how women get worked up about these things." Feizollah is much more of a philosopher about things. He beams with happiness when he tells Mahmood he's been married 10 years. He says that having a daughter has taught him patience, and that is a good thing. He also knows that life is possible without having children - children aren't everything. Mahmood seems kind of cut off from this type of conversation. It's not that Mahmood is arrogant, or openly a dick. It's just that he's detached. He hides behind his work and his intellectualizing of emotional events.
In the town there is a sheep in labor - she has been in labor for two days. Feizollah is worried about it - because it is his sheep, and his animals is how he scrapes out a living from the land. The women take over caring for the sheep. There is also a hugely pregnant woman in the town, and it is feared that she will give birth at any moment as well. The wife is surrounded by birth and impending birth. Everyone assumes that she must have an entire brood of children - she's married, after all! She hides her pain about her fertility within her, but it starts to take over the whole film.
The film switches back and forth between the two men - and the wife back with the children - and there's a bit of monotony in this structure that doesn't quite serve the story. It drags. It's meant to drag, I know that - this is not about its plot - it's really just a day in the life ... but it's important to stick it out, to tolerate the draggy sections - in order to get to, first of all, the rawly beautiful end sequence (wow. I was surprised by how moved I was - beautiful use of music, too. Beautiful.)
And second of all, to a section where the kids are playing hide and seek with her - in two deserted trains which sit on an unused section of track. It's where they play. The trains sit silent, open, and they are falling apart, rapidly being eaten up by the desert. The windows are broken, the doors and steps are rusted - there are compartments, old-fashioned North by Northwest compartments - lots of great places for kids to hide. The trains sit side by side. There are no kids in sight. But you can hear them calling to the wife, their voices echoing creepily - "Over here!" "Look over here!" "We're behind you!" The great thing about the story-telling style of Iranian films is how they avoid, at all costs, saying anything on the nose. They do not lead you by the hand. I suppose part of this is because of having to deal with censors - the film-makers try to get away with as much as they can, without ever saying "Here is what this is about." Sometimes that leads to opaque or rather boring stories - you wait for the crisis, or the conflict ... but it doesn't come, or it is so buried in symbols that you can't even "get it" (although most Iranians would probably get it immediately). There are sections of Deserted Station where all that seems to be going on is the wife giving dictation classes to the students, and then letting them go off and have recess. There does not seem to be any urgency. We are not sure what we are looking at. But the hide-and-seek in the trains section is absolutely gorgeous - it's like a poem, so yes - its language is symbols, metaphors. What we are looking at is a grown woman, walking between two deserted trains, as all the kids hide in the trains, calling out to her tauntingly. The scene goes on for much longer than we would expect, and there is no resolution. She doesn't break down, she doesn't speak out what she is thinking. We just see her wandering around, no kids in sight, but they are heard in the air, coming from every direction ... and we already know her pain about children ... so her search for the kids, her fruitless search through the empty dilapidated trains, is excruciating. There's a moment near the end of the scene when she walks into an empty compartment and sits down. We aren't sure what is happening. At that moment, we can see out the window - a train hurtling by - on the working tracks 100 yards away. The sound of the movement fills the air, and slowly, the camera closes in on her face. She sits there, still, and her eyes are closed. But Leila Hatami is such a good actress that I could feel her melancholy and her psychic pain vibrating on the surface of her skin. The eyes are so important for actors. Here, she does not use them, and she does not need them. Her sadness about children radiates out of her face, as the train shrieks by in the distance.
It's a stunning sequence. Strangely powerful, and it retains much of its mystery. It's hard to talk about. Because I want to talk about "what it's about" ... but that's not really the point with a movie like Deserted Station.
The film has stayed with me.
April 6, 2008
Leila, (director: Dariush Mehrjui) - Marriage and infertility in modern-day Iran
Dariush Mehrjui, director of Leila, is a figure who embodies the entire 20th journey of Iranian film. Check out his stunning bio here. His films have often been festival favorites, garnering great international acclaim. His journey as a film-maker is a personal one (as can be said about most Iranian directors - they make what pleases them, and hopes it will pass muster with the regime) - he tackles issues that matter to him (the struggle of post-revolutionary Iran to find its way) - and also the always-thorny issue of women in Iran. He is fearless, when you know what he is up against. In Leila he brings up the unspeakable, and examines it, delves into it, lets the events play themselves out - without too much intervention on his part. The implications are enormous, his critique implicit.
Leila (played by Leila Hatami) and Reza (played by Ali Mosaffa) are newlyweds. (Also, I just love that these two actors are married in real life. The rapport you see between them is genuine.) And on Leila's birthday she discovers that she is infertile. So begins a year of testing, and medical consultations, and increasing desperation. Reza tries to assure Leila that he did not marry her for babies. He doesn't even really like kids. He loves her. But unfortunately, his family feels otherwise. Reza is the only son in a family of daughters, and it is not just inconceivable (bad pun) that he will not bring forth a child (preferably a boy) but not an option. This is a modern-day story - these are not peasants, or illiterate third-world people. They live in luxury. They have cars and good jobs. But Reza's mother (a horrifying woman, a true Medusa, everyone turns to stone when they look at her - she's played with a relish by Jamileh Sheikhi) insists that Reza WILL have a child, and he must take a second wife. It is this journey, the fight over the second wife (which implies the fight in Iran between tradition and modernism), that makes up the true story of the film. So not only does Leila have to deal with the fact that she cannot get pregnant, an issue that most women have strong feelings about - regardless of their culture - she has to deal with the fact that Reza's family believes she needs to be put aside, for other concerns. She will be "first wife", everyone reassures her, but there will, indeed, be a second wife. Reza has all kinds of feelings about this, too - because his match with Leila is a true love match. She is the only woman for him. But the family will not be denied. And so Leila and Reza find themselves in an upside-down world, a world that sometimes is horrifying, insensitive, and yet what are they to do? They fight, they make up, they find the humor in the situation (which is truly amazing to watch - and makes you ache for them ... because you can feel their love, the fact that they can crack up about how absurd it all is) ... but in the end, what is there to do? Should they run away? Where no one knows them, where they can just live without the pressure of their families to be a certain way? Leila and Reza return from the infertility doctor with the bad news, and are at odds with one another. They don't know where to look, what to say. We have already seen them previous to this scene, laughing and talking and making fun of things ... so their silence is deafening, and we feel the loss of their earlier comradeship. Leila says to Reza, "What should we do tonight?" Reza opens the fridge and looks in, contemplating, and replies, "We could stay home, whip up something to eat, moon over each other ... and then maybe watch a movie?' Just that one line alone ensures that I will be invested in this relationship and what happens to it. I love them both.
The movie has an overall impression of lightness, even with the scenes of deep grief and solitude. There are countless scenes of Leila and Reza (husband and wife) driving the highways - we see out the front windshield - sometimes it is blaring sunlight, we see the mountains to the north of Tehran, the bustling city streets around them ... and sometimes it is dusk, the sky a deep dark blue, the streetlamps at the edge of the highway stretching off into the distance. Reza and Leila's heads silhouetted against the landscape, as they chat about what happened during the day, the various "second wives" they have interviewed. It's chillingly normal.
There is a great heaviness in their world, events have moved beyond their control, and both of them are caught up in it - to family obligations, to their own sense of truth, to their desire to make the other happy (which is one of the major fault-lines of the film) ... but the look of the film, the feel of the montages, the way characters fade in and out as they walk down hallways, showing the disorientation at the heart of grief, that you literally do not know where you are at times, you lose substance, you become like air ... is all very light. You yearn for someone (other than Reza's monstrous mother, that is) to put a foot down, to say, "No. Here is where we stop. Here is the ground beneath our feet, and we will go no further." But what happens when your desire to please overrides all other considerations? What happens when depression - deep and acute - fogs your vision? Where does happiness lie? In yourself? In your spouse? Can one spouse be happy when the other is in despair? How do we stay connected, in the midst of our shared loss?
Leila and Reza try to fight it out. But at times they are working at cross purposes. And in the world depicted in Leila, a young married couple is never alone. Their families are chattering in their ears at all times, whatever is going on in the relationship is everyone's business, the phone rings off the hook throughout the film. You cannot say No to your family. You cannot screen your calls. There would be hell to pay. The atmosphere is suffocating. At times I wanted to say to Reza or Leila, as they sat in their house, mourning, fighting, silently enduring - and the phone kept ringing - I wanted to say, "Let the machine pick up! Don't answer!" But no. They can't.
In their world, their parents - and aunts and uncles - all have a right to intervene, to interject themselves, to ask nosy questions, to talk incessantly about sperms and eggs and Leila and Reza's sex life- as though it is anybody's business! Leila and Reza are not given a chance to interpret their own experience and figure out what they want to do, with the news that she is infertile. It is a raw wound. For both of them. Terrible news, painful, shatteringly so. But the way it is treated by their families (not all members, but certainly the most vocal) as a problem to be solved, with no sensitivity, everyone barges right into the center of the action, discussing Leila's "barren womb" and Reza's frustrated sperm, no holds barred. An infertile woman is public property. A family crisis.
It's a painful film, but with many moments of great joy ... and I was left, at the end, with hope. But then again, I'm certifiable.
Leila and Reza are happy. We see a series of moments in their lives, shot Cassavetes-style, with very little editorializing. We just see moments, out of context, but they add up to a whole, an impression more than a factual representation ... a montage-effect of an entire relationship. We see Leila and Reza having a candlelight dinner at home, and cracking each other up over nothing. She bursts out laughing, he wants to know what is funny, she can barely speak, which starts him laughing, which makes her lose it all over again. They enjoy each other.
We move on. Moments are not dwelt upon or analyzed. Reza shows up at the door of their lovely house with random ridiculous gifts, the sole reason behind them to make her howl with laughter. Which she does.
In these simple scenes, we see that both members of this couple are devoted to pleasing the other. Even if it means being silly. One of their favorite things to do is to make shish kebab, grilling it outside in their backyard. They chop up the vegetables and meat together, Reza mans the grill, Leila mixes the yogurt sauce, and it's nighttime, cool, they are alone, in their love and their simple pleasures of marriage.
Again, we don't get many scenes of this - just 3 or 4 at the beginning - and that is all we need. The relationship is set up. The love between them is established (without anyone ever saying, "I love you.") Most of what they do together is laugh. They like to go out to eat. They like Japanese food. You know. Regular newlywed stuff.
You do get the sense of their families hovering on the outskirts. It's a loud noisy gossipy world, of busybodies and nosy questions. Leila and Reza, before they get the bad news, treat it all with humor and tolerance. Within a week of their getting married, everyone asks when they will get pregnant. The film opens with Leila's birthday - and Leila and Reza going to parties - first at his family's house, and then at her family's house. We can see the differences between the two families: Reza's family is a bit austere, they live in a towering marble mansion, with elegant green walls, and artwork everywhere, a bit chilly. Reza's mother and his aunt run everything - they remind me a bit of Regan and Goneril from King Lear. Reza has three sisters, formidable women in their own right, married themselves - and they end up becoming important allies later on. Reza's poor father is henpecked and overrun, he says things like, "I have no idea what is going on in this house" as the women race around, chattering and making plans ... as he retreats to his study.
But he is nobody's fool, as we discover later. It is just that he has learned the power of silence and withdrawal. But when he does speak? Wow. You better listen. Not only does he hold a part of himself separate from his overbearing wife, but he maintains a slow still pool of kindness and compassion, within him. It is a cruel world, and Leila and Reza will be overrun by it ... but Reza's father sits back, and looks at Leila, with kindness. He can see what she is going through. He can see her pain, and he feels for her. And you realize that that is no small thing. That compassion is actually everything.
But what is, essentially, so chilling about Reza's family - and I think the house Mehrjui chose to place them in is indicative of a larger point he was making - is that they are the ultimate in privileged. They have great wealth. They have cell phones and also social power (any young girl would be thrilled to be a "second wife" marrying into such a family). And yet, when push comes to shove, this ancient and cruel tradition of polygamy emanates from his family. Not Leila's, who are more traditional, certainly not as wealthy. Leila's family, when they find out about the second wife, are horrified, and furious. We might think (in our mistaken preconceived notions) that it would be opposite - that Leila's family, their lower class status - would be the ones clinging to "the old ways". That modernism and technology, in and of themselves, bring enlightenment, and represent a break with the past. But no, that would be too easy - and Mehrjui is not interested in the easy way out. We make assumptions. And Mehrjui shows us where we are wrong (but again, without a heavy hand. All of this is implied - you just have to look at Reza's parents house in comparison to Leila's parents ... the difference is right there).
At Leila's birthday party, Reza's mother - who reminds me of a fat black widow "s" - with her big bug-eyed glasses and cooing dominating smile - comes up to the camera, which we are to understand is Leila's point of view - and whispers that Reza needs to have a son, and soon.
Or Reza's older sister walks up to the camera and whispers that Leila needs to make sure Reza doesn't get too fat, that she needs to feed him such and such ...
Anything that has to do with Reza is up for conversation. He is the King, the golden child, the beloved son who has been babied and pampered by a houseful of domineering women. The fact that Reza has any balls at all (and he does, he really does) is amazing. His main goal is to make his wife happy, and to be a good husband. But this one goal ends up butting against his mother's goals for him. And Reza is caught.
At first, I didn't like the convention of actors talking right to the camera, it seemed too obvious ... but by the end of the film, as it used again and again, it took on a different aspect. It is always the women who speak directly to Leila ... and their comments and "gentle suggestions" (which are actually commands) begin to add up to an overriding sense that Leila is not alone in her own head. She cannot make up her own mind ... the voices of the others take over. Sometimes Mehrjui puts an echo on those voices, to show that there is a reverb. And eventually, all these black-veiled women end up feeling like a Greek chorus, prophesiers of doom or revelation. And Leila can't ignore their whisperings. She lies in bed, by herself, and hears them still.
You can tell, in these early scenes, despite the fact that Leila and Reza obviously have an open and loving relationship, that man is King. Reza is the beloved only son. Leila is just a conduit for his seed. It is her job to produce. Get crackin', dear.
We move on from the party at Reza's parents house to the party at Leila's parents house. This house is a more traditional Middle Eastern house - one-story - with a tall gate blocking the garden and house from public view. The tables are low to the ground, and everyone sits on the floor. The kitchen bustles with activity, and the men in the family sit around eating, laughing, making dirty jokes, and teasing the women. One of the men plays a guitar (or a Persian version of such) ... accompanying the raucous family gathering with music. The walls are lined with books (how I yearned to browse those shelves!). Leila has a younger sister, who is mischievous and still single, she is Leila's best friend and confidante. There is also an uncle (played by Mohamad Reza Sharifinia) who is one of my favorite characters in the film - Uncle Hossein. He wears a long robe, he has a flowing beard, he is single, and makes huge pronouncements about what his wife should be, and everyone laughs in response. "She should be beautiful and educated and rich ... but she also shouldn't talk too much!" Everyone howls, and says, "Who would have you, Hossein??" There's a nice easy feeling here, with these people. They cook together, eat together, sing together, and Reza is accepted as a beloved member of the family.
That man right there is Uncle Hossein. He is a breath of fresh air.
The honeymoon is soon over. Leila and Reza have not gotten pregnant, and so they go to see a doctor. The hospital is cold, clinical, and empty. We see Leila and Reza walking down a hall together, and they look so small, dwarfed not only by the building, but by their new circumstance. The doctor is female, glamorous, unsmiling, with a gauzy white chador. She is from another world, the world of medicine, and certainty, where words like "ovum" and "progesterone" and "ovaries" are thrown around, as though they are not knives, cutting deeply into someone's personal experience. It's not her fault. She's a doctor. But Leila and Reza sit and listen to her, realizing what is ahead of them - fertility treatments, maybe artificial insemination, a long road ... and the doctor's voice goes into an echo, leaving the two of them disoriented, and alone.
Tests are done. Leila and Reza are not even able to wait in peace, their phone rings off the hook - Reza's mother and his witch-like aunt - wanting to know what the prognosis is. They continuously sound the same refrain, to Leila: "It can't be Reza's problem. We've never had such a problem in our family. Reza is fine, it must be you who is the problem." Leila shows amazing forbearance, listening to all of this. Reza is starting to break free from his family, in the face of all of this, you can feel it. He ceases caring (at least openly) about having a child. What he wants is to be with Leila, and to have a happy marriage. He insists he doesn't care about having kids, and you know what? I believe him. Not that he wouldn't welcome children, but he's certainly not about to divorce Leila if the problem is hers. That would be unthinkable. Through the course of the film, one of the things that becomes apparent is that, for Reza, there is only one woman in the world. And that is Leila. If she departs, then so does his chance for happiness. I am sad for Leila, and what she has to go through. But in many ways, I am sadder for Reza. He is the one who is truly caught, and he is the one who is going to lose. Ali Mossafa, the actor playing Reza, is wonderful. Infertility happens to both parties in a marriage. And he is willing to give up the dream of children to have a happy wife again. He says to her once, the saddest line in the film, "I want the old you back."
They learn that it is Leila who is infertile. So commences a year of exhausting upsetting tests and medication and ovulation and herbal remedies ... Leila and Reza visit an orphanage, just to see what the process would be for adoption. They're not sure if it's what they want to do, but they are weighing all the options. Children play outside like maniacs and Leila wanders among them, looking at them, laughing, sometimes not laughing, taking them all in, trying to see how it would feel to her to take one of them, not her own, home. As she wanders through the children, Reza stands off to the side, watching her. I'm not sure what I would say that I see on his face. It's not just one thing.
Love for her. Sadness for her. Sadness for himself. Trying to gain strength for whatever they have to face. Trying to reconcile his dreams for himself with the reality in front of him. It's a lovely moment.
And the pressure is growing, from Reza's side of the family. At a family picnic, Reza's mother takes Leila aside and says that it is time to start thinking about Reza taking a second wife. Leila wouldn't be so selfish as to deny her her posterity, would she? The second wife would merely be a baby-maker, she wouldn't usurp Leila's position ... Leila must think about it, and must also convince Reza that this is the right step. As a person living in America, that scene is the most difficult to handle. It's foreign, it seems cruel and savage, it seems that Leila is not being considered, that her pain is not being taken seriously. Her pain is selfish. Stop whining about being infertile - what is important is that Reza procreates. Leila tries to say to her mother-in-law, "Reza doesn't really care for children ..." and Reza's mother pooh-poohs this. Of course he does. He is just saying that so Leila won't feel bad.
She's a horrible woman. Insinuating, undercutting, dominating ... Leila "owns" what Reza's mother says to her. She begins to look at Reza in a new way, and wonders if it is true ... is he just placating her? Will he regret staying with her? Will he regret having no children? Will he grow to hate her? Reza's mother assures her that this is her future. Leila begins to lose her grip on herself, and her own sense of her relationship. Even though Reza says to her, in private, "Don't listen to my mother. She's bossy and full of shit. I don't care about kids. I love you. I want you. I don't want a second wife."
There are heart-aching scenes of Leila praying by herself. Sometimes there is a voiceover, her quiet voice saying, "God, why are you punishing me? Have I sinned?" Other times, there is just silence, with the echoing of the muezzins in the distance, calling people to prayer. Leila, though, prays alone. It is her own grief. She feels cursed by God.
And on a superficial note, Leila Hatami is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, and the camera adores her face, caressing its curves, mulling upon her chin dimple, she's got a face made for the movies - gorgeous, evocative, yet asymmetrical, and totally itself. When she cracks, and starts to weep, it is even more terrible, because her beauty is so singular and serene, so attention-getting in and of itself.
And so begins the battle, the main battle of the film, which has multiple tentacles. There is the growing pressure from Reza's mother and aunt, to start interviewing second wives. There is the increasing strain between Leila and Reza. Reza makes himself clear - he does not want a second wife. He would rather be alone with Leila, childless. A baby (ie: sex) without love is meaningless to him. Leila begins to sway to the other side, she begins to put the pressure on Reza to start thinking about a second wife. It is mainly so that she can X herself out of the picture, and martyr herself. Her pain is so huge that she feels it cannot be born any other way. Again, this may be incomprehensible to us, in this society - but Mehrjui makes the point here that it should be incomprehensible to anyone with a caring heart. In his way, his film is a revolutionary document. A clarion call for equal rights and for compassion. Leila's response to the savagery is understandable in that context. Who could bear it? She cannot bear seeing Reza unhappy and she wonders if Reza might be happier with a child. Reza begins to cave. He is overrun by women (as usual). He is furious about this. There's a great scene where Leila and Reza fight and Reza explodes, "Why hasn't anyone asked me MY opinion about this? Why doesn't anyone care what I am going through?" It's a valid question.
There's a tragic scene where Leila and Reza sit at home, drinking tea. Suddenly Reza picks up his empty cup and looks down at the tea leaves and begins to read his fortune out loud. "There is a man who is so in love with a woman that he will do anything to make her happy. The man wants to run away with her, where they can be alone in their love." Leila picks up her cup, and reads her fortune. "There is a woman who only wants her love to be happy. She will do anything for him."
But by this point, Leila and Reza have different definitions of what will make the other happy. Leila, even in her misery, thinks that what Reza's mother says is true. And that what will make Reza happy will be to have a second wife, who will bear him a child. Reza thinks that what will make Leila happy is to turn her back on all of the whisperings from his family, and re-enter their lives together, as a couple, childless or no.
Reza's sisters, who, up until this point, have been a mystery, descend upon Leila one afternoon. There are three of them. They clomp up the walk, chadors billowing, and they look vaguely terrifying. I think it was Guy de Maupassant who described fully veiled Arab women as looking like "death out for a walk". To me, that's what Reza's sisters (even though they are not Arab) look like as they tramp loudly and seriously towards Leila's door.
But then ... amazingly ... they sit Leila down, talk right to her (to the camera) and tell her to get a backbone. She needs to say to their mother, "Take a hike, lady." They warn her that if she accepts the proposition of taking another woman into her home, she will lose Reza forever. They bring forth arguments - valid ones. A man can't help but fall in love with a woman he makes love to. Especially if she bears him a child. Could you let Reza fall in love with someone else? Reza is a man - but he is dominated by his mother - don't let her run all over you! Stand up for yourself, say NO - tell her in no uncertain terms that the second wife thing is OFF. Reza is depending on YOU to stand up for yourself and for your marriage! He is only succumbing because he thinks YOU want it!!
So suddenly, "death out for a walk" becomes a welcome collective voice of humanity and sanity. I love those women. They had kept quiet, out of deference to their mother and Reza for a while - but finally decided: You know what? This is nuts. Let's go talk to Leila.
But they do not convince her. Leila says she has "turned to stone". She becomes annoyingly passive, and hands the reins over to Reza's mother. Reza says things to Leila like, "I wish you would scream at me and tell me that you would never accept a second wife ... I wish you would stamp your feet and say No!" But she doesn't. In a sense, she leaves him alone in it. A very selfish act. But understandable, nonetheless. Her guilt is huge. She looks at his sad worried face and knows that it is because of her.
So Reza's mother and aunt begin to propose possible women as second wives. Leila is bound to secrecy and told not to tell her family. Which is so unethical and sneaky, and of course only what we should expect from Reza's bitch of a mother (who, in the end, gets what's coming to her - in one of the funniest shots in the whole film. I laughed out loud and clapped when I saw it, thinking, "Ha! Serves you right, lady!!")
Reza and Leila drive around Tehran, to go on these ghoulish "interviews". Leila is dropped off in a public place, and she wanders the streets, or in the park ... waiting for Reza to come back from his interview and pick her up. It's all so absurd. Leila can hardly believe what is happening to her. Reza is not enthusiastic about any of it. He makes it clear that any possible second wife must be "cleared" by Leila first. Otherwise, no go. But you can sense Reza's dread. He drives off, leaving Leila alone.
And the funniest and most wonderful things start to happen on their long drives home, as Leila asks Reza about each woman he had to meet. These are my favorite scenes in the film, these drives. Leila asks for a report - "Okay, so tell me everything. What was she like?" And Reza starts to regale her with stories - about one woman's facial tick, and one woman's cheeky rude manner, how one of them was pissed that he planned on staying in Iran, how one never spoke but her father grilled Reza on his financial situation ... how one of the women blurted out, "So your wife can't have kids, right? You should divorce her, and marry me ..." ... All of these crazy stories, and they are not told in a gloomy way, but as ridiculous comedic set-pieces. Leila listens, and laughs hysterically - saying stuff like, "Did she really say it like that?" Or "Come on, you're exaggerating ..." In a creepy way, not totally explainable, Leila and Reza become closer during those drives, making fun of these poor prospective second wives. I love that! It's not "rational", and it's a bit beyond the pale ... but don't we, as humans, sometimes behave in the weirdest of ways, especially under duress? Reza does an imitation of the bitchy mother of one of the girls, and Leila cracks up. It's like they're in it together. They're in it together. I cling to that, watching the film ... still feeling that somewhere, beneath all of it, they are holding hands, maintaining that original bond. A lovely touch, those scenes.
I love the one dinner scene, at home, when Leila starts to tell Reza about one of the prospective women that Reza's mother wanted him to meet. She says, "Her father is a colonel in the army." Reza glances up, deadpan, and says, "A colonel in the army?" Like: my second wife will be a colonel in the army? His joke takes Leila by surprise, and she starts cracking up - and then begins a long goofy scene of the two of them making this prospective wife more and more grotesque: "Maybe she will be bald." "I wonder if she will have an artificial eye." "I think she might have two artificial limbs." By the end, they are both crying with laughter.
You rarely need to have actors say the words "I love you" in order to convince us in the audience that they are in love. In fact, it is better to NOT have them say "I love you". The "Maybe she'll be a gimp" and the "I bet she will have a big gold buck tooth" scene says, clearer than any other kind of language: "I love you, dear." "And yes, I love you."
And what wonderful film-making that is.
I will not tell you how the film ends. All I can say is that it is a searing unforgiving examination of a situation that affects the lives of millions of people - and also a window into a world that remains somewhat mysterious to those of us on the outside. But Leila is not opaque. It is not the closed walls of the Middle Eastern houses, with private life safely ensconced beyond view. Mehrjui takes us back there, into that world, into the lives of these people, struggling to do the best they can, to be their best selves, and to cope with the cards that God has dealt them.
March 30, 2008
Offside, dir. Jafar Panahi
5 or 6 years ago, Iranian film director Jafar Panahi was headed off to a soccer game at Azadi Stadium in Tehran. His 10 year old daughter begged to come with. Females are not allowed to go to the stadium to watch soccer games. It is the rule. Panahi explained to his daughter - No, you cannot ... it is the law that you cannot go. It's a stupid law, but it is the law. But she begged. Panahi was not about to stay home - he wanted to go to the game - so he struck a deal with his daughter. He said, "Okay - we'll go - and we'll see if we can sneak you in somehow. But if they catch us - you have to come back home, because I want to go to the game." His daughter agreed. Of course, they get to the security gates at the stadium, and immediately the guards said, "Nope. She can't go in." As agreed, the daughter walked off - in the direction of home - and Panahi went on in to his seat in the stadium. About 10 minutes later, he looked up - and saw his daughter strolling down the steps towards him. She sat beside him. He was gobsmacked to see her and asked, "How did you get in?" And she said, "There is always a way."
That comment ("There is always a way") was the germ of the idea for Offside, Panahi's 2006 film about a group of 6 girls who dress up as boys and try to get in to see a soccer match in Tehran.
The girls are not trying to sneak in to see just a soccer match - but THE soccer match in 2005 - when Iran played Bahrain and won, therefore qualifying for the World Cup. Much of Offside was filmed in real-time, during that game. The celebrations you