And here is my next excerpt from my history bookshelf:
Next book on the shelf is The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran
Robin Wright writes from a bias: she loves the Iranian people, and she hates the government. But she has lived and worked there for many years. Each chapter takes on a different topic: freedom of the press (a fascinating chapter: newspapers closing because of censorship and then opening the next day – same paper, different name), birth control (huge government-run campaign to educate the populace about birth control), separation of church and state, Islam and democracy (it is through this book that I was introduced to Abdul Karim Soroush ).
The Last Great Revolution is not that well-written, truth be told. Her prose is rather cursory, and inelegant. If you want one of these “Let’s look at the entire country in 300 pages” type of books about Iran, then I would recommend Persian Mirrors, which is informative, yes, but also beautifully written.
While Wright’s prose is a little bit boring to me, she has an entire chapter on the film industry of Iran, which is interesting and active, and that’s why I really appreciate this book. She interviews the main actors, the directors, about the challenges they have with the censors. So many Iranian films are about kids, because filmmakers decide to just stay away from portraying adults altogether.
I’m going to post an excerpt about the film industry in Iran. Specifically about one of its biggest stars Akbar Abdi. Robin Wright lists a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini at the top of this chapter: “There is no fun in Islam.” Thanks for the sunshine, pal.
The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran
Akbar Abdi is Iran’s greatest comedic actor. A playful, pudgy man with fat cheeks and a thick walrus mustache that turns down instead of up at the sides, Abdi is best known for his breakthrough role in a breakthrough film called The Snowman.
The movie broke so much ground, in fact, that it was pretty much banned indefinitely by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in 1995. The black-comedy plotline involved an Iranian who went to Turkey in a desperate bid to get a visa to the United States. He repeatedly got scammed, leading him into ever deeper intrigues and compromising antics. But that wasn’t the most controversial part of the film. What really offended censors was that Abdi played a woman.
“I was the Tootsie or Mrs. Doubtfire of Iran,” he said with a mischievous smile when I visited him in 1998 on another movie set in Tehran.
As one of the character’s ruses, Abdi did exactly what Dustin Hoffman did as Tootsie and Robin Williams did as Mrs. Doubtfire. He disguised himself as a woman to get what he couldn’t as a man. The main scam in The Snowman had Abdi dressed as a woman paying money to a man he thinks is an American to marry him — since marriage to an American is one of the few surefire ways for an Iranian to qualify for a visa.
But to conservative censors, the plot was also a surefire way to get slapped with an official ban for being “un-Islamic”, even though The Snowman was supported by the official Islamic Propagation Organization and even though the character ended up falling in love with an Iranian woman and returning home.
“It was a wonderful part. A man trying to be a woman is one of three roles every actor wants to play. The other two are an addict and a crazy person,” Abdi said, puffing on a Marlboro Light during a filming break. He’d just finished entertaining the cast and crew with a funny Turkish song and a little jig. They were all still chuckling in the background.
The Snowman did finally open in Iran, however. After President Khatami’s 1997 election, one of the new culture minister’s first acts was to lift the ban on the Abdi film. It instantly became a box-office hit. I saw the film several months after it was released; it was still playing in Tehran cinemas. For his role, Abdi told me proudly that he’d been nominated for a best actor Tandee, Iran’s equivalent of the Oscar. The film also grossed more than any other movie that year — by far.
Abdi claimed that he wasn’t bitter about the delay.
“I wasn’t worried, because the film probably was a little bit ahead of its time,” he reflected. “Even three years later, it still had problems.”
Big problems, in fact. On the day The Snowman was to premiere in Isfahan, militant Hizbollah thugs attacked the local theatre. They destroyed posters of the film. They threatened people lined up for the show, including females and children. And then they attacked anyone who didn’t flee.
The cinema succumbed — and shut down. The Snowman opened in November 1997 in twenty-two other Iranian cities, but not in Isfahan.
Just to make sure that the theatre didn’t try again, militants returned for several days and held “God is Great” victory prayers on the street outside. No one even tried to stop them. Nor did police and city officials in Isfahan step in, despite the fact that Hizbollahis repeatedly broke several laws.
In a sign of the times, the showdown was defused only after the leading local ayatollah intervened — on behalf of the movie. Ayatollah Jaleleddin Taheri used his Friday prayer sermon to scold Isfahan officials for their failure to act — either to ensure law and order or to allow an unbanned movie to be shown.
“If the police and intelligence forces and the governor’s office are unable to deal with them,” the seventy-year-old cleric warned, “then let them tell me and I’ll put them in their places.”
Taheri’s word was final. So The Snowman finally opened in Isfahan too, several weeks after its premiere elsewhere. Again, it was an instant hit.
I asked Abdi if humor was more sensitive in an Islamic theocracy — or if there was even such a thing as Islamic humor.
“It’s better not to use terms like that,” he replied. “After all, what is human humor? It’s the same for Christians too.”
Then with a twinkle in his eye, he boomed, “Oh, I’m afraid the ceiling will collapse because I’m telling such lies!”
The film’s producer and several crew members who’d gathered around to listen laughed again.
“What I mean is that a human should be a human and know God. But he shouldn’t be afraid if he says this kind of thing is true. We’re all humans with similar values,” he added, in a more serious tone.
I asked Abdi if he was religious, and if being religious was important to an actor hoping to make it in the Islamic Republic.
“I can’t say I’m very religious, but I believe in God. I believe in God very much,” he said.
“At the beginning of my life, I believed because of my mother. Since I loved her very much. I wanted to follow her way. As a child, I prayed and fasted because I wanted her to love me. It’s the same at the other end of life. Sometimes when people grow older they think they should get closer to God. They think if they no longer commit the sins they did when they were young, then they’ll get closer to God,” Abdi added. “I’m not like that. Now I really believe in God.”
The thirty-eight-year old actor, however, hardly fit the outside world’s image of a devout Iranian believer. He had shaken my hand when we were introduced. During the filming break, he sat across from me in a heavy military uniform for his part as a famous nineteenth-century shah. The bulky black jacket with gold trim and epaulets was wide open, fully exposing his white T-shirt underneath.
I asked Abdi whom he most admired as an actor or director.
“God,” he said, pausing. Then he smiled. He clearly thought my questions were taking the religious stuff too far.
“No,” he said, smiling and waving his hand sideways in the air as if to erase his words.
“It’s probably Buster Keaton. For him, humanity is important. He cares about the other side of the coin. Sometimes when I’ve seen his films or biography I’ve actually broken into tears because I see a similarity between us. He was a very lonely person. And usually comedians know sadness better than others.”
Before he resumed filming in the opulent Mirror Room of Golestan Palace — golestan means “rose garden” and is so named because of the splendid flower beds alla round it — I asked Abdi if there was any other daring role he wanted to play.
“I think playing a bisexual would be very interesting,” he mused.
In light of my conversation with Mohajerani about the arts portraying homosexuality, I asked Abdi if he really thought that kind of role could ever be written into an Iranian movie script.
“Who would’ve thought a man could play the role of Tootsie in Iran?” he replied. “So maybe even that’s possible here.
“Maybe …” he repeated, for emphasis.
“Someday,” he added. Then he turned and went back to the set, cracking jokes in Persian to amuse the crew.
A few actors do have star quality in Iran. Ihsan, the wiry little taxi driver who’d taken me to Golestan Palace, had lingered on the edge of the set during my interviews. He came up close when I talked with Abdi, almost hovering over me at the end, so I introduced him.
“It was like meeting Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson,” he gushed later. “We don’t get opportunities like this.”
Yet making a film in Iran is not a major production, at least compared with the way most American or European movies are made. Both the cast and crew of Abdi’s movie were tiny — six actors and actresses and a staff of thirty camera, sound, light and set technicians. As in most Iranian films, the director was also the lone screenwriter. The set had no trailers for the stars or caterers for lunch. The cast and crew had all taken public transportation, or driven themselves and parked in the small lot outside the palace. Lunch was strictly brown bag.
Equipment was also sparse. The lone camera was a German-made Arriflex BL4S.
“This kind of camera probably hasn’t been used anywhere in the West for fifteen years or more,” Habib Allahyari, the film’s tall dapper producer told me as I inspected it.
“After eight years of war and two decades of sanctions, we make quality films good enough for the whole world with this old equipment. Give us your facilities and we’ll give you ours — and then we’ll compare films,” he added, though with envy rather than anger.
For all the pride Iranians have in their films, the industry gets few perks. The crew had to suspend shooting for a couple of hours until repairmen quit making banging, clanging noises as they worked on the old downtown palace, built just a few years after Tehran became the capital. The shahs were coronated in the ornate first-floor ballroom before the court aristocracy and diplomatic corps. Anyone can visit now, though few besides foreign tourists bothered a generation after the last shah’s departure.
Iranian movies also tend to be low-budget, to say the least. Abdi’s new movie involved a sixty-day shoot and was onen of the costlier recent productions, Allahyari said. The budget was about $185,000, and it was that high only because the producer counted on a big audience. The last movie Abdi starred in grossed a billion tomans, or about $1.2 million at the exchange rate of the time.
Yet Iran’s vibrant and original cinema may be the richest cultural byproduct of the revolution — often in spite of the revolutionaries themselves.
In the 1990s, Iranian films were good enough to become standards at the world’s major film festivals. And they fared well, taking major prizes at Cannes and other festivals from Switzerland to Singapore, Canada to South Korea, Italy to India to Israel, Japan to Germany, Australia to Argentina, Belgium to Brazil, Spain to China. They won for best picture, best foreign film, best director, best script, best actor, best documentary, best short film, and best jury. The Taste of Cherries, the story of a man talked out of suicide by the taste of cherries, won the Cannes Palm d’Or in 1997.
Iranian films even did well in America. The New York Film Critics Circle named The White Balloon, a poignant tale of a little girl and her brother who lose their money on the Iranian New Year and their encounters with people who try to help them retrieve it, as the best foreign film in 1996. It also won the Cannes Camera d’Or for best feature film in 1995.
Of the seven-year-old girl who plays the lead role, the Hollywood Reporter raved, “She displays a range of emotions that would stymie Meryl Streep.”
Life in the Mist won the Horizon award for short films at the Aspen Filmfest in 1999. It was a powerfully simply story of a young Kurdish boy who made the family’s only cash income by carrying goods on his mule along the rough Iran-Iraq border. With the death of the mule, he was forced to carry the goods himself, in turn triggering other challenges and adventures.
In 1999, Lincoln Center in New York, the American Film Institute in Washington and the Chicago Art Institute all held retrospectives honoring director Dariush Mehrjui, arguably the father of modern Iranian film, who’s been ranked by both domestic and foreign critics as the most important of Iran’s new generation of directors.
In Hollywood, Children of Heaven was one of the five films nominated for a foreign Oscar in 1999. The heartrending tale centers on a nine-year old boy named Ali who accidentally lost his seven-year-old sister Zahra’s only shoes, a tattered pair with pink bows. To hide the loss from their poor and occasionally employed father, Ali and Zahra swapped the only pair of shoes between them, racing to meet after her school shift ended and before his began. Sharing a single pair repeatedly got both children in trouble. To solve their problems, Ali entered a long distance race — in which, of course, shoes were a prize. The catch was that it was third prize. The subtle ending did not include Ali’s winning the shoes.
The competition for best foreign film taht year was arguably the toughest in Oscar history. Iran’s Children of Heaven was up against Italy’s Life is Beautiful and Brazil’s Central Station — both of which were so impressive that their foreign stars were also nominated for best-actor and best-actress Oscars. Children of Heaven lost to Life is Beautiful, which also took the best-actor Oscar.
Despite the rich variety of plots, Iranian films tend to share several striking features: Characters aren’t crafted from superlatives — the prettiest, the wealthiest, most powerful, bravest or strongest, nor the most evil, ugliest, dumbest, or most cowardly. They’re instead quite ordinary folk: small shopkeepers, poor families, children or housewives. The settings are not sets but real homes and back alleys, villages and schoolytards, downtown shops and public streets.
The stories also don’t center on earthbound asteroids, spy escapades, sinking ocean liners or historic epics. Little is glamorous.
The common thread in many Iranian films is instead a deceptively simple story line culled from small events, encounters or challenges that subtly offer the grist for bigger themes. The heroics involve getting rhough the calamities of daily life, rarely unscathed. Many amount to modern fables that leave viewers with hauntingly deep feelings.
