Women Without Men

Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari, Iran, 2009 (8.1*)
This story links the lives of four different women living in or near Tehran, Iran during the time, 1953, that their elected President was replaced by the Shah in a CIA-backed coup, after British ships blockaded Iranian oil tankers. Their stories are unified by an idyllic garden location, and the symbology of Eden is apparent. Co-director Shirin Neshat is a visual artist turned director, known for her works exploring gender relations.

One woman is unmarried at 30, living with her brother, who considers her a family disgrace for not yet accepting any suitor. He truly cares more about his own social status in the community than his sister's happiness. Another woman is a miserable and bored prostitute. Another is the jaded wife of a long, boring marriage, whose husband has a younger mistress.

Using some indelible and haunting images, we are given a poetic story of the stuggle of women in a fundamentalist society in political turmoil. Most of the women here had their lives dominated by men, so there was no personal independence for an entire gender. The film succeeds most when it ignores politics and becomes lost in the imagery of people in nature, dwarfed by the vast landscapes here.

It's not surprising that the novel this is based on by Shahrnush Parsipur is banned in Iran, and also this film, it's an important look the plight of women in some cultures of the world, and the hopelessness faced by some of them.

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Half Moon

aka Niwemang
Bahman Ghobadi, France-Iraq-Iran, 2006 (8.6*)
A legendary elderly Kurdish musician named Mamo (Ismail Ghaffari), living in Iran, has finally received government permits, after months of trying, to travel to Iraqi Kurdistan for a final reunion concert with his sons.

They set out on the journey in a derelict bus, but Mamo feels he needs a female singer (Golshifteh Farahani), who are banned in Iran, one he remembers who has the 'voice of a siren'. This excursion to a town of exiled female singers leads to one of the most unforgettable scenes in all of film, as hundreds of women line the rooftops of the town and sing in unison. This scene alone makes this film a must-see for all cinephiles, as there is nothing like it in any western film.

Mamo's journey becomes a metaphor for life, with the old bus becoming a symbol for old, failing bodies. Ghobadi's films are eye openers for those of us in the west - his Turtles Can Fly is perhaps the best anti-war film ever made, in which he used real Kurdish war orphans as the cast to tell an unforgettable and poetic tale.

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Baran

Majid Majidi, Iran, 2001 (8.4*)
aka Hamsay-e Khoda
A locan Iranian teen, Latif (Hossein Abedini) loses his position at a construction site to an illegal Afghan refugee named Bahrat (Zahra Bahrami, who does all her acting with just her eyes, never speaking a word), hired because an accident injured his father with a broken leg. He seeks revenge through a series of pranks, only to discover that Rahmat is actually a girl. Local officials are constantly raiding the site, searching for illegal Afghan workers, who work for less and take jobs away from Iranian citizens (gee, sound familiar?)

Latif begins to feel for the girl, forced to lift heavy bags of cement and to do other demanding labor, and begins to seek out her family in a nearby village of refugees. He discovers more about himself as he finds out about the plight of Raman's family.

This is a small unpretentious film, perhaps a bit light on story development, that says a lot about the universal human condition, and especially about war refugees forced out of their native lands and to seek survival any way they can. It manages to be touching without sentimentality, and loving without romance or personal concerns.

Majidi's films (Children of Heaven) concern the poor and working classes and their struggle for survival, and hopefully can help westerners dispel their prejudices against this part of the world and other religions.

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Turtles Can Fly

Bahman Ghobadi, 2004, Iraq-Iran-France (9.7*)
This is an amazing anti-war film which takes place in a Kurdish village on the border of Iraq and Turkey, just as the 2004 invasion of Iraq by the U.S. takes place. The star of the film is charismatic Soran Ebrahim, as a kid called Satellite because he sets up those dishes for remote areas who otherwise would have no tv. He's also the self-appointed leader of about 200 war orphans, organizing them into work details who earn most of their money by disarming land mines and reselling them, and harvesting spent artillery shells from two decades of war in the area for their scrap metal value. Into this village arrives a beautiful young girl (Ajil Sabari), taking care of her armless brother (who does amazing things with his teeth), and a near-blind infant her brother thinks deserves someone's care, who needs an ankle leash to keep him from wandering away.

This film is amazing for the amount of hope shown by the kids, all but ignored by the mostly shepherding adults, and how perseverance and ingenuity can allow survival in the harshest of conditions, amid a chaotic, war-torn environment. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group on earth without their own country or government, and they have been constantly attacked and persecuted by both Turkey and Iraq. This is one of the more memorable anti-war films ever made and should have a much wider audience, as it's been compared to Schindler's List for emotional impact.

All of the child actors were actual refugees, and this is the first film made in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Red Fish, shown throughout the film, are a symbol of the Iranian new year and symbolize life within life. This was Iran's submission for the Best Foreign Film category at the 2004 Oscars, and won 15 international awards out of 19 nominations.

Awards page at IMDB

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Close-Up

aka Nema-ye Nazdik
Abbas Kiarostami, 1990, Iran (7.5*)
This is a small, sub low-budget pseudo-documentary that has much of the story re-enacted by the original participants. It involves the true story of an unemployed Iranian family man, Ali Sabzian, who impersonates Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a director he idolizes and later meets, director of "The Cyclist", the film he admires. Meeting another fan on a bus, he gains entrance to a middle-class family's home as they all like Mohsen's films. Eventually asking for money, he arouses suspicion, so the family patriarch arranges to have him arrested when he returns to their house.

We join the story there in the film's beginning, following a journalist to the arrest. Later we're with the director of this film, Abbas Kiarostami, as they interview the accused, then Iranian court officials, who decide to let them film the trial. (or was it re-enacted?) Iran, opening up its primitive legal system to journalists with cameras - what's wrong with this story?

It would be a touching story otherwise, but I can't separate myself from the locale and the Iranian regime. This is not an earth-moving case either, mere hero worship and impersonation, perhaps for financial gain, as the man has a family to feed. Just about anyone would perpetrate a minor scam if it could feed their kids at the expense of those apparently well-off, and who would blame him. You feel for the criminal in this (his real crime is just poverty), who appears remorseful, as they all do when caught. I don't buy his self-proclaimed innocence in court myself, but then I'm from the nation with the most laws, most prisoners, most lawyers, most time spent in court in the world!

I wasn't as moved as most critics: the film quality is very poor, the sound perfectly awful, the worst I've ever heard. At times it vibrates into unrecognition, in one scene with director Makhmalbaf, it cuts on and off from his remote microphone, some dialogue being lost entirely. (see El Mariachi for a great example of low-budget excellence, so it can be done, and all in single takes)

I'm convinced this movie was Iranian propaganda. They let Kiarostami film in court because this case meant nothing - were any journalists allowed in Roxanne Saberi's so-called trial? I don't buy the veracity of this film, so it loses it's power without the viewer buying the premise. It's an interesting window into a closed regime, even if a cloudy, poorly made one, so in that regard it's worth seeing, just don't expect any decent production values, but the positive is some openly displayed emotions in a raw and human docudrama.

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