A brief analysis of Iranian Cinema
By Jashvitha Dhagey
Iranian filmmakers have the ability to take you through a journey of emotions that are entirely yours even though they are a response to their stories. Iranian cinema tells us stories that take place in the world we are part of sans the glitz, glamour, people who look the same and of course, Iranian cinema doesn’t sell sex. You don’t see ‘happily ever afters’. You see life unfold in front of you as if it were happening to you in the same moment. Iranian cinema will prove to you that life can be lived even without a whirlwind romance.
The Cyclist(1987) directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf is a film that stands out because of its ability to completely draw you into the story. It’s not the simple storyline but the characters. Makhmalbaf has explored the lives of characters who are not the quintessential heroes. They are people with no money and enough struggles to make one want to give up on life. It’s a story of people who give their everything to attain things that the people watching the film won’t even have to bat an eyelid about. The Cyclist is about a father-son duo struggling to keep the mother alive despite living in poverty.
A bicycle forms the central part of the theme, much like in Bicycle Thieves. It becomes the protagonists’ lottery ticket to a slightly better life and also betrays them in the end. It is extremely painful to watch the father Nasim played by Moharram Zaynalzadeh pedal around the same square while people come to watch him. It gets even more painful when the man who set him up to seven continuous days of pedalling runs away with all the money he earns because of him. All through the movie, one is hopeful that Nasim gets the money to treat his wife but instead, the audience gets a taste of life.
The music in this film stays in your head because it is the element that draws you into the scene while the shots keep you glued. There are some lovely shots that show the curves of the small square that Nasim is riding in. It makes you nauseous, suffocated and angry at the same time. Nasim not getting off the cycle even after the seven days end makes you feel that maybe he doesn’t want to stop cycling because he’d have to return to his grim reality. One begins to wonder if anything done by one is ever out of one’s will. It makes you think about the people in power who reached there because they exploited people like Nasim and continue to do so. It’s especially infuriating to watch the men in the car deciding what to bet on next at the end of the film,
Borrowing from her father Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s style is his daughter Samira Makhmalbaf who stands her ground with The Apple (1998). Telling the story of a family with a blind mother and a father who keeps both his daughters locked up for the entirety of their lives until they turn 11 and a social worker intervenes. She forces him to let the girls go outside. With strong scenes that convey the father’s anguish, the mother’s helplessness and the children’s innocence, this film just makes space for itself in your head. The end scene is one that is extremely powerful with the blind mother reaching out to the apple. It is symbolic of her husband’s fears coming true. It might seem like he wanted to keep his family safe from the apple that symbolises the fruit that also supposedly corrupted Adam in the Garden of Eden.
Iranian films possess a quality that makes them speak directly to your heart. There isn’t a more inclusive kind of cinema that captures the struggles of being rich, poor, young or old. Abbas Kiarostami’s film Where is the friend’s home? (1987) is a heartwarming story of a boy of eight who is trying his best to help his friend even though every force in the universe is against him. This film is a brilliant reminder of the difficulties that make up a child’s existence. It reminds the adults watching it of the frustration that they themselves went through with their issues being trivialized because somehow, it’s only the adults who lead serious lives.
It has beautiful scenes of houses set in the hillside and viewed from a child’s perspective. It is this child’s perspective that makes these seemingly mundane fixtures so amusing to watch. Where is the friend’s house? can be compared to The 400 Blows (1959) for telling us a story from a child’s point of view. The innocence with which he acts upon his fears of his teacher for his friend can easily bring us back the trauma of events that feel silly in hindsight. Do we adults ever stop to remember how we felt as children before making children feel the same way as our adults did to us? The end of this film will definitely bring a smile to our faces and make us promise ourselves to be kinder to children even though we know how difficult that is going to be.
If Where is the friend’s house? tells us what life is all about, Taste of Cherry(1997) made by Kiarostami ten years later is a consistent dialogue about death. Set in the grim locales in the outskirts of Tehran, this film can make you ponder about your existence as several characters try to stop the protagonist from attempting suicide. In the end, a taxidermist in desperate need of money agrees to help him but not without telling him that life is about the taste of cherry. We almost think that the protagonist Mr. Badii, played by Homayoun Irshadi has changed his mind when he almost gets into an accident that could have been fatal. We see him rush back to the taxidermist and are filled with a sudden burst of hope only to be disappointed later. We don’t see an end but we know what it is.
Kiarostami gives us a premise to assume the obvious ending even though we don’t see it. Asghar Farhadi doesn’t seem to believe in giving the audience even that with his film A Separation (2011). After a roller coaster of a story that completely grips your senses, you almost feel like an abandoned child at the end. Again, while the adults are busy living their difficult decisions, the audience is forced to look at the world from the viewpoint of a child who is desperately trying to save her parents’ marriage. A beautiful depiction of class divides and prejudices that exist in societies all over the world makes this film global. You don’t know how you want to feel for any of the characters. This often happens in real life too. Humans are not black or white characters. We have several shades of grey and layers of conditioning that make us who we are.
Iranian cinema has captured human emotions on camera for posterity and portrayed them in their rawest forms. If people from the future were to look back at how humans in the past displayed their emotions, these films will show them that truthfully. It almost feels like these are stories that are playing out in our own surroundings and vicinities. The people in them feel like our family, friends and neighbours. What happens to the characters in all these films could very well have happened to us too! While the stories are quite simple, it’s the characters that lend layers to the films. They feel real. One doesn’t feel stupid about relating to these emotions because they are not larger than life. They are life.