AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Iran proud films1/29/2024 ![]() ![]() When people walk out of the movie, one can guess that their reaction isn’t bad, but it isn’t excellent either. ![]() The only sound is that of small moans as bodies stretched to bring the joints back to life. There is no applause when the end credits roll. One can see that he wants the film to get to the point. His eyes, half-closed behind big prescription glasses, struggle to keep up with the intermission-less, near-three-hour length of the film. The mature gent sitting on my opposite row seems like the niche audience that cares for dry, socially driven stories.Īs Chikkar continues, the gent’s head tilts to rest on his shoulder. Their attire suggests they belong to the upper-middle class tier of society. The distributor, in this case, is Nadeem Mandviwalla, who runs Atrium and Centaurus cinemas as an exhibitor.Īt its 8:15pm show, less than 20 people sit idly mumuring. The discount, I learn from the staff at Karachi’s Atrium Cinema, is the distributor’s prerogative. “How can it calm you down? I don’t get you men.”) And then there are the interludes of musical fantasia, as car-bound karaoke mutates into fourth-wall-breaking lip-syncing of popular tunes by artists who have long since fled Iran.A week into Chikkar’s release, the film’s ticket is selling for 640 rupees instead of the usual 800 rupees. Takes you deep into the galaxies.” (“Galaxies are full of wars,” retorts his mother. “It’s mesmerising,” says the older brother, sharing a moment of truthful intimacy with his mother. Elsewhere, a thermal garment becomes a spacesuit as our down-to-earth characters slip into an intergalactic void, recalling an earlier conversation about Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In one superb twilight long shot, the players are tiny figures dwarfed by the vastness of the sky. Yet somehow we come to share his childish wonder at the mysteries of the world, causing him to kiss the ground and offer praise to the almighty at sublimely inappropriate moments.Ĭinematographer Amin Jafari, whose extensive CV includes Jafar Panahi’s 3 Faces, lends a Kiarostami-esque sense of grandeur to the landscape, which changes from arid sands to verdant hills. We understand that much is being hidden from the youngster – the dog’s illness his brother’s true course – as we travel toward the border. It’s one of many superbly judged moments in which Panahi’s deceptively light-touch film hits that sweet spot between laughter and tears (the two elements are literally juxtaposed on screen). The Dark Knight will, in fact, feature prominently in the en route conversation, not least during a gorgeously fanciful exchange between father and son on the depreciating value of a scratched Batmobile, provoking hilarity as they imagine Bruce Wayne weeping because his beloved car is now worth only $500m! Later on they will meet a motorcyclist whose face is hidden by a sack, a potentially terrifying encounter that is utterly punctured by the six-year-old’s observation that he looks like Batman’s arch enemy, Scarecrow. ![]() “We’re being followed,” observes Mum early on, establishing an underlying air of tension and paranoia about this family pilgrimage, a clandestine venture that we learn has already cost them much (“we lost our house and sold our car”). Pantea Panahiha and Amin Simiar in the ‘deceptively light-touch’ Hit the Road. And then there’s the younger brother, a six-year-old whirling dervish played by Rayan Sarlak who leaps around the car like an untrained puppy (the family’s actual dog, Jessy, is quietly ailing in the rear), and whose babbling observations on life, the universe and everything drive his family to distraction, but also remind us of Psalm 8:2: “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength.” In the driver’s seat is their elder son (Amin Simiar), who is apparently on his way to get married, but whose real purpose will be only gradually revealed. Hassan Madjooni is the outwardly grouchy Dad, wrestling toothache and a broken leg, the authenticity of which is slyly doubted by Pantea Panahiha’s quietly exasperated but endlessly loving Mum. We meet the stars of Hit the Road in the borrowed car in which they will spend much of the film. It’s the latest move in a long and largely fruitless campaign by the Iranian authorities to silence an artist who continues to be an international beacon of inspiration – not least to his son, Panah Panahi, who worked on his father’s most recent films, and who here makes his own triumphant feature debut as writer and director. Earlier this month, the irrepressible Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi found himself detained in Tehran and facing six years in jail. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |