'Cinema', writes Ali Reza Shojarnoori, the president of the Cinema Institute in Iran, 'is a window to look at the heart of a nation.' It would be wise for the foreigner wanting to understand the Iranian heart to look through the window of cinema. Much can be seen.
• Pride in Iran
• A determination to fight
• Love of ‘pathos’
• Humour in the ordinary
• Primacy of relationships
Hessam Mortazavi
Pride in Iran
During the 1980's many films were made dealing with the war against Iraq - which raged on till 1989. Many of these were typical action movies, such as 'A Military Base in Hell' by Payegah Jahannami, and 'Eagles' by Samuel Khachikian exalting Iran against the enemies of Iraq and the West. Some of the films though focused more on analysing human motives. The first of these was 'Lover's Place' by Hassan Karbakhsh that told the story of a young man with no convictions who eventually volunteers to go to the front to purify his soul. The message of these films - some of which did very well at the box office - was that it is worth sacrificing all for Islam and Iran. In the context of the war, it is impossible to separate Iran's religion and Iran's land, both are holy, and both are worthy of martyrdom.
Though the war ended in 1989, the legacy of the war and its effect on Iran is still a very live issue for the country. This theme is brilliantly explored in Ebrahim Hatamikia's film 'The Glass Agency' which took the country by storm in 1998. It tells the exciting story of a war veteran who in frustration takes a group of people hostage in a Tehran travel agency to meet his demand that his sick war friend be given immediate transport to London to get treatment. Through this story, the film explores the three-way tension between the Iranians who gave their lives for the country in the war, the Iranians who want to get on with running Iran in the 90's, and the Iranians who want to travel. At one point in the film the hostage taker stands by a cardboard cut out figure of a smiling air-hostess. The point is obvious - the Iranians who want to travel just for the sake of it are chasing emptiness. Throughout the film, these customers taken hostage are completely passive. They have no roots, no convictions. They are as empty as the cardboard dream they are chasing. The people of action, the people who love their country are the hostage taker, and the police officer who has to handle the incident. Both are war veterans, and both are now fighting to make a difference to other people's lives. These are the real people that matter in Iran. And they matter because they love their country.
One of the most extraordinary films to be released in the 80's was Bahram Bayzai's 'Bashu - The Little Stranger' (1989) It tells the story of a little boy whose whole family is killed in the war in the south. He flees to the north of Iran in the back of a lorry, where he is found by a mother whose husband is at war. At the centre of the film is both the relationship of the little stranger with the mother, and also the relationship of the cultural diversity of Iran with the language of Persian. When the boy is first found, he is hardly understood by the rest of the village because of his dialect, yet at the same time the boy is taken in because he is Iranian. Then in a remarkable scene the boy is shown alone on a path reading a Persian book. Soon a small group of other children gather round as they hear him read Persian out loud, and as he reads, so he is completely accepted. Persian unites all Iranians and Iranians will weep during this scene such is their love for their language. Though very different from the war films, 'Bashu, The Little Stranger' is still essentially a film that takes intense pride in Iran, its cultural diversity, and above all its oneness because of the Persian language. For the foreigner wanting to understand the Iranian heart, this love of Iran as one country must be understood. In recent years some analysts have broken the country into 'people groups' and tried to present Iran as a conglomeration of different tribes and languages. The message then of ‘Bashu, The Little Stranger’ would seem to suggest that such a view completely misses the Iranian heart.
Fighting Against the Odds
Again and again in recent films we have stories of the weak battling against the odds. At the centre of Makhmalbaf's famous film 'The Cyclist' is an old man who rides a bicycle for a week without stopping to get money. The determination of an ordinary, powerless man, grips one's attention. Or in Majid Majidi's 'Children of Heaven', the story is told of a young boy who loses one his sister's shoes. Together they decide not to tell their parents who are too poor to buy another pair and come to an arrangement where she uses his shoes for the morning session of the school, and then she gives them to him to use for the afternoon session. Children's determination is also a prominent theme in Jaffar Panahi's 'The White Balloon' where a little girl is determined to buy a particular fish for the New Year celebration. And in 'The Glass Agency' the engine of the film's plot is one veteran's determination to get medical care for another veteran.
The theme is perhaps most interestingly explored in Kiarostami's award winning film 'Where Is the House of My Friend'. A small boy, Ahmad, arrives home to find he has taken his friend's exercise book by mistake. The teacher has threatened to expel the friend if he doesn't do his homework, and Ahmad, feels he must return the exercise book. Even though his mother does not give him permission, Ahmad still sets off to the next village to find his friend. On his journey he gets little help from other adults as to where his friend lives, and one of them, an old man lectures Ahmad on how children who don't obey their parents should be given one chance and then severely beaten. Ahmad never finds the house, so he writes the homework out himself for his friend. The final scene shows Ahmad's friend handing in his homework, which the teacher glances at and accepts. The film is clearly about determination, but more than that, it is about the child's willingness to write his own moral agenda, despite what older voices are saying.
The villages where Kiarostami made 'Where Is The House Of My Friend' were destroyed by earthquake, so the director went back to the area and made two other films, 'Life Goes On' and 'Under The Olive Tree' using a mix of actors and real people. Though these films are primarily looking at the relationship between film and real life, again the sense of determination to get on despite the odds is prominent. It becomes beautifully poetic in 'Under the Olive Tree' where Hossein Rezai tries to woo the hand of Tahereh Ladanian. In 'Life Goes On' they play a young married couple, but then in real life, Hossein falls for Tahereh. Though constantly rejected by both Tahereh and the family for being uneducated, Hossein never gives up, and the final scene becomes one of the greatest in modern cinema. We see Tahereh walking through a huge field, with Hossein about a hundred yards behind. The camera moves back, and the two figures continue - she in front, he behind. We never know whether he was accepted or not, what we do know is that he never gave up.
This theme of fighting against the odds can be interpreted in different ways by Iranians. For the revolutionary it can speak of how Iran, as a victim of imperialism, fought against the odds to establish the Islamic Republic. For the millions struggling to maintain their living standards, it speaks of their refusal to give into economic pressure; and it speaks of how Iranians will always write their own agenda, as did Ahmad.
For the outsider wanting to understand the heart of Iran, the common denominator in all these films, is that the hero who is battling against the odds is always in one way or another a victim. For the outsider it is important to understand not just that the Iranian is determined, but that from the outset he usually sees himself as a victim who has to right a wrong.
Sad Endings and 'Pathos'
Closely linked to the theme of a victim battling against the odds, is the incredible sense of 'pathos' that slowly steals over many of these films. And, almost inevitably, the director will choose a sad rather than a happy ending. The story of the 'White Balloon' almost has a happy ending. A little girl drops the money for the fish she so desperately wants for the New Year celebration6 down a drain, and eventually it is fished out by an Afghan who sells balloons. The little girl rushes off to buy her fish, and perhaps in another culture, the credits would have started to roll. But not in this film. The little girl and her brother rush off, but the camera doesn't follow their happiness. Instead it stays with the Afghan, who stands over the drain with his stick and one white balloon as the streets empty and everyone goes to celebrate the New Year with their families. The Afghan has no family, and so stands alone in the street with his balloon. It is a scene of heart-breaking pathos, and shows that even at a time of celebration, Iranians cannot forget sadness.
In 'The Glass Agency' the hero who has taken the customers in the travel agency hostage manages to get himself and his friend a seat on a plane to the West where the friend will get the medical treatment he needs. Again in other cultures the credits would roll at this point. But not with an Iranian film. Here the sick man dies on the plane first. Then the credits roll. It is exactly the same in 'Children from Heaven'. The whole film is filled with the pathos of two hard working children having to share a pair of shoes. Towards the end there is hope that the brother can win some trainers in a race as a pair is the prize for the runner up. The film ends with the race - and the boy does very well...in fact he does too well. He comes first, and so doesn't win the shoes that he wants. Then the credits roll.
This sense of 'pathos' is so unmistakable that you have to conclude it is very deep rooted in the Iranian mind. This means it is not just there is a sense that Iranians are victims who are battling against the odds, but they have this deep inner sense that ultimately they will lose. But they lose having knowing they were ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and they lose having laughed at themselves.
The Extraordinary and the Humour in the Ordinary
One of the first things that strikes you when you start to watch Iranian films is their commitment to depicting ordinary life as it is. Unlike most of the films from Hollywood there is hardly any 'packaging' - there is little background music, no luxurious studio interiors, few costumes, and the camera often moves, as the human eye does, with the sway of the conversation. Instead of finding the extraordinary in the endless special effects of films like 'Star Wars' or 'Titanic' or its humour in slap stick or farce, Iranians love to show the viewer that ordinary life, as it is, is both extraordinary and humorous.
Two outstanding films 'A Simple Event' and 'Still Life' by director Sohrab Saless in the early 1970's set the standard for revealing the extraordinary through the ordinary. As Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa says ' one can trace the influence of these two films in the works of two generations of contemporary Iranian film makers. In 'A Simple Event' we follow the mundane routine of a small boy in a remote town in the north of Iran. The simple event is the death of his mother - which in a way hardly breaks the routine, but overall there is a sense of the extraordinary in the way these ordinary people live their lives with such dignity despite all the poverty. In 'A Still Life,' Saless looks at the lives of two old people. Again the focus on the mundane and the use of space brings out a sense of how this old couple is alienated from the system. And in this film the ordinary humour of Iranians comes to the fore. As Saeed-Vafa writes - 'We watch the old woman's ritual of pouring tea and carrying it with difficulty to her husband...following a long period of silence she asks her husband to buy her a new veil and in a subdued tone the old man responds by asking if she has a wedding to go to.’7
Perhaps the best examples of these uses of the ordinary are in Makhmalbaf's 'Sallam Cinema' and Kiarostami's masterpiece 'Close Up'. In 'Sallam Cinema' Makmalabof in real life advertises for ordinary people to come and audition for a film. Hundreds flock to his studio. The whole film is the auditions and it revels in the pure joy and humour or seeing what ordinary people will do to try and get into a film.
In 'Close Up' as with Kiarostami's other films, there are times when the film is acted, and times when the camera films the actual 'ordinary' scene. It is the true story of a working class film fan who managed to con a middle class family that he was the famous film director Makhmalbaf. The family is so taken in that the children even start rehearsing with him. When they find out they have been conned, they take the false Makhmalbaf to court. It is in the court scene that the extraordinary and the humour in the ordinary reach a climax. This scene is filmed as it actually happened - so the realism is perfect. The humour of the middle class family getting so upset about being tricked just flows through the camera to the viewer, as is the extraordinary fact that anyone would bother to take such a case to court. But that is ordinary life. The film ends with the false Makhmalbaf being taken by the real Makhmalbaf to the home of the injured family to apologise.
Both the films are primarily an exploration of the way art affects real life, and as such they are saying that we do not have to create a false 'studio' world for cinema. In a sense, ordinary life itself is the film which is more extraordinary and more humorous than any studio can produce. For the foreigner wanting to understand the Iranian heart this is clearly important, for it means that the Iranian is always seeing significance in the ordinary, and has less interest in what is manufactured.
The Overall Importance of Relationship
Iranian directors are constantly interested in the nuances of human relationships, and how relationships bring out what is noble in people. The background to so many of the films is either dominated by rural poverty or war , and, as seen, the final scene in invariably sad. But it is rarely the sadness of a broken relationship, rather the relationships grow stronger, whatever the circumstances. Again, as Saeed Vafa points out, it was Saless who first emphasized the primacy of relationships in 'A Simple Event' and 'Silent Lives'. The relationship of the refugee boy and the single mother blossoms in 'Bashu - The Little Stranger' and in 'Where is the House of My Friend', 'The Glass Agency' and 'Children from Heaven' the whole plot is fuelled by the love of the hero figure for someone who needs help. In 'Children From Heaven' the children not only love one another and their family, but there comes a poignant moment when the little girl sees another girl wearing the shoes she's lost. But this girl is blind - so she doesn't feel she can demand them back. Many are struck by the power of the human relationships when they first see Iranian films. Italian art critic, Alberto Betrini, wrote - 'After seeing these films I have fallen in love with Iran and have been drawn to the warmth and human closeness of Iranian cinema'.
Stepping Back
For anyone, especially Christians, who want to speak to Iranians about important matters, it is wise to listen to cinema It shows that Iranians have a great pride in their country and language. It is not just Muslims who died for Iran in the Gulf War. Many Christians also gave their lives - because they loved Iran. Then cinema also shows that usually the Iranian sees himself as a victim who has to fight against the odds, but will fight, and write his own moral agenda. So though the Westerner might think the Iranian is conditioned by a strong religious and cultural system, the message of cinema is that there can be a peculiar individual stubbornness in the Iranian heart that will fight to the end for what is right. But with this stubbornness there is often a fatalism that assumes that though the fight is heroic, in the end they will lose. Like their music, it seems Iranians like to have their films in a minor key.
But though the endings are sad, this doesn't mean the Iranian is essentially sad. Rather ironically post-revolutionary Iran is intensely humanistic and cinema shows that the Iranian does not so much look to externals for a sense of wonder, but finds humour and glory in the ordinary, and in the depth of human relationships.
Hessam Mortazavi is a Bible College lecturer and a film expert.
6Nourooz (literally ‘new day’), marks the start of the New Year and is the most important traditional festival in the Iranian calendar. The first day of the New Year falls on March 21st, the Spring Equinox. More precise than the Western tradition, the Iranian calendar counts each year as 365 quarter days so that in ‘The White Ballon’ the New Year starts in the afternoon.
At Nourooz most families have a ‘haft seen’ table on which are placed seven (haft) articles which begin with the Persian equivalent of ‘S’, (seen). They display of a goldfish on the table as a symbol of life.
7From Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa’s essay in ‘Life And Art In New Iranian Cinema’ edited by Rose Issa and Sheila Whitaker