Not for the first time, out of oppressed Iran comes a thrilling, almost life-changing film. Dodging censors and taboos, Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami, have managed to pull off a 77-minute masterpiece in the heroic tradition of Iranian underground cinema, which constitutes a genre in its own right. Its subtle, often whimsical satire is of course deeply subversive of the Ayatollahs' regime and all its minions, but it would be a serious mistake to see this film merely as a polemic against the Islamic State (though it is that, triumphantly), rather than as a cri de coeur against banal, quotidian tyranny, against the pettily personal abuse that all power relationships in all societies generate as a matter of course.
The film's central character is Tehran itself, shown in a gloriously extended opening panorama, shot by an unmoving camera, in which the city, with its ambient noise as the only background, shifts from night to morning to full daylight. That is the only exterior shot (making a virtue of what were surely security constraints), though the film closes on much the same view, seen through the window of a high-rise, in a shattering climax the details of which should not be revealed here.
The rest of the film consists of a series of short sequences, all interiors, in which ordinary citizens of the city are filmed in long takes by a fixed camera, alone on screen but in dialogue with the petty gods of the system, who remain unseen, usually sitting behind a power-enhancing desk or something like it (partially seen in the foreground), who torment them in the heads-I-wind-tails-you-lose snakes and ladders of bureaucracy and ideology, preventing perfectly normal needs and requests from being met.
In these sequences, none of which goes on for more than 10 or 11 minutes, we witness a character, always sympathetic (or, in the case of a little girl, adorable), as they cautiously try to frame their modest request in as deferential a way as possible and then react as elaborate structures built upon absurdities, callousness, and sometimes outright abuse are piled up by the unseen interlocutors. Each solo performer proceeds to give us a masterclass in the actor's art as she or he shifts from caution to carefully masked irritation, to abject hopelessness as whatever it is they care about is ground to a pulp, and their dignity with it. In each case (save for that little girl's), there comes a moment when the victim snaps, when they can no longer endure the cruel gibberish they're facing, only to quickly retreat into self-defensive caution and deference, knowing as they do (and, through sheer acting alchemy, showing us, heartbreakingly, that they know) that things could otherwise only get far worse. Each sequence ends in soul-searing defeat, and the effect upon us as spectators is devastating, with the devastation expanding cumulatively with each sequence. And if you think that this stuff only happens in the Islamic Republic and that it doesn't happen, in only slightly different form, here, there and everywhere else, you are truly a fool.
In a lively Q&A at NYC's Film Forum, Alireza Khatami revealed that, in keeping with the underground nature of the project, the actors were all recruited without being given any idea of the overall structure of the film, so that each sequence is in effect a discrete short subject. The actors, he said, all knew they were taking a risk, and subsequently each was indeed interrogated by the authorities about what had gone on. The creation of the film, in other words, required heroism and defiance from all involved. And yet I wouldn't have needed any of that background to conclude that this small yet major masterpiece is, for me, the film of the year so far, and I seriously doubt that it will be displaced. It is a must-see for every serious, engaged citizen of whatever nation, state or territory. May the gods of film distribution make it available to as many such viewers as possible.
