This is an existential movie that, in part, gently examines the mindset of people who have moved to the US from certain parts of the middle East (primarily Iran and Afghanastan). It uses the unlikely vehicle of a Farsi-speaking Iranian radio station in San Francisco (PARS Radio) as its main locale. The station is a surreal place, like the old WKRP in Cincinnati TV show, but instead of kooky American stereotypes this radio station is inhabited by kooky middle Easterners.
The distracted head of the station is more interested wrestling than radio. His daughter, a frosty and remote fashion plate, is the station's business manager. She seems to have captured her unfair share of local Iranian advertisers including a dermatologist specializing in removing unwanted hair from Iranian women and a fast-food restaurant in a food court specializing in Afghan and Iranian cuisine. Perhaps these are nods to Iranian assimilation in the US.
But this movie really revolves around the fictional Hamid Royani, a noted poet and a truly masterful literary writer in Iran, reduced to working as the program director at this tiny radio station filled with misfits. He single-handedly tries to maintain his country's cultural heritage against the insurmountable odds of America's highly assimilating, melting-pot culture.
The entire movie captures one day in the station's existence when a Metallica-inspired Afghan rock-and-roll band that Royani has flown to the US from Kabul is supposed to appear on the air with Metallica in a jam session. This is Royani's dream: a celebration of international cultural mixing. He's a dreamer living a nightmare, surrounded by the leaden (from his own perspective). In fact, I think it's hard to tell which parts of this movie take place only in Royani's mind. I'm sure that part of it does.
The people surrounding Royani at the station, mostly interns, spend a lot of time looking into the camera with blank stares. I assume that's the filmmaker telling us how empty these people's lives have become as expats living in the US. (All in all, you're just a brick in the wall.)
There are funny parts to the movie. There's confusion. There is pathos. There are beautiful moments. But mostly, this movie trundles at a truly glacial pace, perhaps reflecting the director's feeling about life. Or not. In many ways this is an art film minus the art. It's the sort of thing I'd expect to get from a film student just starting out.
I saw this film as part of the Camera Cinema Club in San Jose, CA. The audience consists of longtime film patrons accustomed to seeing many different sorts of films through the club. This movie left a lot of them scratching their heads.
