dromasca

Can art in general and literature, specifically, save the world? Or at least make it better? Or at least create for those who love them - creators and consumers - an inner fortress where they can take refuge in times of hardship or in places where authoritarian systems impose their dictates? This is the question posed by the 2024 film 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' directed by Eran Riklis, an adaptation of the autobiographical book by Azar Nafisi, an Iranian writer living in exile. Definitive answers cannot be given, but the questions themselves open a debate that is more important than ever in times when dictatorships dominate much of the planet and the dangers of sliding towards dictatorship and censorship - political or puritanical - are real in almost every other place in the world.

It is not easy to make a film about the power of words. Another Israeli director, Joseph Cedar, tried with 'Footnote'. Eran Riklis did not seek spectacular effects, emphasizing the narrative and the characters. The cinematic version of Azar Nafisi's memoirs is reorganized into four chapters that capture (not in strict chronological order) four moments of the author's time in Iran. 1980 (the year in which the writer, together with her husband, an engineer, return from America with the hope that they can contribute to building a modern and democratic Iran), 1995, 1988 and 1996. Each of the four sections is named after the title of a book by an important English-language writer that Azar Nafisi shares with her Iranian students: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Vladimir Nabokov, Henry James, Jane Austen. She begins her teaching career as a professor at the University during a period of transition. The religious and political pressure of Islamists is increasingly evident and some of her students, supporters of democracy, are arrested, tortured, and a few are executed. The status of women is deteriorating, the wearing of the hijab becomes mandatory, censorship is intensifying. She resigns from her position at the University to return after a few years, finding among her students many young people disappointed and traumatized by their experiences on the front lines of the war between Iran and Iraq. After her second university experience fails, she creates a private literary circle, in which the students are all women. The risks are enormous because all the books studied are banned. Along with good literature, the students learn from her about the taste of freedom and the culture of debate. But can this inner fortress protect the group of women from the world around them? How long will they last, how will they resolve the contradictions between their inner freedom and the oppression that surrounds them? Neither the students nor the teacher can avoid the contradictions and the difficult questions.

Most of the characters are women and the feminist message of the film is clear and strong. The main role is played by Golshifteh Farahani, a beautiful and luminous actress, who radiates with the character's wisdom and compassion. The entire cast of actors and especially actresses, most of whom are Iranian actors living and working in exile, was excellent, even if the other female roles are not that well written and the female characters in the student circle are not differentiated enough. The documentary sequences from the filmed actualities of the time are intelligently inserted and define well the context. The first chapter, which seemed to me the most cohesive, also exposes another important idea. Democracy, with the principles of equality and respect for the citizen and the natural and fundamental rights of every human being, is hard to win, through struggle and suffering, and easy to lose. Azar Nafisi and those around her had placed their hopes in the revolution. They love their country. She and her husband chose to return to their homeland and then tried to continue living there. By creating a bubble of freedom for her students through the reading circle, she opened their eyes and taught them to think independently and to challenge what they consider unfair. The most beautiful scenes of the film seemed to me to be those in which the women share moments of inner freedom, as well as the most intimate confessions, using the words and ideas from the books that had been hidden and forbidden to them until then. Also touching is the connection between the heroine of the film and the mysterious intellectual with whom she secretly exchanges books, avoiding the police who monitor them everywhere. Anyone who has lived under an authoritarian regime can understand these scenes very well. Dictatorships fear the power of the free written word. 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' - for all its cinematic shortcomings - is a tribute to courageous women, in Iran and elsewhere, who fight for their natural rights and to the books that preserve and spread beauty and freedom in their pages.

Ilie Nastase was one of the idols of my youth. First of all, thanks to him, tennis found its place for a while in the dull programs of Romanian television during the communist era. Together with his partner and mentor Ion Tiriac, he played in the Davis Cup final three times and lost three times. I was devastated when the two lost the final in Bucharest in 1972. He was a phenomenal athlete, a unique champion at a time when the game of tennis was going through its greatest change in history, and his contribution to this (r)evolution was essential. For the young man I was then, however, he represented something more. He was one of the few Romanians who, without being the president or a spy, could travel all over the world at a time when a passport was an almost impossible dream for the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of communist Romania. And he was also one of the few male celebrities who appeared (demonstratively and defiantly, I think) with long hair at a time when the militia would round up young men with long hair on the streets and force them to get a haircut. I knew less about his controversial personality at the time and only part of his adventures on and off the tennis courts were known in our country. Over time, I learned more and my opinion about the man Ilie Nastase became more nuanced. When I found out that the team formed by Tudor Giurgiu, Cristian Pascariu and Tudor D. Popescu had made the documentary 'Nasty', I was eager to see it as soon as possible. I only saw it now, a year after its premiere at Cannes 2024, at the Romanian Film Festival in Israel. Many of the things I was expecting are in this film, but there are also some that are missing.

The documentary brings together three types of filmed materials. First of all, there are the sequences filmed on the tennis courts in the 60s and 70s that show this splendid athlete who managed shots that seemed impossible, who played with pleasure and at the same time chatted and flirted with the audience, who annoyed his opponents and constantly argued with the referees. Then there are the interviews conducted either at the time or later and up to today with celebrities of the tennis world and primarily with the great players from Nastase's era and those who came after him. What a pleasure to see Stan Smith (Nastase's archrival and opposite in everything), Billie Jean King, Jimmy Connors, Boris Becker, John MacEnroe, Arthur Ashe talking about Nastase the athlete and the man, most of the time with admiration, sometimes with criticism, never without fondness. Finally, the filmed sequences and interviews are accompanied and packaged in comments from recent interviews with the film's hero, often alongside Ion Tiriac. The presentation is not chronological, the childhood and beginning of his career appear about halfway through the film, and the climax - the lost final in 1972 - is well placed towards the end.

What I liked: first of all, the sequences filmed on the court, including some of the famous controversial moments. In retrospect, I agree with Nastase in 80% of the situations and I believe that he contributed significantly to raising the level of refereeing and increasing respect for the players. The film captures several essential aspects of the transformation that tennis was going through in those years, from the status of an elitist sport practiced by rich amateurs, who could afford the time, equipment and travel, to professional sport, with all the advantages and disadvantages of the sport transformed into a global televised spectacle and a business that generates colossal amounts of money. The athlete who came from communist Romania was given the opportunity to play an important role in changing the status of the players, their relationships with the referees, even the equipment on the court (he was the first or among the first to use colored jerseys). What I missed were somewhat more professional comments related to this transition, but also to the interviews from that period and to Nastase's special status as a professional performance athlete with a Romanian passport. The differences between the interviews in Romanian (for the censored television) and those in the West are visible only to very experienced eyes. The documentary does not delve into more controversial aspects of the athlete's statements and behavior on and off the tennis court, during his active period and after retirement. I suspect there were limitations here because the filmmakers wanted to secure the collaboration of the great athlete, but my feeling at the end was that too much respect meant less documentary acuity. Anyway, thanks for the nostalgia bath!