JuguAbraham

There have been several Iranian award-winning filmmakers in Iran who have made fictional films that reflect the true conditions of repression, brutality, and unjust prison sentences against Iranian nationals who have chosen to speak out and faced the consequences, e.g., Mohammad Rasoulof and Jafar Panahi. Unlike them, director Amir Zargara, a Canadian of Iranian descent has made a notable film on a similar subject using the real tale of a talented wrestler Navid Afkari who spoke out and paid with his life in Adelabad prison. Director Zargara chooses to refer to Navid as Arash in his film. The tale is intelligently scripted--with public protests seemingly against rising costs of gasolene and little else, while it is amply clear in the film that Arash is making an overt stand on more substantial issues against the current government, knowing fully the implications of his actions for his career as a wrestler and for his already decimated family. Evidently his father died protesting as well. This film is accepted as an entry to the 2025 Oscars' Short Documentary section. I do hope it wins and gets noticed not as Iranian film but as a realistic film critical of the policies of the current Government there without any reference to religion by a filmmaker who has once lived in Iran. And the film extrapolates the words and moods of the dead wrestling martyr "Our power lies in our united voice."

A major performance of Burt Lancaster in Hollywood films, ranking alongside "The Swimmer." His later performances for Italian directors Visconti ("The Leopard" and "Conversation Piece") and Bertolucci ('1900") were more sophisticated. His performance as Elmer Gantry was propped up by the excellent script of director/scriptwriter Richard Brooks and the original novel of Sinclair Lewis. Lancaster deserved his best actor Oscar in this film as did Brooks for his adapted screenplay. Arthur Kennedy's role in this film seemed to anticipate his similar role in David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia."

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"Bad Living" and "Living Bad" are parts of a diptych, mirror images providing different points of view, where their different stories overlap in time, space (location being the same hotel) and characters seen in both films with some of the scenes repeated in the both films but shot with cameras kept at different points and angles in each. "Bad Living" was very interesting with a superb end-sequence.

"Living Bad" introduced us to three plays of August Strindberg woven into the portmanteau film. Which reminds you of Robert Altman's "3 Women," and specifically Strindberg's "Motherlove." The other preceding Strindberg plays are "Playing with fire" and "The Pelican" broken up as such by the director Joao Canijo.

While Canijo stumbled, the viewer gained by understanding Strindberg's plays visually. The best idea of the film was capturing actions in the various well-lit hotel rooms at night simultaneously, from the perspective of the silent swimming pool, which makes sense only when the viewer has watched both films of the diptych.

An amazing experiment indeed from Canijo.

P. S. Wondered if Jean Genet's novel "Querelle of Brest" was influenced by Strindberg's play "Motherlove."