THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
There are several ways for an Iranian filmmaker to challenge the existing power. That of the late Abbas Kiarostami (who died in 2016, aged 76), a huge figure in world cinema, who is precisely why it is difficult to imprison. That, more directly, of his former assistant and heir Jafar Panahi, aged 64, who made films where political commitment competes with the spells of fiction, for which he was imprisoned and prevented from filming, against which he deploys treasures of courage and ingenuity. He continues to do so despite everything.
Finally, there is Mohammad Rasoulof, 51, who we will describe, in memory of Bruce Lee and Dominique Valera, as “full-contact” and who gets into all possible and imaginable trouble. Launched in 2002, his work includes eight feature films, most of them made clandestinely. The latest, Wild fig seedsIt inaugurates what, unfortunately, would end up happening: the pure and simple exile of the filmmaker.
So we will go and watch this very good film, a sort of summary of the decomposition of the Iranian autocracy, to understand why. Because, in fact, it is the inner workings of totalitarian thought that Mohammad Rasoulof is trying to describe this time, an ambition made very cleverly possible through the prism of a middle-class family simmering on the embers of an intergenerational conflict.
The drama unfolds in the turn of two concomitant events. On the one hand, the appointment of Iman, the paterfamilias, to the feared post of judge of the revolutionary court of Tehran. On the other hand, the birth of the social protest movement Women, Life, Freedom, born in the wake of the murder, in September 2022, of the young Mahsa Amini, by the moral police, who considered her to be improperly covered up.
Change of social status
A clear rupture breaks through the family cocoon on this double occasion. The couple’s two daughters, Rezvan and Sana, immediately take up the cause of this wave of youth protest, which they follow on social networks, while the parents pretend to be informed of the course of events by television, because the power distorts them. The first act of hostility is handled by the mother. Najmeh is not a fanatic or cruel woman, but she is satisfied with the change of social status and therefore of apartment, linked to her husband’s appointment.
Taking seriously the decorum, discretion and exemplarity expected of the family of a judge of the revolutionary tribunal, she watches over her teenage daughters, assuming that discreet intermediate place of genius in the patriarchal house, which consists in the same movement to relieve her husband of the responsibility of doing so and to protect her daughters from paternal domination. This, naturally, within the limits of her powers and her strength, which are particularly weakened the day when the two girls offer the hospitality of the family apartment to a friend who returns from a demonstration with a torn out eye.
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