Directed by Hussein Keshavarz and MaryamAzadi
Screen play by Maryam Azadi
In the opening scene, a few young boys are having
a casual party, drinking and debating the quality of Johnny Walker Red vs.
Black or Gold label while what they have access to is only a poor local vodka
commonly referred to as dog sweat.
The boys’ party breaks up when one of them is called by his uncle to rush to the hospital to attend his mother
who had been hit by a car on a bridge. He leaves the three other to weave the
tapestry of Iranian youth and their problem for us.
The next scene is of their female
counterparts. The girls, who will later each become connected to these boys,
are preparing themselves for a party, putting make up on each other, having
short chats about the boys, dropping remarks and even flirting with each other.
And then we met all the characters of the film in a loud mixed party just for a
second or so which ends quickly with a sombre, slower life.
The complex of the youths’ relationships
with each other, with their preceding generation, with society’s normal and abnormal
is portrayed and narrated freely by the youths themselves. Simple friendship,
the cornerstone of Iranian society and culture, developed into incongruous
phenomena. Sexuality emerged even more confusing without proper rules of
conducts. Giving in to the expectations or following one’s will and ideas leads
to indecision. Finally, fitting into society
and letting one’s identity be shaped by it or changing it to one’s desires, or
simply letting go of both and submitting to whatever goes glues all these
confusions together in a thematic series short episodes.
The setting is the streets or parks of Tehran,
dotted with only few scenes inside which we meet a pair of the opposite sex.
Though the film gives us a chance to visit Tehran with all its noise and contradictions,
it seems that the outdoor life has also been selected quite purposefully for
this film, where the private and inner side of youth are closed to us as well
as to themselves.
*******
Not long into the film, I felt that I had
an urge to scream, “Say something for God’s sake!” when immediately the facial
expression of an actress shuts me up, saying, “What is there to say. Don’t you
see?”
No, I don’t see if there is no talk, no
laughter, no crying, no discussions, no debates, no complaints, no questions, no
answers, not a single complex sentence. But why?
“We are in strange land my dears, where
language has gone through a massive transformation. Language as the medium for communication has
lost its function where communication has lost its place in the society and
culture, where the efforts are made to hide rather than reveal, where one must
divert rather than to direct, where one has to misguide rather than to guide;
then words are better forgotten if one has to lie,” I’m whispering to myself.
Lips do not kiss, hands do not touch, gazes
are afraid to connect. It is not restraint but hiding. There is no need for
censorship since there is not even any desire for of any sort expression. There
is still an outcry for an “empty nest,” an empty room, a dangling key to an
empty apartment. It seems that finding “that key” is the ultimate goal, though
I’m not so sure that there is anything but darkness behind the closed door. Even
passion is absent …
But
little by little, I learn to hear them. I learn their
language. It is very simple, their facial expressions, sweet faces with bitter
and sad expressions, tell us of boredom, aimlessness, hopelessness, very gently
and good-naturedly. But beneath those
bitter expressions on those faces, those cold faces, those deadly silences, one
can see the residue of some drive, of some hope and some faint and colorless
shadow of something that might once have been a dream or fantasy.
They narrate their own story, as if the
film were a documentary and had been made spontaneously, with actors and
actresses, without script, on stage thriving to tell their stories. It seems
they have something to say only if they find someone to listen, if they feel
safe, if they find privacy, if they know how.
The story is also about a lonely generation
which has to live an unexamined life, a life without serious challenge, without
tough critics, without interaction and even without a given, the clash between
two generations. A tale of living in two worlds with no connection in between,
the worlds of young and old, public and private, openness and dead tradition.
The story of a generation which is even deprived of the unity that should exist
naturally within the family. It seems that this dual existence has crept under
the skin of life permanently and has given each a double self.
Sexuality is confusing, as is expected,
though there are not only heterosexual relations but gay and lesbian ones. It
seems it is the main preoccupation of our young generation, torn between tradition,
the mainstream, avant-garde fads or even sometimes biological needs. Gay
couples that do not even dare to admit it to themselves, naively thinking that
they can have it both ways, a heterosexual marriage and a supplement of homosexual
relationships in the guise of a regular one. Confused, wondering why it fails...
Tradition and modernism clash with each
other quite often and the youngsters, as well as parents and older generation, learned
to get around it or pass by it without being affected by it or even without
trying to get their point across. No, we do not hear the cliché of my
generation, “You don’t understand me.” They simply assume the barrier is
impassable. They are resigned to it.
And yes, resignation! It comes in all forms
and shapes. A gay couple finds no other way but to give in to their parents’
demand for a conventional marriage. To make her mother happy, a girl consents
to marry a gay man and give up her dream to become a pop singer, only to find
out shortly after that she had made a mistake;
her mother’s real happiness lies in the tomb of a martyred imam in
Najaf.
Disillusions, failures, and disappointments
all come one by one as one may expect. Kathy, our lost soul, separates from a
lover, her cousin’s husband, and does not know what to do with the proposal of
an admirer who appeals as a last resort to attract her “an apartment in Dubai
and a car there waiting to make her happy.” This is tempting enough to drag her
out bed to move out of the house let herself be picked up by the third or
fourth car that stops by, “Hey! Let’s have a little fun!” Her smirk betrays
her. She does not believe in having fun either, but she sits in the back seat
impassively. In a car behind her, the
boy is watching her wondering if she didn’t care for the “apartment in Dubai
and a car waiting” or she didn’t believe it.
And, yes, parents, the generation that in
their youth witnessed all their values and learning turned into nothingness over
night, are not even prepared to face the kind of problem their children may
face, leave alone know how to deal with it:
A mother notices his son is gay and
suffering in his new role as a married man and she cries!!
Another finds a condom in her daughters
room, slaps her on the face and locks her in.
A religious mother does not know what to do
with her daughter who sings underground and pushes her to marry the first
suitor who comes along.
And where are the fathers? All absent. One
is making money somewhere. The rest are dead, or martyred.
Even death seems incapable of bridging the
gaps between these two worlds. Upon the mother’s death in the hospital, our
young character, torn between the mother’s siblings, pushes him for revenge and
the guilty driver and his wife beg his forgiveness. He turns away to free himself
from the burden of executing this justice. “What is my right? Who has any
rights in this country?” In pain and agony, in need of love and support, he is
offered only the opportunity to revenge. He submits to it, thought, avenging himself.
He gets into arguments with three Basijis
in an isolated place in the middle of a dark night and gets killed.
Yes the movie moves quickly from one
episode to another just to hastily depict the scenes of loneliness, despair,
resignation, and hopelessness. It is indeed gloomy and dark, the life of
generation of victims whose name we never learn.
But all through they all remain
good-natured kids who simply want to live, just simple living, the only thing
they do not have a right to.
Mariam Azadi and Hussein Keshavarz did
marvels in this film. They both took us into the heart of young Iranian
society. I assume their personality,
their passion for their profession, and their dedication has contributed to the
actors and actresses in this film offering their best. Not only have they
provided a safe and private place for them to narrate their story, but they
carried it safe and sound to us in this part of the world to listen to their
outcry. Indeed, their story came right across and sat in our heart. So many thanks to them both for the wonderful
job they did.
