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| Writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof |
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| Rasoulof at Cannes, photos are actors who are forbidden to leave Iran |
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| Mahsa Amini |
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (Dâne-ye anjîr-e ma'âbed) B- France Germany (167 mi) 2024 ‘Scope d: Mohammad Rasoulof
Dictatorial systems succeed and are maintained over time not because of the leaders, but because of the middle management who carry out and often amplify their orders. The regime is using religion as a political tool, and my films focus on this indoctrination. The Islamic Republic is a dictatorship that has taken Iranians hostage; repression is its essence. Any announcement of change is just propaganda. If they can, they will eliminate any opponent, but I don’t spend a second of my life thinking about it.
—Writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof
Mohammad Rasoulof is a filmmaker with a storied past, interweaving the personal with the political, arrested multiple times, initially accused, along with Jafar Panahi, director of No Bears (Khers nist) (2022), of filming without a permit in 2009, then he was arrested in 2010 for filming a movie about The Green Movement, specifically the protests following the allegedly stolen 2009 presidential elections, which he never finished, where his films were declared “propaganda against the system,” convicted of “intending to commit crimes against the security of the country,” one of several high-profile Iranian filmmakers to be arrested, censored, and condemned by the Iranian regime for his art. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is the reality in Iran today, which has a long history of corruption and brutality, leading to significant uprisings, including the revolution that brought the Islamic Republic into power in 1979, the 2009 Iranian Green Movement to protest massive fraud in the presidential elections, the 2019 uprising over rising gasoline prices, and now the protests that erupted since the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, leading to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022, mostly women under the age of 25, where the rallying cry has been “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi,” or women, life, freedom, with more than 500 deaths (at least 69 of them children) reported after Iranian security forces fired live ammunition into crowds and killed even more protesters by beating them with batons, where thousands more were subjected to interrogation, arbitrary detention, unjust prosecution, and imprisonment for peacefully exercising their human rights. The Iranian government, which currently provides drones to the Russian army to bomb Ukraine, by the way, has only intensified its efforts to suppress the fundamental rights of women and girls and crush remaining initiatives of women’s activism, with Amini’s lawyers arrested and ordered to serve a year in prison, while executions in Iran have significantly increased, with a record number of 853 death sentences in 2023 (Iran: Two years after 'Woman Life Freedom' uprising ...). Stoking the flames of punitive retaliation, Iran’s authoritative judiciary has become a tool of repression and fear, part of a long history of suppressing political opposition, criticism of the country’s human rights record, and other peaceful forms of dissent, using religion as a weapon, where civil servants act against their own consciences and enforce dubious judgments in order not to endanger their own standard of living, which results in the entire Iranian population being held hostage. Notably, the film also marks the first time since the establishment of the Islamic Republic that Iranian actresses appear onscreen without wearing the mandatory hijab, a detail which carries a tremendous symbolic significance both for the regime and the Iranian public, though they are barred from ever seeing the film. The maker of The White Meadows (Keshtzar haye sepid) (2009), Goodbye (Bé omid é didar) (2011), Manuscripts Don't Burn (Dast-neveshtehaa nemisoosand) (2013), and 2020 Top Ten List #2 There Is No Evil (Sheytan vojud nadarad) (2020), Rasoulof has had to continuously deal with the security apparatus of Iran, twice serving time in Iranian jails, over a month in solitary confinement, finally exhausting his appeals, ultimately sentenced to eight years in prison as well as a flogging, a fine, and confiscation of his property, which led him to flee the country, crossing the mountains on foot, leaving behind all his electronic devices to avoid being traced, hiding in safe houses before arriving in Hamburg, Germany 28 days after leaving Tehran, where going into exile was something that was never considered until the very last minute, having only two hours to decide, leaving everything else behind. As a result, this film is Germany’s submission as Best International Film for the Academy Awards, having been made primarily in Iran, but smuggled out of the country, financed, and completed in Germany, which has become the director’s new adopted home, having studied film there as a young man, while his daughter, Baran Rasoulof, who starred in THERE IS NO EVIL, has lived there for years.
Made entirely in secret to evade a previous legal ban that prohibited Rasoulof from making films, with post-production done remotely, this won a Special Jury Award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, shown on the very last day, receiving plenty of acclaim for demonstrating a ferocity of spirit and for simply being made at all, yet the film is about as subtle as a runaway bulldozer, where the heavy-handed moralistic approach may leave some cold, as realism is transformed into symbolism, which is so obvious that it is borderline ridiculous, carrying little emotional power. At nearly three hours long, this meandering morality tale can feel overlong and relentlessly exhausting, making the same point over and over again, becoming a battering ram on the brain, with the filmmaker having a love affair with posted cellphone footage of the protests, where unfortunately he’s not much of a character builder, as his characters don’t really seem real, instead they serve other purposes, personifying allegorical themes instead of any authentic naturalism, which has always been an essential component of the best Iranian films. Beginning with a story parable, the title refers to an invasive species of fig tree that spreads by “wrapping itself around another tree and eventually strangling it,” seen as a symbol of the theocratic regime in Iran, where more than anything this exposes the toxic patriarchy that is suffocating the life out of its own people. Written by the director, whose entire career represents continued attempts to understand the authoritarian mindset, the film becomes a political allegory for the relationship between the Iranian state and its people, superimposing the real threats of a brutal theocracy with the fictional story of one family’s struggle under its absolutist rule. An overtly political film is mixed with a complex, psychological chamber drama, where the internal and external factors become so intermingled that they are virtually indistinguishable, creating a moral conundrum for all involved, where the first two hours of the film take place almost exclusively in the claustrophobic, prison-like confines of a family apartment in Tehran, with poorly lit rooms, the curtains always closed, completely cut off from the combustible force happening right outside on the streets below. Led by family patriarch Iman (Missagh Zareh), he was recently appointed as an investigator to the Revolutionary court in Tehran, a prestigious position that traditionally leads to becoming a judge, where his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani, who was herself arrested in 2022 for demonstrating against Amini’s death) is ecstatic at the prospects of becoming economically secure for life, offering the best possible chance of a better life for their two adolescent daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami), just entering university, and Sana (Setareh Maleki), who is still in high school, two strong and independent-minded daughters. Iman initially has misgivings, however, as he’s asked to sign off on death sentences with no investigation and no trial, without even reading the case file, an act his predecessor refused, which created the job opening. Just as ominously, Iman is given a gun by the government for self-protection, as court officials are often targeted by disgruntled families, placing them at risk. The film adheres to Anton Chekhov’s narrative principle, described as Chekhov's gun, which suggests that “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” Arriving in court at the crack of dawn and not returning until late at night, the court is literally swamped by an avalanche of arrests from the outpouring of protests following the death of a young 22-year old girl, Mahsa Amini (never named in the film), who authorities claimed suffered a heart attack, yet she was severely beaten and died of head injuries while in police custody several days after she was arrested in Tehran by members of the country’s Basiji, or morality police, for violating hijab laws, not for refusing to wear a hijab, but for “not wearing it properly.” The outrage this generates is unprecedented, much of it captured on cellphones and posted on the internet, where the brutality of the images contrasts with the state news coverage that blames it all on a conspiracy of disobedient lawbreakers who want to overthrow the regime, yet the protests were unlike any the country had seen before, and the most widespread revolt since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
There’s enough foreshadowing in this film to fill all the holes in Albert Hall, where Najmeh is nauseatingly persistent in warning her daughters about the dangers of going on social media or associating with the “wrong” kind of person, as that reflects upon their father’s profession, where any little slipup could derail his career. “You must be irreproachable,” she warns. They constantly get harangued with these warnings, each time with greater urgency than the last, but in the secrecy of their bedrooms they spend their time watching cellphone coverage of the protests, witnessing the civil unrest unfolding in real time, where they can see for themselves the television coverage is blatantly false, as the police are simply bashing heads and making sweeping arrests. When one of Rezvan’s friends living in the university dormitory gets shot in the face with buckshot from a random shot at the students by the police, they are aghast, bringing Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi) home for medical care, as any visit to the hospital would result in her arrest, forcing Najmeh to secretly come to the girl’s aid, cleaning the wound, meticulously removing each pellet, where the camera holds on her battered and bloody face for what feels like an eternity, literally rubbing viewers face with the grotesque nature of the catastrophe, where there is simply no looking away from the crime. Returning back to the dormitory, she is arrested shortly afterwards and goes missing, as Rezvan sums it up, “They took her beauty – and her future.” While they keep this incident from Iman, who would not approve, things go off the rails when Iman loses his gun, reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa’s STRAY DOG (1949), frantically searching the house, going through every nook and cranny, turning the entire living space upside down, like a police search, creating chaos in the ranks, which only grows more incendiary when the girls have the unmitigated gall to question their father, who mirrors the Iranian state by blaming it all on criminal deviants, as that’s what he spends his entire time doing, each and every day, working under extreme pressure, signing off on sentences sending protesters to jail or even to death sentences, but the girls know better, part of a generational divide, and this perturbs their father, creating division in the ranks, with Iman proclaiming “Faith knows no questions.” While we never see Iman at work, what we do see is chillingly surreal, as just walking the hallways reveals giant cardboard cutouts of various Iranian martyrs and dignitaries, whose shadow presence looms over the proceedings. One of the most surprising images comes when Iman stops his car at a red light and exchanges looks with a young woman in the car next to him, short hair, no hijab, dance music playing on the radio, and a fiercely defiant look. This is a look at the future. Perhaps the most eerie sequence is when Iman, desperate to find the gun, has his own family interrogated by a supposed professional who specializes in “psychology and body-language techniques,” which is shockingly disturbing. When Iman’s identity and address are posted on social media, they head for the country, suddenly feeling like a jailbreak out into open spaces, turning into a long, slow descent into authoritarian horror, as the clashing perspectives spiral into a paranoia-fueled nightmare, where fascism and a growing madness creep into their own family divisions. Iman loses all sense of balance from the missing gun, afraid he’ll lose his job and be sent to prison if he doesn’t find it, growing more and more unstable, turning into a villain that demands absolute obedience, illustrating he is little more than a cog of the repressive regime, with Najmeh, who has a very pragmatic relationship to her husband’s work in a role similar to that of Sandra Hüller’s Hedwig in Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023), caught in the middle. Where it all leads is into a frenetic, yet heavy-handed Hollywood-style action thriller, fueled by continually escalating suspicions, where everyone is suddenly a potential suspect, turning very grim and darkly sinister, with collateral shrapnel flying in all directions, taking domestic violence to the next level, featuring an alarming road rage car chase, a violent standoff, and a frightening game of hide-and-seek in a hallucinogenic, maze-like labyrinth of an abandoned city in ruins that defies all rationale, but accentuates the deep divisions that exist in this fractured society hell-bent on imposing its will, a common theme, unfortunately, on the global landscape at the moment, where democracy movements are being stifled.
