Who By Fire (Comme le feu)

 

Director Philippe Lesage

WHO BY FIRE (Comme le feu)        B                                                                              Canada  France  (161 mi)  2024  ‘Scope  d: Philippe Lesage

Allegedly inspired by the Leonard Cohen song by the same name, Leonard Cohen - Who By Fire (Official Live in London 2008) YouTube (6:26), with its links to the Jewish Yom Kippur prayer Unetanneh Tokef and its references to death, but it is also a song about our life journey and how our experiences, good and bad, welcome and unwelcome, shape the person we become.  With many believing he is the heir apparent to Québécois filmmaker Denys Arcand, Lesage is a Canadian director, screenwriter, producer, photographer, and actor who got his start directing documentary films before transitioning to autobiographical-inspired fictional films, winner of the Generation 14plus Grand Prix at Berlinale 2024, which explores youth perspectives, often with challenging, authentic, and unconventional storytelling, carving out the psychological contours of teenagers finding their paths through treacherous emotional landscapes.  While there are many good things about this film, it’s still a bit confusing and off-putting, as some of the characters exist, but are nearly invisible, fading into the woodworks, which matches the darkened palette with an almost Rembrandt looking framing, where things easily disappear into the darkness.  Also the backstory, whatever it may be, is entirely absent, so whatever history these characters have remains a mystery.  For instance, there is the presence of legendary French actress Irène Jacob, a fixture in Kieślowski’s THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE (1991) and THREE COLORS TRILOGY: RED (1994), yet she is barely utilized, appearing only briefly in a role with little consequence.  Instead the focus is on the fragility of the male ego, mostly explored through long, tense shots set against the unforgiving Canadian wilderness, highlighting how nature reflects and dismantles the characters’ fragile mindset, whether it be an adult or child perspective.  Exploring complex, messy relationships and shifting power dynamics during a secluded wilderness retreat, the film centers on teenage filmmaker wannabe Jeff (Noah Parker), who is clearly trying to find himself, searching for approval from adult role models, but instead encounters a disoriented and unhinged world of adult insecurities, artistic ego, and failed mentorship while visiting an acclaimed director he greatly admires.  With a predominance of atmosphere and mood setting the stage, there’s an interesting use of interior dream sequences, where it’s not always recognizable just whose dream we are seeing.  17-year-old Jeff accompanies the family of his best friend, Max (Antoine Marchand Gagnon), his intellectually neurotic screenwriting father Albert (Paul Ahmarani), and Max’s self-asserting, college-aged older sister, Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré in her first feature role), an aspiring writer he has a secret crush on, named after the saintly youngest brother from Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, heading to the secluded home of well-known filmmaker and avid outdoorsman Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter) in what is meant to be a happy reunion between two longtime friends and collaborators, but instead of a welcoming occasion, things spin out of control in suffocating fashion, as it dissolves into tension-filled confrontations of vanity and masculinity, where you see the grownups through the eyes and the sensitivity of the young protagonists who are struggling to figure out who they are in the face of outrageous misbehavior on the part of their “role models.”  

Opening in a car traveling down the highway sequence that resembles the opening of Christian Petzold’s Afire (Roter Himmel) (2023), or the opening of Gus van Sant’s GERRY, Gerry [2002] Gus Van Sant YouTube (4:27), where it’s even the same car, an old Mercedes, set to the ambient electronic track of The House in the Woods’ Grounded YouTube (9:38), a darkly moody and haunting piece fraught with sensual tension that offers a sense of dread, while also having a hypnotically calming influence, as if breaking the monotony of the journey with the anticipation of an ominous danger that awaits them, capturing a lingering shot of a boy and girl’s hands in the car coming close together without touching, an homage to the opening of the Bresson film A Man Escaped (Un Condamné à Mort s'est échappé) (1956), and a reflection of a growing sense of longing, setting the tone for the film’s meticulous exploration of the changing dynamic of relationships.  Bush pilot Blake is there waiting for them in his hydroplane, flying them to one of those northern Canadian lakes that would be impossible to reach otherwise, as there are no roads, yet he plays a prank right from the outset, a practical joke with cruel undertones, Exclusive Clip: Who by Fire - Philippe Lesage (2025) YouTube (1:32), a foreshadowing of what’s to come.  As they arrive to this woodland retreat, which is used mostly as a hunting and fishing lodge, what’s immediately apparent is the force of the great outdoors, as they are literally engulfed in nature, where it’s easy to get lost in the woods, yet there’s also a claustrophobic feel of being trapped.  Almost immediately, Jeff’s attention focuses on Aliocha, with Max fading into the background, so much so that he’s almost written out of the story entirely, becoming an invisible presence, yet he’s always there, just no longer noticed by Jeff who is fixated on his sister.  At an opportune moment, he tries to kiss her, but is flatly rejected, running away in shame afterwards, thoroughly humiliated, spending a harrowing night alone in the woods, completely enveloped in the darkness, taking shelter in another abandoned hunting cabin, eventually rescued the next morning by the searching plane of Blake flying overhead, who also picks up two new guests visiting from Paris, Hélène (Irène Jacob) and her partner, Eddy (Laurent Lucas), representing the educated and elitist elements of society, yet beneath the surface lies a profound dysfunction, reflections of the broader malaise within bourgeois society.  Their arrival culminates with another festive dinner, Who by Fire | Clip | Opens March 14 YouTube (1:48), but it takes an ugly turn, with alpha male Blake tormenting the more melodramatic Albert again, this time switching Albert’s prized vintage wine to a cheaper version, which he immediately recognizes, though it’s been poured into the same bottle, leaving him stunned and flabbergasted before sending him into an emotional tailspin, mirroring Jeff’s outburst, building on a similar dynamic that copies the correlation between Jeff and Aliocha with Albert and Blake.  Relationships are viewed with themes of exposed vulnerability and acts of deception, erupting in a feverish after dinner sequence of comical and wildly exaggerated dancing to The B-52's - Rock Lobster (Official Music Video) YouTube (7:06), a joyous, anxiety-relieving counterpart to the cruel embarrassment of the earlier sequence, yet happiness feels more like a mirage than any positive development.

Jeff is in for another radical surprise, as he discovers evidence of Blake and Aliocha’s secret affair in the form of witnessing Blake taking naked photographs of Aliocha as he peers from the outside into the cabin window, which immediately changes his perception of both of them.  No longer envious, they each become the object of his scorn, calling her a slut who will put out for anyone else but him, even revealing to Albert that he watched Blake drink his prized wine afterwards while joking about the incident, having a good laugh at his expense.  It’s a stunning turn of events, as hero-worshipping turns to hatred and scorn, even having thoughts of killing Blake, which plays out like a sick revenge fantasy in his head, evolving into a study of male patriarchy gone wrong.  The coup de grâce, however, is an extended ten-minute dinner scene that grows more uncomfortable by the second, with the table serving as a verbal battleground for voicing grievances, laced with mean-spirited insults and humiliation, as Albert expresses unfiltered venom for his old friend, voicing his displeasure about the wine incident, but taking things much further, as old resentments and petty jealousies erupt.  With an unsettling tone, combustible tensions soon boil over between the two creative male egos, initially reminiscing over their youthful endeavors, but the mood shifts significantly, as playful bickering leads to brazen insults and hurtful comments, going way over the top in terms of drunken outbursts, taking a slide into the wretchedly vile and repugnant, adding an obnoxious stench into the air. The following morning, hoping a little fresh mountain air might ease the pent-up tension from the night before, they set out in canoes down the river, peaceful at first before the scenes of the group canoeing down the rapids in the middle of the deep woods resembles the ominous danger that awaits them in John Boorman’s DELIVERANCE (1972), as it explodes into a catastrophe on multiple fronts, with several boats capsizing, leading to a horrible tragedy, while a hunt into the mountains shows Jeff eyeing Blake through the scoped sights of his rifle, like an internalized death fantasy, where clearly they have crossed a line of no return.  There’s a switch that takes place, as the more the film goes on, the more we’re getting inside Aliocha’s head.  No one comes out unscathed in what is essentially a coming-of-age story where innocence veers into the horror-in-the-woods genre, shot in ‘Scope by Balthazar Lab, growing significantly darker and more disturbing, taking its own sweet time at more than two and a half hours, where a good deal of it is staring at a near completely dark screen, with very little outline of anything visible, a visual tactic that definitely tries one’s patience and can get wearying, while the director also has a tendency to interrupt music scenes abruptly, ultimately feeling underwhelming, with not nearly enough dramatic tension, though it is told in a uniquely distinct style.  Set in a time before anyone had cell phones or social media accounts, the film is essentially a series of extended conversations that steadily build into heated arguments, reflecting the disillusionment of youth, the failure of adult role models, the effects of toxic masculinity, and the longing for artistic/personal intimacy, as Lesage blends a combination of slowly building naturalism and dread in this lengthy exposé of a wilderness retreat that goes off the rails, spiraling into the depths of the unknown, like an existential venture into the heart of darkness. 

While this train wreck of a film has a darker, more psychologically complex edge, featuring really insufferable characters for a prolonged period of time, presenting episodes of aggression and simmering tensions without offering even the slightest satisfaction of closure, it just doesn’t have the character depth or emotional complexity of some of the best movies made about adolescence, like François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian) (1991), Olivier Assayas’s  Cold Water (L’eau Froide) (1994), André Téchiné’s Wild Reeds (Les Roseaux Sauvages) (1994), Richard Kelly’s DONNIE DARKO (2001), Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2001), Andrea Arnold’s FISH TANK (2009), Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now (2013), or Richard Linklater’s 2014 Top Ten List #1 Boyhood, to name a few. 

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Dâne-ye anjîr-e ma'âbed)

 

Writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof

 Rasoulof at Cannes, photos are actors who are forbidden to leave Iran

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.   

Mohammad Rasoulof's Top 10 - The Criterion Collection