The Pictures in a Lost Mirror

On Bahram Beizai’s TRAVELLERS

Kamyar Mohsenin

“Mirror does not flatter” as Jung indicated. But it always does not reflect our own true face. Sometimes it immediately finds a path into the unconscious, into the hopes and into the dreams. Thus as observed in Plath’s “The Magic Mirror”, it reflects the double personality hidden beyond the persona. In Bahram Beizai’s TRAVELLERS, the faces behind the masks are magically portrayed in a lost mirror.

With a Brechtian devise, Beizai starts his film when Mahtab (Homa Rousta) turns to the camera and says, “We are going to Tehran to attend my sister’s wedding. But we never reach there. We will be all dead in an accident on the road.” Everyone hears the news in disbelief, but trying to compromise with the so-called truth, they start to show their true faces behind the masks. Everyone does so, but Grandma (Jamileh Sheikhi) who believes that they are still alive as the mirror used in the weddings of the daughters of the family in the different generations is not found on the accident location. The house also changes from the setting of a wedding to a platform for a funeral.

Most of the film is formed in the complicated mise-en-scène for a group of characters, inspired by shi’ite passion plays, Ta’zieh. This way a ballet of the movements of the performers and the camera brings to life with some unique aesthetic concepts. In these scenes, all the characters, but Grandma, are hidden behind their masks. But in the solace of two characters, the true faces are ultimately revealed. Enhanced by deep and sincere emotional performances, the solace scenes are devised without any figurative and decorative facades in static medium shots. Relied on the strong dialogues written by Beizai (one of the most powerful playwrights in the Iranian history), the solace scenes come to an unforgettable duet when Mastan (Simin Maotamed Aria) talks to her husband, Mahu (Majid Mozaffari), about the hidden secret of their life.

The film is badly hurt when these two concepts are forgotten – for instance, in the playful movements of the bride, Mahrokh (Mozhdeh Shamsai), in the first scenes, and her nightmare sequence – however there were some critical attitudes towards the performance of the main actress, it is evident that the creative ideas were not in place to shape these scenes as powerful as the rest of the film.

TRAVELLERS depicts the truth about a nation accustomed to wear masks when appearing in the public even in the critical circumstances – something much more realistic than all the Iranian docudramas offer to their audiences…

K.

The Importance of Being Not Fiery

On Rene Claire’s I MARRIED A WITCH

Kamyar Mohsenin

Once Luis Bunuel wrote that the Europeans are too intellectual to make movies. When thinking of the notions to Dante and Beatrice in the romantic dialogue between Wooley and the Witch in Rene Clair’s American romantic comedy, I MARRIED A WITCH, Bunuel’s point is absolutely comprehensible, but the whole film indicates how it is possible to alter an American genre film.

Interestingly Clair’s film focuses on a main plot and forgets all about the very popular subplots. For instance, the mayor candidacy of Wooley (Frederic March) which could lead to the popular political jokes is simply put aside. In the main plot, there is a triangle, but not an ordinary love triangle. The approach is more similar to a comedy as described in the essential aesthetic texts where there are a man and a woman in love and an elderly man relentlessly trying to make them apart. However when the lovers marry at last, the elderly does not learn a new lesson in life – as prescribed in the old formula. There is no way but putting back the disturbing genie back in the bottle!

This way, in a romantic comedy, Clair marginalizes the fiancée character stereotype, Estelle (Susan Hayward) in order to focus on the two unearthly characters, Jennifer (Veronica Lake) and her father, Daniel (Cecil Kellaway), not to embody a metaphysical love, but to glorify the love as it happens on the Earth – a concept which was glorified 45 years later in Wim Wenders’s DER HIMMEL ÜBER BERLIN. Delving into the paradox, Clair turns one unearthly element, fire, into the fourth character and forms an entertaining piece on the importance of being not fiery.

K.

On Vincent Le Port’s BRUNO REIDAL: CONFESSIONS OF A MURDERER

Kamyar Mohsenin

Not delving into the sociological depths of the story of a murderer and the men of law as thoroughly observed in Bertrand Tavernier’s unforgettable rendition of the story of Joseph Vacher, a serial killer assuming himself a godsent anarchist, in the unforgettable film, LE JUGE ET L’ASSASSIN (1976), Vincent Le Port’s striking debut feature, BRUNO REIDAL: CONFESSIONS OF A MURDERER, lacks the driving force of the narrative due to the reduction of the motivation of the central character to his complexes.

Inspired by the real story of an adolescent murderer in the turn to the 20^th century, Le Port’s film does not aim at the presentation of any historical and sociological grounds for the event as it abstracts the main character from the community and confines him in a small world of personal experiences. The psychological analysis does not lead to any thought provoking clues as it desperately relates all the misfortunes to the bad habit of the masturbation – just as heralded by the preacher men all through the history! The film apparently attempts to build up a study based on the confessions and the documents, but never comes to the point of questioning history, truth, morality and justice as Foucault and his co-authors did in “I, Pierre Rivière, having slaughtered my mother, my sister and my brother… A case of parricide in the 19th century”.

However it’s not the end of the story since the film finds its strengths in the cinematic ventures director takes in his very first step. The narrative, constituted of the present time in killing, confinement and interrogation (apparently seen from the omniscient POV) and the past, in the flashbacks (clearly reconstructed in the killer’s mind), gives new depths to the film. Starting with the killing scene, avoiding the extraviolent shots, the film opens a window to a crime story with a little shock, but at the end, when the scene is reconstructed by the killer in the details and the shocking depiction of the sudden savagery, swinging between determination and hesitation, CONFESSIONS OF A MURDERER shines a new light on sense and sensibility when a so-called act of insanity is committed. Visually the film finds a good path to portray that it is not the human who is vain, but lacking any relations to the other people and the surrounding nature makes him seem vain and alienated. In order to achieve this, the film intelligently relies on the appearance of the actors playing the main character in different ages. As a matter of fact, the actors are mostly seen as models in the paintings, bearing a vision of vanity and insanity.

K.

A different look into the concepts and the narrative outline of LA STRADA

Kamyar Mohsenin

Maybe after the WWII which led to the misery resulted by the discrimination and the cruelty, it was so unexpected to wait to see what Zarthustra would be saying about his ubermensch and his contribution to the humanity. Maybe it was a proper time to see how a candid observer, not a wise man of knowledgeability, would look into the world and the history destructed by superpowers of inhumanity.

After long years, it seems that Federico Fellini has intelligently pursued this kind of observer in LA STRADA through the postwar Europe. Not only in the confrontation of Gelsomina, as the woman simpleminded observer, and Zampano, the superhuman of masculinity, but also in the every incident premised in the film, there are a lot of paradoxical resemblances and similarities between the adventures of Zarathustra and Gelsomina respectively depicted by Nietzsche and Fellini.

If Zarathustra deliberately chooses the way down to the mountain, Gelsomina is chosen and forced to go up the hill and then the mountain. If Zarathustra believes that he is the chosen one to teach the human to rise to an upper stage, Gelsomina is obliged to learn to herald the entrance of a superhuman. This transfiguration of a speaker to an observer gives a way to see the world through the eyes of the speechless victims when the superhuman, made by the preachers of the ideology, begins act as a betraying, killing machine.

Just like Zarathustra, Gelsomina is enchanted by the presence of an acrobat who endangers himself to bring the joy to the people. The acrobat dies, but here not due to an accident on the path he has chosen, but due to what is conceived by the superhuman of will and dignity. The acrobat is named Il Matto – just like a fool in a Shakespeare’s drama who is marginalized since he is the only man talking out of truth and honesty when faced by the icons of power. When he dies, it seems that instead of Zarathustra, Gelsomina is destined to bear the unbearable lightness of his being on her shoulders all through the way.

Just as Zarathustra was advised by a priest, Gelsomina is asked by two nuns to stay far from the outside world and live in peace and just like him, she does not accept to live outside the world of the reality.

Interestingly both of them are neglected by the people, but they both teach them to undergo a different experience. The fist one teaches words of wisdom to turn a human into a sueprman; and the second one teaches tunes of emotion to breakdown a superman and to turn him into a human.

In the fantasies of both of them, these echoes can be heard – especially when Gelsomina is lost and sees a group passing by, playing a happy tune.

After a great war, LA STRADA shows that there is no way but to learn to be human… there is no way but to rely on sensibility instead of intelligibility.

Once in the mad, mad world of industrialization, self alienation was defined by Kafka when describing metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa. In “The Metamorphosis”, everything was narrated inside a room where Samsa was transformed to a giant insect.
In her thought provoking debut feature film, DIFFERENT KINDS OF RAIN (which deservedly won the best first feature film award in Tallinn Black Nights International Film Festival), Isa Prahl focuses on the concept of self alienation in the mad, mad world of communication and social networks. In order to do this, the self alienated son of the family, Mike, who has locked himself in a room, is not portrayed as a proper character, but as a faceless figure covered in the clothes just in the beginning of the film; a figure who might be the unknown boy who surfs between all the people, locked in the closed areas, to protect themselves from the downpour; a figure who might find a way to go to the open air to surf fearlessly in the rain – since he is notified that the rain is beautiful when falling on his skin.
In DIFFERENT KINDS OF RAIN, unlike “The Metamorphosis”, there is no hint that what is happening inside the room with the unknown figure. Contrarily the film focuses on his family members living on the verge of nervous breakdown and fall of a house and a family, each searching for a new meaning for their lives outside the domestic circle and being prepared to cross the borders of regularities. Their unity, evident in the beginning of the film, when the father, the mother and the sister are singing “Happy Birthday to You!” at the door of the closed room, gradually turns to the crosscutting of the stories of three people, seeking their dreams out of their home – a home with a creature, deliberately locked in his room.
Unable to connect to the creature, each of them is involved a new story to prove the humane abilities. The father tries to look after an ill man, unable to connect to the others. He is ready to steal the device the man needs to communicate with the others. The mother meets one of the old friends of his son and tries to make him a replacement. She is ready to break in the gym with the young boy with the boy and unawarely tempt him. The sister does her best to convince her best friend that her new boyfriend is not worthy of her. She is ready to sleep with him and make a mess at last.
The crosscuts between the stories make the audience forget all about the creature, but the pretext for the creation of the creature seems somehow clichéd and outdated. It is the easiest way to talk about a horrible experience when confronting the wild nature in the desert and then an unbelievable reaction when taking refuge in one’s room and surfing the internet. But the creature’s messages to outside form an outstanding idea, solely dealing with the rain reports from different parts of the world.
In her debut feature film, Isa Prahl shows her masterful approach to creation of a critical situation and its relevant narratives. Her great work with the actors is sensational, leading two young girls, Miri and Ellie, to crazy moments of trust and friendship as well as jealousy and hostility. Meanwhile DIFFERENT KINDS OF RAIN showcases the bravura contribution of the cinematographer and the composer. Andreas Kohler finds the most precious opportunities for creating the dreams and the nightmares in his stylized shots and Volker Bertelmann gives more psychological depth to the unforgettable scenes through his experimental music.

K.

First film by Mazdak Mirabedini, FOOTWORK (2017), is an indie Iranian film in its essence. Different in form from any product in Iranian mainstream and art film industries (even in casting; even in the opening with a lengthy medium shot of a young couple sitting in a car, back to the camera), it focuses on none of the controversial, contempo issues – such as immigration, regional tensions, problematic lives of artists and filmmakers, financial crisis, etc. – affecting the lives of its central characters. It does not trap the whole thing in the box of a conventional, simplistic story, desperately trying to over exaggerate all the misfortunes of the people. It makes a miniature painting of a big city called Tehran. It seems that each scene is shaped as a detail in a gigantic tableau of the modern metropolis. In each detail, the city is depicted as a hiding place for vulnerable, helpless people fearing that betrayal and dishonesty will be exterminating their lives; as a ring for the exhausted individuals challenging a cruel, savage contender called life.

In such a composition, it is more important to lay out the shots in a bigger frame rather than to make counterpoints with them. So instead of the rhythm of the events, it is vital to capture the expressive moments in the lives of the individuals – such moments as the picture of the lonely man remembering the past and talking to their beloved ones, looking at the vast landscape of the city; and two fragile women understanding each other and sitting on the steps in the nocturnal silence of the street. In FOOTWORK, life of a city is reflected in the lives of its inhabitants. Meanwhile the film is enhanced by the rhythmic pieces formed on formalist concepts of montage, mostly accompanied by some kind of a fusion of occidental and Iranian music. Thus the film finds a way to give an overall view to the circus of the real estates in the big city; and to track down the main character wandering around the streets searching for all his lost hopes.

K.

Not a conventional story, but a keen observation of human conditions and relations… Not a tragic, gloomy piece on disorderly world today, but a biting, playful requiem of living… For these reasons, Haneke’s new film, HAPPY END, does not connect to most of the people…

This time, once again, Haneke does not attempt to define the lack of the relations with an incomprehensible, indigestible interpretation of a word like LOVE, but delivers an apparently incoherent text to have more time to focus on his big tableau of contemporary life.

The film mentions that it follows up the characters from LOVE, but it does not help a little bit since HAPPY END is a completely different film – even in some parts witty and funny.

It portrays three generations in a family. The grandfather (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a remaining member of a generation who witnessed the big crimes and survived the big wars. Full of hatred towards living in the days of inability and oldness, he tries to convince everyone that the only deservedly act is to help him to get rid of this still life – as once he did it to help his wife.

The father (Mathieu Kassovitz) and the mother (Isabelle Huppert), the son and the daughter of the grandfather, are the adult generation who desperately and constantly try to show that they have control over everything. Coming from a generation lacking big experiences and referring to a few days of protesting on the streets in Paris as the second big revolution, they are incapable to have control even on the smallest things in their personal lives – more subtly in their troubled relations as single parents to their children and their meaningless search for a new love. Ignorant to the real side of living, the grandchildren, each, have found their own way of escaping the truth and choosing a response to their conditions – one with the pretentious humanistic activities with no sympathy and the other with altering anything to an object seen through a mobile.

Looking for an assisting hand for killing himself, after some witty conversations, at last he comes to terms with his granddaughter who finds it an interesting subject to be recorded on her mobile…

It seems that in a nightmarish black comedy, Haneke succeeds in painting his tableau with some still shots, composed simply and unsophisticatedly, and usually defined with minimal actions. Thus the actors are firstly some models for his paintings, and when one overacts (like Huppert), the visual subtleties are sacrificed. This way Haneke manages to indicate the lack of the relations of the individuals and the others through imagery. For instance, the granddaughter is solely characterized only through the imagery. When she beholds the world through the camera of her mobile in the opening, she is depicted as a witty passive, motionless observer of the repetitive details of everyday life, but among the others, she seems completely disconnected from everyone and everything. The film is undoubtedly enhanced by her encounters with her father and grandfather – despite the director’s direct criticism of a mobile-dependent generation trying to define itself in a virtual world without knowing anything about their world and obsessions.

K.

On Narratives and National Cinema

Part 1

In order to convince the audience, a narrative is often expected to be identified by its close relations to history, culture and traditions of a nation. Studying different cases, it seems that every nation has got its own narratives, but a paradoxical question also remains with no answer. In so many cases, the first acquaintance with national roots is made through some narratives. Then the constant references to Levi-Strauss’s ideas are not the only way to deal with the narratives of a nation. Besides when the winds of change begin blowing, the national roots could be easily forgotten in some certain periods. Therefore, in order to focus more carefully on the narratives, it seems that different cases should be thoroughly studied case by case.

Historical Experiences: Revolution or Reform

In late fifties-early sixties, there are two films providing the opportunity for building up a comparative study. There are some resemblances in the plotlines: an adolescent, who is unable to connect to his family members and often hangs out with some unfit friend(s), is arrested for a petty crime and sent to a detention center. But confronting the unbearable atmosphere of the center, each character goes his way.

In LES 400 COUPS (1959, François Truffaut), Antoine Doinel does not find anything to calm down his restless soul. So he turns into a rebel man breaking the law and escaping to the wide blue see, but eventually looking to the camera, he does not have any idea about the future.

In THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER (1962, Tony Richardson), which is adapted from a short story written by Alan Sillitoe in 1959, Colin Smith finds out that long distance running is his sole road to the freedom. In a race organized by the detention center, he stops a few steps before the finish line and gazes at the governor as a gesture of protest. In the final shot, the young boy is punished to work for the system.

The difference between the French film and the British film is laid in the historical backgrounds of these countries. Coming from a history of revolution and rebellion, Antoine Doinel does not stand the tyrannical rules basically and gets away from them ultimately. Contrarily rooting in a protest and reform background, Colin Smith stands against ruling systems and protests in order to take a step forward. In numerous highly-acclaimed examples in French New Wave and British Free Cinema, the movies reflect the contradictions between urgency of defiance and virtue of obeyance.

When a few years later, the earth was rocked by the rebellious souls and the dream of a better world mesmerized whole the world, there were remarkable films made in Britain reflecting the revolutionary hopes of ex-angry-young-men. Though some highly acclaimed conservative pieces – like A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (1966, Fred Zinneman) and THE LION IN WINTER (1968, Anthony Harvey) – were made in praise of the British political traditions, a new trend marked derivation from the old rituals and habits of a nation. The change was evident when IF… (1968, Lindsay Anderson) was made as a new variation of ZÉRO DE CONDUITE (1933, Jean Vigo) to focus more seriously on revolution and paved the way for radical, frantic films by such outstanding filmmakers as Ken Russell, Stanley Kubrick, etc.

K.

Following its central character in a nightmarish strange castle, Sergey Loznitsa’s A GENTLE WOMAN could be easily associated with Kafka’s works, but it is not Kafkesque at all. In his new film, Loznitsa steps into a new world. Portraying an alienated woman, stepping into this new world, he takes a semi-Bunuelian turn to focus on the nightmare wittily. So the film playfully and funnily portrays all the characters surrounding the gentle woman in the ongoing, horrible dream – a nightmare formed out of the dark world of the shadows and in the broad daylight.

At first, she is portrayed in full peace and harmony with the nature when there is no other human being around. But when she attempts once again to take a break and take a package to her husband in a far, faraway prison, she turns into a speechless alien in a pathetic circus. The clowns are the officers examining the objects inside the boxes both in the station and the prison, the convicted behind the bars and the people living all around the prison – however they would be able to turn into wild beasts whenever there is no one else around but the gentle woman. When she is not allowed to deliver the package to her husband, she tries anything decent to get this little chance. When there is no way, she is obliged to begin a silent protest. When she finds out she is living her own nightmares, she surrenders to the other peoples’ obsessions.

In “Exercice du Scénario” (by Jean-Claude Carrière and Pascal Bonitzer), only one rule is set for screenwriting: never show that everything happened is just the dream of a character. But then, Carrière remembers that he had done it in Bunuel’s LE CHARME DISCRET DE LA BOURGEOISIE and it had proved to work out well. In A GENTLE WOMAN, Loznitsa does the same thing to show how the heroine comes to know that she is destined to follow the others’ wills and obsessions. This way Loznitsa builds up a woman character living simply, entering a patriarchal world, attempting to observe her rights and meaning of freedom eventually and surrendering to misuse and abuse.

To proceed with this, Loznitsa sets out on a personal journey into the world of imagery. Portraying the woman in the nature with auteuristic flavor, in the station and prison with a satirical approach to bureaucracy, in the unknown town with its existential references and in the wild circus of the nightmare, Loznitsa succeeds to create a group portrait with the gentle lady whenever the other people are involved. After the opening in the way to the cottage, the film reflects her difference with the others as well as her inability to connect to the surroundings in non-action of the silent lady. In Lozanitsa’a visual feast, the words weaken the film – the words that make the film too long and the final nightmare too far.

K.