Over the past few decades the cinema of Iran has, better than any other national canon, bridged the gap between political resistance and genre-adjacent entertainment.
Mohammad Rasoulof’s own story illustrates the continuing pressures placed on artists who dare to question the regime. Shortly before The Seed of the Sacred Fig played at Cannes, the director, sentenced to flogging and confiscation of his property, fled the country for a life of exile in Europe.
All of which might suggest the film, concerning the paranoic decline of a legal bigwig, is going to be a little too “good for you”. A chore. A duty. An imposition.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Rasoulof, director of There Is No Evil and Manuscripts Don’t Burn, has, despite his film’s forbidding length, crafted an increasingly taut, always twisty thriller that, if anything, gives in a little too enthusiastically to breathlessness in its closing sections.
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The Seed of the Sacred Fig review: An odd, special, important film
The anger remains palpable throughout – footage of real-life protesters is woven in with the drama – but so is the desire to keep the audience on edge. It is a worthy nominee for this year’s international-feature Oscar (submitted by Germany, a producer, after the Iranian authorities unsurprisingly declined).
Rasoulof, also the screenwriter, does a good job of conveying the political structures in clear, economic fashion. Iman (Missagh Zareh), a dutiful lawyer living with wife and two daughters in modestly comfortable circumstances, learns that he is to be promoted to “investigating judge”.
The position turns out to be much taken up with signing the death warrants for dissenters. There is little “investigation” to the task. He is there largely to hasten the harshest of punishments.
Iman is to remain anonymous, but, aware that this remains a dangerous position, the authorities offer him a gun for his protection. Rasoulof, a well-read man, may be inserting a literary gag here. We all know Chekhov’s maxim about ensuring that any firearm introduced in the first act gets fired by the close of action.
In this case, something almost as destructive takes place. The pistol goes missing and the family becomes engulfed in recrimination.
Some fraying was already in evidence. Rezvan and Sana, Iman’s daughters, have been watching protests on social media and are waking up to the suppression of independent thought. Both father and mother shut them down when they raise objections at the dinner table. Later, Sadaf, a friend of Rezvan, arrives at the apartment after being injured in a protest against the forced wearing of the hijab. Najmeh, Iman’s hitherto loyal wife, reluctantly allows the dissident shelter.
It is clear some kind of clash is coming. Nonetheless, few will guess quite how sinister the reversals prove. One can read those betrayals as evidence of how ideological conviction can override familial loyalty, but that is surely a naive take on an even filthier series of compromises.
The later horrors spring as much from the desire for self-preservation as from any dedication to theocracy. It doesn’t matter what class of oppressive regime you live under. Keeping your job and maintaining your lifestyle is too often more important than what’s written in the constitution or the holy book.
All involved prove committed to Rasoulof’s grim vision. Soheila Golestani, as Najmeh, wears the stresses heavily throughout. Missagh Zareh and Mahsa Rostami, as the daughters, weave desperation in with frustration. Pooyan Aghababaei’s camera finds accusatory murk in every compromised corner.
What of the final, insane conflagration? More than a few critics have suggested the film ends up losing the run of itself, but few would deny that it remains indecently entertaining up to the last frame. Odd, special, important.
- In cinemas from Friday, February 7th
