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At the forefront of Iranian cinema stand two
names, Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf. If
Kiarostami has gotten greater Western acclaim owing to the more intellectual bent of his
films, Makhmalbaf can be comfortable in the fact that virtually his entire family are now
the darlings of international cinema. Directed by wife Marzieh Meshkini and co-written by
Mohsen, The Day
I Became a Woman has enjoyed much acclaim with its recent U.S. release. Older
daughter Samira Makhmalbaf (age 21 as of this writing) is already famous with two films, The Apple and Blackboards,
again both co-written by Mohsen.
Facets Video has just released six of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s early
features – Boycott, The Peddler, The Cyclist, Marriage of the Blessed, Once Upon A Time, Cinema, and The Actor – as well as a documentary on him by
Houshang Golmakani, editor of the Iranian film journal Film Monthly. The most
remarkable revelation in these films is just how much Makhmalbaf developed from a rough
student of Hollywood-influenced movies into a masterful composer with his own personal
style and tone. In all his films however, the subject matter is clearly close to his heart
and deals with deeply ingrained personal experience.
As Golmakani’s documentary Stardust Stricken, Mohsen Makhmalbaf: A Portrait
(1996) shows, that experience is extraordinary. Makhmalbaf was born in Tehran in 1957, and
Golmakani shows him visiting his old home where Makhmalbaf relates the story of his youth.
He was born to his father’s second wife. His father left his first wife because she
could not bear him a son and he soon deserted his second wife as well during
Makhmalbaf’s early childhood. His mother took him to live with his aunt and
grandmother, and she remarried, this time to a lawyer. Makhmalbaf attributes discovering
religion from his grandmother, learning how to read from his aunt, and gaining political
awareness from his stepfather. Makhmalbaf became such a stern fundamentalist that due to
the religious intolerance of music at the time, he would cover his ears when passing music
stores.
He was politically active and militant, distributing leaflets and
putting on plays against the Shah's regime. The central event in his youth proved to be
his attempt to steal a gun from a policeman when Makhmalbaf was 17. (This was turned into his wonderful masterpiece A
Moment of Innocence, aka Bread and Flower).
He stabbed the policeman, but failed to get the gun and was shot. Taken into captivity, he was interrogated and
intensely tortured. Makhmalbaf utilized this
experience in his film Boycott. He
remained in prison for 4 years before being released in 1979.
Makhmalbaf’s philosophy has evolved significantly since then.
Looking back, he sees himself as naive and now finds the too devoutly political to be
Machiavellian. Surprisingly, he takes Albert Einstein as an idol and applies his theory of
relativity to the social-political. He says he has stopped judging others and instead
tries to understand them. He sees God as an inclusive rather than an exclusive force. His
willingness to criticize the state and cultural traditions have made him a controversial
figure in Iran, and his collaborations with Marzieh and Samira certainly show a strong
concern for the oppression of women and Kurds in Iranian society.
The earliest Makhmalbaf film in this collection is Boycott
(1985), which will be a shock to anyone only familiar with the pictures from
later in Makhmalbaf’s career. Car chase scenes and gun battles feature prominently in
this story about political activist Valeh (Majid Majidi, later the director of The Color of Paradise
and The Children of Heaven). Valeh’s wife, Maryam,
has just gone into labor when the Shah government forces unleash a full-scale assault on
Valeh and his fellow dissidents. Valeh is captured after his colleagues are brutally
murdered, and in prison, he strives to escape vicious torture. A cross between a 1970s
American paranoia thriller and Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor, Boycott still shows signs of
Makhmalbaf realizing his own cinematic language, particularly in one 540 degree pan. Boycott
is tedious polemical cinema with pretentious dialogue like, “I had begun with the
postulate: I fight, therefore I am. But now I doubt whether I really exist, and therefore
I don’t care to fight.” It is, however, certainly worth watching as a curio in
Makhmalbaf’s oeuvre.
The Cyclist (1987) is perhaps the best film in
the series. It is cinematically more sophisticated than Boycott as Makhmalbaf makes
beautiful use of backlighting and camera dollying. Ateh, nicknamed Nassim (Moharram
Zaynalzadeh), is an impoverished Afghan immigrant whose wife is dying from a serious
illness. Unable to find any other job to pay for her medical bills, he agrees to a circus
act in which he will ride a bicycle in a small circle for an entire week straight. He has
to deal with a riot getting in his way and sabotage as betting whether he will make it
becomes intense, but simply staying awake on the bicycle becomes the most monumental task.
His young son hands him food and drink, and he props his eyes open with toothpicks in his
ride that may determine life and death for his wife.
Shot in expressive black and white, Once Upon a Time, Cinema
(1992) is the most beautiful Makhmalbaf film in this collection. An expression of
the love of film, particularly Iranian film, the movie follows Ebrahim-Khan, The
Cinematographer as he is called, while he tries to introduce cinema to the Persian court
at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The Cinematographer may be made up to look like
Charles Chaplin, but the film pays equal homage to Buster Keaton in employing characters
who leap on and off the screen as in Sherlock, Jr. Makhmalbaf quotes sight gags from The Kid and other Chaplin films, but suffice it to say
Chaplin does Chaplin a lot better than Makhmalbaf. Makhmalbaf also over-indulges in
surrealism, but he does manage many memorable scenes – an opening landscape shot
worthy of Andrei Tarkovsky, a slow-motion storm of leaves, a cow and a man half-buried in
film stock, a montage of movie embraces, and a spoof of his own film, The Cyclist.
Comedy has always had greater translation problems than drama between
cultures, and The Actor (1993) is prime evidence. It is less amusing than frighteningly absurd, not
unlike much Hong Kong comedy filtered through Western eyes.
The story has famous and successful movie star Akbar Abdi (playing a fictional
version of himself long before John Malkovich did), plagued by infertile wife Simin
(Fatemah Motamed-Aria) who desires a child. She
brings home a deaf and dumb gypsy mute (Mahaya Petrossian) as a second wife for her
husband, but that just might cause more problems than it solves. The doughy tantrum-prone Abdi here seems to be
channeling Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel from The Producers simultaneously. Makhmalbaf meanwhile
pays homage to Jacques Tati’s Playtime with an automated room and to Luis Bunuel
with a surreal scene of Simin fishing out of her window.
Makhmalbaf may have made his mark in the West with A Moment of
Innocence and Gabbeh, but any serious student of his films would
have to see the movies in this Facets collection to get a thorough understanding of
Makhmalbaf and his methods.
- George Wu
