Contemporary Justice Review

ISSN: 1028-2580 (Print) 1477-2248 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcjr20

Worlds Transformed: Iranian Cinema and Social

Vision

William Over

To cite this article: William Over (2006) Worlds Transformed: Iranian Cinema and Social Vision,
Contemporary Justice Review, 9:1, 67-80, DOI: 10.1080/10282580600564933

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 Contemporary Justice Review
Vol. 9, No. 1, March 2006, pp. 67–80

Worlds Transformed: Iranian Cinema

and Social Vision
William Over

The Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf has suggested new ways of valuing human
0WilliamOver
overw@stjohns.edu
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1028-2580
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Taylor
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Francis
(print)/1477-2248
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relationships and communities that move beyond particular ethnic and class divisions
towards a world of human understanding, tolerance, and appreciation of otherness. For
Makhmalbaf, this new vision is best represented through an awareness of natural beauty,
the steadfastness of interpersonal relationships that overcome social stigmas and oppressive
roles, and an inclusive vision of national history. The revolutionary agendas of the Islamic
Republic must be turned towards the affirmation of a strong cultural identity that
emphasizes openness towards nature and humankind through a compassionate skepticism.
This positive critical understanding in Makhmalbaf’s films avoids cynical withdrawal or
aggressiveness by engaging positively with both Iran’s rich past and the possibilities of free-
dom offered by Western cultural forms. By holding to this vision, Makhmalbaf confronts
Iran’s recent past, offering a positive opportunity for progressive change by rejecting neither
traditional Persian cultural norms nor Western ways of thinking.

Keywords: Gharbzadegi; Westernization; Cultural Openness; Transcending Generations;

Westernized’, Boundary Crossing; Cultural Hybridity
‘West-struck-ness’
‘Westoxification
The post-revolutionary cinema of Iran has gained international recognition for its
subtle and cogent penetrations of the human social condition within a culture that
confronts the perplexities of rapid globalization. While several prominent Iranian film-
makers, Ghasem Erahimian, Darnish Mehrjui, Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Hamid
Jebeli, and Abolfazl Jalili among others, have engaged the ambiguities of their society’s
tensive movement from religious and social intolerance to a problematic Westernized
globalization, perhaps Mohsen Makhmalbaf has explored alternative social conscious-
ness more deeply and poignantly than any other. In films such as A Moment of Inno-
cence (1996a), The Silence (1988), and Gabbeh (1996b), Makhmalbaf suggests new ways
of valuing human relationships and communities that move beyond particular ethnic

William Over is Professor of English and Speech at St John’s University in New York City. Correspondence to:
CPS, St. John’s University, 8000 Utopia Parkway, Jamaica, New York 11439, USA. E-mail: overw@stjohns.edu

ISSN 1028–2580 (print)/ISSN 1477–2248 (online) © 2006 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/10282580600564933
 68 W. Over
and class divisions towards a world of human understanding, tolerance, and
appreciation of otherness. For Makhmalbaf, this new vision is best represented through
an awareness of natural beauty, the steadfastness of interpersonal relationships that
overcome social stigmas and oppressive roles, and an inclusive vision of national
history.
Makhmalbaf’s vision asserts that the revolutionary agendas of the Islamic Republic
must be turned towards the affirmation of a strong cultural identity that emphasizes
openness towards nature and humankind through a compassionate skepticism. This
critical perspective avoids cynical withdrawal or aggressiveness by engaging positively
with both Iran’s rich past and the possibilities of freedom offered by Western cultural
forms. By holding to this vision, Makhmalbaf confronts his country’s gharbzadegi—
variously translated as Westoxication, Westitis, and Euromania—turning this
common Iranian complaint into a positive opportunity for progressive change by
rejecting neither traditional Persian cultural norms nor Western ways of thinking.
Fearing popular disfavor and wishing to present a window dressing of liberality and
cultural sophistication, the Pahlavi government of the Shah regime reluctantly funded
art films that often included dissident themes, though censorship was also common.
During the 1970s, cinema in Iran became a chief target of revolutionaries against the
Shah. By the advent of the Islamic government in 1979, 180 cinemas had been
destroyed (Naficy, 1996). While clerical leaders were not opposed to film in itself, they
associated most commercial films with unwanted secular and Western cultural influ-
ences. In 1982, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance was founded to enforce
guidelines for subject matter and treatment, to set film release schedules, to control the
use of film equipment, and to manage production financing. However, instead of
restricting artistic development, government backing encouraged commercial success.
As a consequence Iranian banks began to offer more long-term loans for film produc-
tion. During the late 1980s into the 1990s, Iranian filmmakers received praise at
international film festivals, a source of national pride for the Islamic government.
Following this success was a cautious reduction of strictures on film content. Women
characters, for example, moved center stage from the background; the coding of gender
changed significantly. “The averted gaze became more focused and direct, sometimes
charged with sexual desires” (Naficy, 1996, p. 677). Women directors also appeared for
the first time (Nayeri, 1993).
Since then, Iranian cinema has grown still more in international reputation while
becoming a major form of cultural hybridity at home. The most important event for
伊朗电影 artistic development remains the Fajr Film Festival in Tehran, celebrating the 11 days
获得好评 in February leading to the anniversary of the Revolution. Popular as much for the
电影限制 opportunity to see quality foreign films on the large screen—as opposed to black-
逐渐减少
marketed videos—it serves as the major national venue for the latest Iranian
但仍存在
审美的 productions. Still, in some ways, revolutionary fervor has inhibited government
尴尬 support for new filmmaking. Many theatres were incinerated during the Revolution,
but new screens were only slowly rebuilt, creating a distribution shortage (Simon,
2000). Nonetheless, Iran today faces an embarrassment of aesthetic choices. The future
course of film as a cultural institution has been much debated. Although the Islamic
 Contemporary Justice Review 69
government showed clear signs of liberalization in the second half of the 1990s, the
question of cultural identity remains paramount. If those in power determine the
remembered sources of identity and unity for a society, then whatever images are
consistent with the aims of a particular social group are uplifted and reconstructed.
What is inconsistent and threatening is erased or denied (see Zelizer, 1995). To what
extent the 1997 liberal government of Iran will in turn make itself “the masters of
memory” (LeGoff, 1992, p. 54) remains an open question.
Suspicious of the economic and military hegemony identified with Eurocentric
cultural forms, Iran’s social policy has often opposed Western cultural trespassing.
Still, as Makhmalbaf himself remarks, “[T]he Revolutionary government’s restrictions
on violence and sexual explicitness have in fact encouraged a greater attention to both
aesthetic form and moral message, creating a cinema movement with stylistic nuance
and a clear social justification” (Sterritt, 2000, p. 21). Commanding a wide popular
base and enhanced by an agenda for cultural self-determination, Iranian cinema has
affected the lives of the general populace in significant ways. Of its influence on
contemporary Iranian society, Godfrey Cheshire has remarked, “[Iranian] cinema is
not only a link among other arts but a bridge between despair and hope, devastation
and survival, poverty and plenty, subject and object—and most importantly, between
people” (1993, p. 43).

Makhmalbaf
Whereas the popular Iranian filmmaker Ghasem Ebrahimian relies on the verisimilitude
G: 真实
of urban settings to present in his works a globalized world of cultural uncertainty and
的世界 estrangement, Mohsen Makhmalbaf images a transformed world where the characters’
不确定性 imaginations explore and redefine their identities. While Ebrahimian places his char-
M：改造 acters within a highly determined, claustrophobic environment, Makhmalbaf celebrates
的世界 human freedom even in the face of uncertainty and loss. His sensuous filmic style has
强调⾃由
been described in the West as “poetic realism” (“Two masterpieces,” 1999, p. 8). Creat-
ing a rich fabric of ambiguity and tone, he treats his subjects at times with gentle humor,
at other times with poignant silence. Continually experimenting with narrative form
and characterization, Makhmalbaf rebuts the long-term misconception that third world
cinema follows the lead of first world creators. In such 1990s films as Once Upon a Time,
Cinema, Marriage of the Blessed, and A Moment of Innocence, he demonstrates a height-
ened sense of form without departing to gratuitous formalism. His films, however, also
cohere as strong social documents. Another Iranian filmmaker’s character comments
on the significance of Makhmalbaf’s works for a broad section of Iranians:
I find a man who shows my sufferings in his films and makes me want to see them over and
over again. A man who dares to expose the people who trade on other people’s lives—the
rich people who are heedless of the simple needs of the poor, which are basically economic
needs. (Cheshire, 1998)
Makhmalbaf’s characters possess political agency but are drawn with such psychologi-
cal and social accuracy that the levels of identity they reveal evoke compelling responses
from the audiences.
70 W. Over
A Moment of Innocence (Makhmalbaf, 1996a) challenges the presuppositions of the
“play-within-a-play” format. Often the viewer is uncertain of the boundaries between
the reality of the storyline—the actors in their real-life decision-making—and the
fictional recreations of the rehearsed film under production. Further complicating the
film’s levels of reality is the fact that the important characters in the rehearsed film are
playing themselves in part of the film, while young actors are being recruited to play
these same actors 20 years before. Moreover, the story—an incident from the 1970s
Iranian liberation movement against the Shah’s dictatorial regime—is non-fiction,
while the film script is novelistic in point of view and treatment. Finally, the film’s
layers of identity are self-reflexive, since the film under production is based on a signif-
icant incident in Makhmalbaf’s own life during the revolutionary struggle. Common-
place binaries—the generation gap between idealistic youth and cynical age, truth and
reality, the personal and the political, fiction and non-fiction, the story itself and its
retellings, rehearsal and final product—are all transcended in the search for the truth
of a nation’s struggle.
Makhmalbaf breaks another binary accepted a priori in the post-Cold War era,
namely that political and partisan drama cannot bridge the gap between the personal
world and the broad world of political struggle. In fact, the filmmaker answers posi-
tively Susan Mayne’s lament about this separation:

[T]heoretical writing about the “politics” of “critical” spectatorship [in cinema] usually
remains locked into an either/or situation—a micropolitics where everything is a contes-
tatory act, or a macropolitics where nothing is contestatory unless part of a globally defined
political agenda. (1993, p. 172)

A Moment of Innocence (and The Silence, 1988, discussed below) move beyond thinking
only in terms of master narratives of social revolution and structural change. Like the
recent films of Latin America’s New Cinema movement, Makhmalbaf’s works tran-
scend divisions between the personal and the political, the macro- and micropolitical
worlds of literature and ideology, to create a new space where the life spans of
individuals converge and unite within the expanses of large social movements. In this
cinematic world, individual identities reveal the transactional basis of human
experience.
The real incident that inspires A Moment of Innocence involves a plan originally
devised by Makhmalbaf himself when a young anti-Shah militant. Using his girlfriend
as a decoy, the young Makhmalbaf surprises and wounds a police officer. The scheme
costs him five years in prison where he fears for his life under torture. The director
wishes to compare his world then with his world at present in an attempt to explore the
inner lives of the agents of this revolutionary incident. By juxtaposing the older and
younger versions of himself with the same versions of the surviving police officer he
stabbed, he aims to understand those deeper motivations left unconscious over a two-
decade period of profound social change. Vestiges of pre-revolutionary days continu-
ally break through the present realities of the film actors and Iranian society in general.
For example, in an important narrative element that reveals the director’s adroit use of
humor for thematic purposes, the actor-playing-himself-as-police-officer threatens to
 Contemporary Justice Review 71
leave the set over the casting of an actor-playing-his-younger-pre-revolutionary self.
He threatens to leave again when he discovers that the woman he loved 20 years before
is the same woman involved in the scheme to disarm him. Such incidents in the film
ignore traditional concepts of character development for the sake of uncovering the
pathological effects of profound political change. Makhmalbaf does not so much “re-
fictionalize” his narrative as engage macropolitical concerns through the intimacy of
micropolitical realities. In the process, the play-within-a-play format is quickly
transformed into a narrative where perception and reality play off one another to probe
Iran’s tumultuous history.
In the opening scenes, Makhmalbaf plays himself-as-director of the film-in-
rehearsal, creating a Federico Fellini-style thought game on filmmaking itself. But if the
film’s early scenes pay tribute to such cinematic classics as Fellini’s 8 1/2 (1963), they
move beyond artistic preoccupations to reveal the jaundiced inner lives of the film-
maker’s aging revolutionary generation. The young woman whom the director loved is
now a married homemaker living in exurbia who does not want to get involved in
either Makhmalbaf’s film or his personal life. In contrast, her daughter, the same age as
the woman when she became involved as a militant with the director, is eager to play
her mother in the film, but is prevented by the mother, who desires a more conven-
tional life for her. The director plays himself in the film as the character Mohsen, a
jaded director who distances himself from the principle actors in his film, using his
director of photography to play both cast therapist and acting coach. Mohsen’s low
profile allows the director to keep some distance from his own production, preventing
an otherwise narcissistic presence from intruding upon the film’s wider explorations.
In the opening scenes, the policeman-turned-actor watches the casting process for
young actors playing his younger self. He chooses a handsome young man to play
himself, an attempt at self-flattery that fails when Mohsen casts instead a less attractive
young man to play the young policeman. Although the young actor looks more like the
policeman 20 years younger, the older actor-policeman is slow to warm up to him. His
subsequent coaching of his younger self reveals the general militaristic attitudes of pre-
Revolutionary Iran. The younger actor does not possess the martial bearing of the older
actor, a study in contrast between Iranian culture under the Shah and present-day Iran.
On the other hand, the young actor cast as the revolutionary Makhmalbaf is idealistic
to such a degree that he wants “to save the world” and “plant flowers in Africa.”
Through the young actor’s callowness the director satirizes the youthful exuberance of
his own (former?) revolutionary ideals, and by implication the general naïveté of his
country during the 1970s, when an altruistic internationalism combined uneasily with
a turn inward towards religious traditionalism. At one point the actor playing the
young Makhmalbaf refuses to rehearse the stabbing incident with the young policeman
and woman. His sensitive weeping reveals a conception of masculinity quite different
from the martial callousness reflected in the actor-policeman’s coaching of his younger
self. Moreover, the young woman cast as the director’s revolutionary beloved is more
ambitious than sensitive in her new role as actor, as she stares perplexed at the young
man’s weeping. The young woman—played by the actual daughter of the real woman
involved with Makhmalbaf in the stabbing incident—trades traditional womanly
72 W. Over
sensitivity for her new opportunity to transgress gender boundaries as a film actress.
This reversal of traditional roles comments on official gender coding in 1990s Iran but
also reveals the film’s subtle irony and humor, which suggests that all social movements
inevitably simplify and distort human identities.
If Makhmalbaf’s social commentary is subtly embedded in the responses of his char-
acters/actors, the important moments of the narrative are given critical perspective
through the device of the rehearsal process. Enlisting a variation of the cinema verité
production approach, the film’s rehearsal process often crosses between reality and
fiction. In addition to the device of actors reacting to their own involvement in the
non-fictional incident—such as the policeman-turned-actor, who wishes both to
justify and to change the social injustices of the pre-revolutionary society—the narra-
tive interlards scenes of present-day reality with scenes from the stabbing incident of
the 1970s. Moreover, the actors do not rehearse scenes in the standard industry
manner—particular scenes rehearsed on particular days of a production schedule—
but as private actor-coaching sessions leading to a one-time take for the camera. This
method creates the unrehearsed effect of cinema verité but, more significantly in the
film’s narrative, it challenges the separation between the pretense of drama and the
reality of actors’ lives. Suggested by the title, the film’s moment of innocence critically
compares present-day Iran with Revolutionary Iran, revealing not only a generation
gap in ideology and sentiment but also the contradictions in an individual’s acceptance
of social ideals. The central question of the film is put forth: Which moment in history
is innocence embodied, in the present-day consumerist culture of the globalized village
or the youthful exuberance of 1970s Revolutionary Iran? The filmmaker refuses formu-
laic answers, a comment on the elusiveness of historical movements and individual
lives. The film’s ending is not as neatly packaged as film reviewer Stanley Klawans
(1999) suggests: “[A] world of hunger satisfied, love ventured, women emerging into
the light” (p. 52). Rather, for Makhmalbaf, history’s passing does not suggest simple
optimism so much as wonder at life’s contradictions. Perhaps such a perspective
inspired Jonathan Rosenbaum’s quip, “Makhmalbaf has been playing Dostoyevsky to
[Abbas] Kiarostami’s Tolstoy” (in Klawans, 1997, p. 35).
In a very different film, Makhmalbaf explores the harsh realities of poverty and child
labor through the lyrical and visually radiant The Silence (1988), a film that, like Akira
Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990), explores the human spirit non-conceptually, beyond
words. Makhmalbaf’s dialogue is sparse but important, conveying a minimum of expo-
sition and intentionality. Characters first observe, become part of a situation before
speaking, thus allowing the ineffable elements of human interaction to form and speak
before words are exchanged. But if what the film attempts is the unutterable in human
living, it more than makes up for its non-conceptual focus with a clear, uncomplicated
plot structure and a realism firmly rooted in the particularities of locale and culture. The
simplicity of the story creates a universality within concrete social realities that defies
the commonplace opposition of universal and particular, essentialism and relativism.
Khorshid is a 10-year-old blind boy who works for an old stringed instrument maker
by tuning his products. He became the primary support for his mother when his father
emigrated to Russia for work. Apprehending the world only through sound and touch,
 Contemporary Justice Review 73
Khorshid explores a society beyond the social codes of class, gender, and age. Hearing
the patterns of life itself, the music of social striving, he intrudes upon the everyday
tasks of people around him, demanding that their lives change to produce more
harmony. His alternative approach to daily living succeeds through a childish inno-
cence that demands from others their participation in his vision of a life more imme-
diate and fulfilling. Khorshid’s unceasing appreciation of the details of living presents
a heightened self-awareness and inspires a deeper commitment from the sighted
characters he encounters.
The rich visual and aural elements of the film have drawn reviewers to its subliminal
appeal. “The Silence works a kind of aesthetic synethesia: a blind child who hears mise-
en-scene as music is imagined by a director whose eyes see images as part of the delicate
yet indestructible weave of poetry” (“Two masterpieces,” 1999, p. 7). But the director
is after more than lyrical expression through visual and musical elements. His charac-
ters suffer the harsh realities of unemployment, child labor, and a threatening govern-
ment oppression that has begun its policies of forced conformity. Filmed on location
in Tadjikistan, the characters’ toil offers little time for contemplation and appreciation.
Khorshid is able to encourage such awareness because of his youthful exuberance and
his non-threatening status as a blind person. However, he dreads the daily knock on the
door from his mother’s landlord, who demands back rent payments. Threatened with
dispossession and eviction, he seeks to create an everyday beauty to replace such harsh
realities. While passing a brass tub factory, he hears the cacophonous sounds made by
boys employed to hammer the metal into rounded forms. When one of the boys offers
him money he rejects it, stating that he is not a beggar. He asks them instead to beat
their hammers with the same melody as the landlord’s knock on his mother’s door: da-
da-da-daah. As the boy sings the melody for the boys, the landlord’s imperious knock
is heard in the background. The boys soon begin hammering according to this rhythm,
creating a harmonious working space. Khorshid attempts to transform his commuting
world into a harmonious living space by singing on a bus, where he inspires girls his age
to offer fresh bread and red apples to one another. He also inspires his childhood friend
to dance freely after adorning herself with dahlia petals for fingernails and cherry stems
for earrings.
Often distracted from his work routine by the sounds of people and nature, Khor-
shid is reprimanded by his boss. When a school music director accuses the instrument
maker of selling inharmonious products, the boy is fired. Despondent, Khorshid asks
his favorite musician, a poor itinerant composer, for help. The musician offers to play
for the landlord, hoping to soften his heart with beautiful music. Khorshid, however, is
not entirely convinced. The film’s ending is left open, leaving the contingent nature of
life as counter argument to life’s fulfillment. The film’s mellifluous realism presents
harsh social conditions without offering explicit political answers. The unresolved
ending leaves an ambivalent denouement that supports the theme of life’s contradic-
tions—beauty amidst injustice, generosity between the dispossessed, and harmony
within bleak poverty. References to particular political movements occasionally appear
but are not explored. For example, while Khorshid and his companion enjoy the
sounds and smells of nature, the girl notices a man angrily commanding a group of
74 W. Over
young women to wear their head coverings. The couple avoid an unpleasant confron-
tation by taking another path through the woods.
In its visual and aural lyricism, repetition, unhurried pace, and affirmative outlook
The Silence can be compared to Gabbeh (Makhmalbaf, 1996b), a film set in a remote
part of southeastern Iran where the stark beauty of the landscape serves as metaphor
for the marginal lives of the nomadic Ghashgai herders. Not all film critics appreciated
the story. Stanley Kauffmann (1997) found it “a tenuous business,” and the relation
between the old and young couples “muzzy” (p. 27). Still, most critics found the film’s
minimalist plot structure meaningful. Intensely visual and symbolic, the film uses a
folktale narrative to tell of an old couple who value a rug (gabbeh) that depicts a dark
horseman riding with a young woman across a barren landscape. As they wash the rug
in a stream, the young woman appears to them and tells her sad tale. Her poor family
would not allow her to marry the young man of her dreams—the dark horseman.
Flashback scenes reveal her anguish and the loneliness of the poor wanderer, who only
appears on horseback at extreme distances, singing stridently to her of their mutual
longing. Their unhappiness embodies the fleeting nature of hope in a land of migrant
poverty and deferred gratification. If the young woman can find no love in this world,
she finds affinity with the old couple, who still bicker with one another over old regrets.
Threatened by poverty and uncertainty, the characters embody the harsh life of
nomadic groups—the so-called Iranian “nomadic culture”—neglected by governmen-
tal policy (Tapper, 1997).
The young woman’s family will not let her marry anyone until others in her family
are married. She grieves over the unfairness and uncertainty of the situation, wonder-
ing if her beloved will wait so long without satisfaction. The problem is finally resolved
after much delay, a comment on human resilience in the face of life’s contingency and
unfairness. As in The Silence, Makhmalbaf presents the triumph of human hope over
restrictive conventions, a theme evocatively developed through such elements as the
feminine imagery of the carpet and its haunting design, made by women’s labor;
the long suffering of the young woman and her isolated lover; and the stark colors of
the cinematography. The haunting soundtrack music and wide expanses of natural
landscape—shot by Mahmoud Kalari—underscore the film’s binary complements of
human inevitability and transcendence. Avoiding direct political statement and
prescriptive solutions, Gabbeh instead celebrates the capacity for endurance and trust
in life’s abundant possibilities. Stanley Klawans (1997) finds that “the pleasures of
Gabbeh flow too freely to be frozen into a message of protest; but its feminism is appar-
ently hard enough to have gotten the film banned.” He regards the film as “more
romance than ethnography, more parable than report” (p. 35). In fact, Makhmalbaf so
unites his social commentary with the narrative that neither form nor content
dominates. The schoolteacher’s lecture on life as color, lyrically conveyed with filmic
imagery, both enhances the film’s theme of the triumph of human vitality over hard-
ship and comments directly on the need within post-Revolutionary Iran for color as
emblematic of the renewed interest in life’s possibilities. When color is observed and
appreciated beyond the somber shades of puritan doctrine, the children will learn to
trust in life directly, without guilt and shame. So Makhmalbaf, himself victim of five
 Contemporary Justice Review 75
years in prison under the Shah regime, attempts to show that life must be taken lightly
and affirmatively, not restricted to moralisms from across the political spectrum. “For
years I made political and ideological films that were all dark and grim. Gabbeh is my
first poetic film” (in Kauffmann, 1997, p. 27).
In A Moment of Innocence and The Silence, Makhmalbaf presents a slow unfolding
theme through non-conceptual forms such as haunting music and nature imagery.
Departing radically from most didactic narrative methods in the 20th century, the films
offer a discourse on social life through non-realistic technique and figurative language.
This approach directly disputes the understanding of the binary opposition, political
narrative/private-based aestheticism, by presenting through a highly stylized treatment
the endurance of community and the perseverance of individuals amidst poverty and
isolation.
Avoiding overt confrontation and direct statement in these films, Makhmalbaf
instead moves to a place of quiet illumination, affirming a progressive tolerance of
其作品回避
human difference. His cinematic tone creates the kind of expressive authenticity Vivian 了公开的政
Gornick recommends in her comment on politically motivated art: “Accusation engulfs 治对抗和直
insight, prevents a point of view from developing. Without a point of view … there is 接表态，
only a recital of disturbing feeling” (in Linfield, 1999, p. 32). Far from avoiding the real- 以拍摄真实
ities of poverty, Makhmalbaf distances himself from overt political formulation in order 的现实，来
诠释普通⼈
to interpret the lives of ordinary people, whose life-affirming worlds prevail, despite
的⽣活
harsh environments and material limitations. If his characters seem to avoid direct polit-
ical confrontation (The Silence) or have abandoned their once youthful civil disobedi-
ence for a tolerant skepticism (A Moment of Innocence), they nonetheless demonstrate
a unique resilience through their wise humanity and triumphant imagination.

Mehrjui
Where Makhmalbaf offers characters who stray from their social personae as defined 习俗和
by official propriety, breaking through restricted categories to forge new identities not 传统主
always known even to themselves, director Dariush Mehrjui posits a world where 宰的世
custom and traditional relationships dominate the characters to the point of despair. 界
He, like Ebrahimian, creates an Iran in which misfits and skeptics have no place and
where social coding is questioned only at the breaking point. This critical treatment has
at times caused Mehrjui trouble, as when The Lady (1992), an adaptation of Luis
Bunuel’s Viridiana, went under temporary government ban. Set in the affluent but
restricted Iran of the 1990s, Leila (1997) is claustrophobic where The Silence is broad
and open in its imagination, and where A Moment of Innocence ranges diachronically
between generations of people with thoughts and feelings of their own. In Mehrjui’s
story, independent behavior and contentious opinion are repressed for the sake of a
consensual ethic of family respectability. Leila is above all a feminist tract that contains
no argumentative discourse. Rather, its dialectic derives from the irony of unspoken
thoughts and contradictory actions undertaken ostensibly for the sake of family,
marriage, and religious custom. Recalling Ingmar Bergman’s studies of psychological
repression under religious strictures—Fanny and Alexander (1984) and the trilogy of
76 W. Over
faith Through a Glass Darkly (1962), Winter Light (1962), and The Silence (1963)—Leila
informs through moments of painful silence in a world of deferred gratification.
Leila and Reza are soon married and seem the perfect couple in terms of understand-
ing and mutual respect. Their liberalism and conventionality appear within the
mélange of prosperous but enforced conformity of 1990s Teheran. When Leila is told
that she cannot have children, Reza affirms that his love for her will overcome the pros-
pect of no children. To relieve Leila’s despondency, Reza insists that they will be happy,
just the two of them. His mother, however, begins a campaign to divide the couple,
harassing her new daughter-in-law until Leila agrees to allow Reza to take a second wife
who can provide the family with an heir. Overwhelmed by guilt and a sense of respon-
sibility, Leila is unable to stand up to her mother-in-law or retain the full affection of
her husband. When the new wife is found and the wedding celebration is underway,
Leila isolates herself in her room and experiences the heartbreak of love lost. Reza
breaks away from the wedding party to comfort Leila but he confronts a changed
situation. Both are unable to continue their former relationship under the new circum-
stances. In the denouement, a flash-forward scene reveals Leila resigned to her loneli-
ness and disillusionment as she secretly gazes from a distance on the young son who
was the fruit of the second marriage. Although Reza left his second wife, Leila has
refused to see him and the boy until then. The film ends at the moment when Leila
observes the boy from afar. Her face registers compassion for a child caught between
separated parents. This moment of selfless tenderness is the first such feeling in the
film, signifying perhaps the hopeful prospect of the couple’s reunion with the child.
Mehrjui does not allow his audience to see such a resolution. Instead, the film ends
with a poignant close-up of Leila observing the boy through a subjective angle shot.
Leila discloses the hypocrisy of selfishness behind the altruistic ideals of the Revolu- Mehrjui
tion in Iran. The characters in A Moment of Innocence are critical or overtly perturbed 的主⼈公
更加现
by the events of recent history, responding to a time when they were innocent and 实，容易
wanted to change the world. In contrast, Mehrjui’s people keep a low profile, are 被物质所
readily seduced by materialistic values into conformity, and consider the social 诱惑
reputation of the family over their own deeper needs. Within the upper-middle-class
world of urban Iran, traditional hierarchies mirror the theocracy of the state, and
daughters-in-law become easy prey when interests of the family predominate.
In Leila Mehrjui explores the distinction between respectability and integrity. He
shows the deterioration of love through the overwhelming force of traditional values.
At first, Reza and Leila seem the perfect yuppie couple. They possess what most people
envy—looks, money, health, a certain tolerant liberality, education, and urbanity—
and seem to have achieved within a globalized culture a degree of independence from
conventional obligations. However, the film reveals in gradual stages the deterioration
of this apparent happiness. Under family pressure, the couple begin to argue but they
quickly reassure each other that love is stronger than the desire for children and the
demands of parents. Soon these reassurances turn to demands and Leila begins to yield,
at first to her husband’s anger, that she shouldn’t doubt their love, and then to her
mother-in-law, that she should do the right thing for Reza by stepping aside for the sake
of the family’s future. Confused by the conflicting values underpinning the demands of
 Contemporary Justice Review 77
family and love, Leila at last resigns herself to being a co-wife. For his part, Reza at first
reacts angrily when he discovers his mother’s calculating attempts to undermine his
marriage to Leila. Motivated by romantic ideals of love over duty, he is indignant
towards an older generation that would willingly sacrifice his love for the sake of family
respectability. Reza’s personal pride and integrity do not allow him to betray the ideals
supporting his love relationship but eventually the goal of family respectability wins
out. Mehrjui will not end the dialectic at this point. The second marriage fails even
before the wedding party begins and eventually the mother-in-law is forced to raise the
baby on her own, much to her chagrin. Her visible dread at the prospect reveals the
shallowness of her traditional values and is a rare moment of satiric humor in the film.
The narrative focus of Leila remains the weakening of a marriage treated with
verisimilitude and subtlety. One motif that frames the deterioration of communication
between Leila and Reza is the automobile, symbol of both outside control and individ-
ual freedom. When the couple reluctantly agree to the taking of a second wife, it is with
the understanding that it remains only an obligatory action, necessary to produce an
heir but not intended to affect their own marriage significantly. Thus, when Leila
accompanies Reza in the car for his interview with the first prospect, their conversation
is at first lighthearted and sarcastic. After the meeting Reza ridicules the whole proce-
dure for Leila’s amusement, making fun of the attitudes of the respective families and
commenting on the features of the woman candidate. However, as yet more interviews
follow and the family pressure mounts, Reza becomes progressively less talkative and
Leila gives way to sullen passivity. On the way to the final interview, their mutual
silence is deadening, as a subdued Reza simply drops Leila off on the street while he
continues alone. The automobile becomes a place of departure, an exit from the
intimacy of a love now overruled by unspoken mistrust and bitterness.
Encircling the couple are two families whose attitudes towards their situation only
increase the tension and contribute to a pervasive feeling of claustrophobia. While
Leila’s family is predictably more empathetic to her misfortune, they prove incapable
of preventing the second marriage. Reza’s family is presented with more fully developed
characters; some sympathize with Leila and are against the second marriage. In partic-
ular, the men in Reza’s family show either open indifference to the need for an heir or
challenge the mother-in-law’s agenda at certain moments. In the end, however, the
traditional demand for an heir overcomes such dissent, and the faction for the co-wife
succeeds in turning Reza against his original vow to preserve his love for Leila above all
other considerations. A division between the genders develops during the family argu-
ments. The generally sympathetic or passive attitudes of the men—Reza’s father, for
example, is completely dominated by his wife in the whole matter—and negative atti-
tudes of the women in Reza’s family may be an attempt to balance the political vehe-
mence of Leila’s sisters, who advocate her liberation from all enslavements. In so doing,
the film avoids direct partisan engagement with gender politics, allowing the gradual
isolation within Leila and Reza’s relationship to remain the chief focus.
Leila’s deterministic narrative creates a sense of inevitability that haunts the marriage
relationship from the beginning. However, Mehrjui offers certain raisonneur characters
in both families who argue forcefully, though not successfully, for alternatives to the
78 W. Over
traditional marriage culture. Reza’s family includes an unconventional uncle who has
remained single and takes a sardonic attitude towards marriages that are devised solely
to satisfy the need for male heirs. Two of Leila’s sisters are especially outspoken on the
oppression of women in traditional Muslim society. These alternative norm characters
are favorably treated and personable, in contrast to the characters propounding the
traditional responsibilities of child rearing, who appear selfish, disingenuous, and
hypocritical.
The variety of reactions to Reza and Leila’s dilemma creates a richer, more complex
没有按照
narrative. The characters live not within a static world of fundamentalist dictates—the ⻄⽅化的
conception often assumed by Western mainstream media—but within a hybrid culture 情节⾛
beset by the contradictions of rapid economic transformation and competing ideolo- 向，⽽是
gies. In this sense, Godfrey Cheshire’s observation in a positive but unintentionally 被混合⽂
Eurocentric review may have missed the point: “At a time when ‘Iranian Cinema’ inter- 化所形成
的困扰所
nationally connotes a certain distanced exoticism, views of rug-weaving nomads or
驱使
impoverished children against crumbling buildings, Mr. Mehrjui’s sleek, educated,
post-modern Teheran is clearly anomalous” (1998, p. 28). Given the rapid economic
development of Iran in the 1990s, the family lifestyles represented in the film—driving
BMWs and wearing designer chadors—far from being anomalous typify a materialism
uneasily wedded to a traditionalism fast becoming anachronistic. The self-centered
uses to which conventional “family values” are placed in the film find parallel in much
of contemporary U.S. culture, where wealthy politicians cynically spout pious formulae
and pray for votes. Mehrjui’s Iran, like much of U.S. culture, prefers convenient piety
to substantive duty, selfish aggrandizement to love of neighbor. Both Mehrjui and
Ebrahimian (in The Suitors, 1988) present dysfunctional worlds where the selfish
complacency of family structures threatens characters in search of individual freedom.

Crossing Boundaries, Passing Generations

With the advent of reformist President Mohammed Khatami in 1997, many Iranian
filmmakers hoped to widen their subject matter and thematic content for the sake of
an open and democratic national vision. Khatami, who had been Minister of Culture
from 1983 to 1993 and was in part responsible for the revitalization of Iranian
cinema, was ousted from this office for his progressive position on subject matter.
However, after winning the national election in May 1997, Khatami vowed to create
a government “countering superstition and fanaticism” (in McGavin, 1997, p. 50).
Inspired by this change, Jafar Panahi produced The Circle (finished in 2000), not
without some difficulty from local and national authorities. This groundbreaking
film is a straightforward treatment of the poor and disenfranchised in Iranian society,
subcultures left undefined or misrepresented by official Revolutionary discourse. It
concerns women ex-convicts released into the underworld of urban society. Pahani
challenges certain central presuppositions of the Islamic Republic: that the Revolu-
tion was a totalizing discourse backed by Iran’s poor, who had attained the class
consciousness needed to advance their interests by urging revolution, and that the
Islamic Republic had enlisted the whole-hearted support of the motazafin (deprived).
 Contemporary Justice Review 79
The Circle reveals an underlying counterculture overlooked by the Revolution.
Associated with the industrial working class, the urban poor include squatters, the
unemployed, the homeless, beggars, prostitutes, and street vendors. Typically with
low income, and skills and status to match, the new urban poor grew as a result of
Reza Shah’s and Mohammad Reza Shah’s modernization programs. Rather than
enlist these groups as prescribed in Revolutionary doctrine, the Islamic Republic
evicted squatters, denied employment opportunities, and intimidated vendors
(Bayat, 1997). In 2000, Pahani waited for the newly elected reform parliament to
allow distribution of The Circle in Iran (Atebbai, 2000).
The interest in new subject matter extends to films that deal with intercultural
relationships and the fate of outcasts, both social realities bypassed by the Revolution
in its initial nationalistic fervor. These include Hamid Jebeli’s Son of Mary (1999),
about a northwestern Azerbaijan Muslim boy who befriends an Armenian priest, and
Abolfazl Jalili’s Sweethearts (2000), about a young Afghan refugee in Iran who faces
hardships. The wider subject matter and acknowledgment of the other reveals a
renewed concern for tolerance and social outreach in a society emerging from a two-
decade period of rigorous self-examination.
Beyond subject matter, certain elements identify the structural form of Iranian
cinema. These signature features reveal the uniquely self-conscious nature of Iranian
film as a movement, its social and aesthetic basis as both child and gadfly of the Revo-
lution. Iranian filmmakers have experimented with explicitly self-reflexive strategies to
define their movement within a social context. For example, directors allude to other
directors by name in their films. This conscious intertextuality extends to directors
represented as characters in other directors’ films (Moment of Innocence), to films
about Iranian cinema and its cultural locus (Cinema), and to films where characters
describe in highly personal terms their appreciation of other directors (Close-up). The
frequent use of non-actors both establishes a verisimilitude of location and creates
levels of identity, individual and social, that define national culture. Moreover, the
special interest in the world of children in part serves as a rhetorical strategy—much
like Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn—to gain critical distance from the authoritative
world of adults, a device that typically utilizes the irony of innocent wisdom (Where Is
the Friend’s House?, Kiarostami, 1992). Finally, the exploration of levels of identity
through the passage of time (most fully developed in Makhmalbaf’s Moment of Inno-
cence) at once contextualizes Iranian culture and transcends it by revealing the private
world of thoughts and feelings transformed by comprehensive social and cultural
movements. Beyond film as art movement, these characteristics cohere as explorations
of national definition under threat from an increasing Western globalization and also
a delimited religious fundamentalism.
Managing a cinema of cultural self-determination, Iranian filmmakers document a
society undergoing immense yet uncertain change. With vitality they manage to probe
deeply into social and cultural realities without sacrificing empathy, close observation,
or cinematic and literary metaphor. Their films move beyond stereotypical character-
ization, formulaic plot structure, and tendentious subject matter to achieve a lucid
comprehension of Iran’s past and present. This vision is perhaps most fully realized in
80 W. Over
Makhmalbaf’s A Moment of Innocence, where the passage from one generation to the
next becomes a microcosm of Iran’s journey through revolution and globalization.
Although the hybridity of Iranian culture can only continue under the influence of
global telecommunications technologies and transnational corporate consumerism,
Iranian cinema remains a significant cultural locus for independent critical under-
standing and national self-definition. Perhaps, as Stanley Klawans (1997) suggests,
“urgency” rather than style, language, or content distinguishes the future of Iranian
filmmaking (p. 35). Nonetheless, the degree of inventive imagery and heightened lyri-
cism (Gabbeh), the attention to new areas of human interaction and cultural hybridity
(Leila, The Suitors), and the complexities of characterization and temporality in plot
structure (Moment of Innocence) are fully as much a part of the coherence of Iranian
cinema as are social immediacy and topicality. No one feature of film art can
adequately account for the brilliance and global outreach of this national movement.
Because its imagined community cannot be fixed, its subversion of both coercive tradi-
tional culture and monolithic globalization cannot be ignored.

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