Film: Women Without Men
Cast includes: Navid Akhavan, Mina Azarian, Bijan Daneshmand, Shabnam Toloui, Orsi Tosh
Director: Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari
Genre: Political drama, Iranian with subtitles (2010)
In brief:We feel a bit uneasy looking up at the woman on the roof standing near the edge. And we’re not surprised when she jumps to her death… or so it would seem. As she’s falling in slow motion, we know she’s thinking about “freedom from pain.” In a flashback we see her inside the house. Her brother has arranged for her to meet a suitor, but she doesn’t want to marry. It’s 1953 and the whole country is in turmoil. The British blockade, the recent election, the CIA-backed coup d’état… citizens are marching in the streets… some for, some against. In the meantime, all her brother cares about is getting her married off and out of his house… for her own good, he says.
We soon meet three other women… each at a crisis point in her life. Eventually one of them finds her way out to an abandoned apple orchard and moves into the deserted house. One by one the others come, hoping to find companionship and peace. But gradually, they find that they can’t escape outside events.
It’s easy to believe that director Shirin Neshat is a fine photographer because every frame of this unsettling movie is beautiful to look at. Not only is each shot deliberately composed, she employes some very interesting after effects to shift the colors… often mixing black and white images with color images. It’s a very interesting visual experience. Ms. Neshat was born a few years after the 1953 coup, but feels that the events then have relevance to current events. Based on a novel, the story is filled with metaphors that, no doubt, will have more meaning for those familiar with the culture and the history. The plight of women in Iran is an obvious theme that comes across in the film. There are numerous themes, but don’t look for a story with traditional plot development. At a point in the film one woman tells us her goal is “not to watch, but to see… not to be, but to act.” One wonders if this is the goal of the character or the filmmaker.
2 popped kernels
Popped kernels for the beautiful cinematography. Unpopped kernels for the difficult-to-figure-out plot. (Maybe it's a cultural thing.)
