Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX
This film, more than any in recent memory, testifies to the miraculous, transformative power of filmmaking and the unswerving tenacity of a writer/director, producer who prevailed in his pursuit to create a beautifully-crafted, viciously realistic political thriller based on the 2022 civil unrest blistering across Iran after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini; she was imprisoned for “inappropriate dress”. Director Mohammad Rasoulof intrepidly, even being threatened with years of incarceration, clandestinely completed, which in my estimation, should win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, a remarkably honest and chilling account of a family of four in contemporary Iran. The timely focus is the “Woman, Life, Freedom Movement”. How a finite society of veiled women, want what the internet gratuitously offers: blue hair, painted nails, glamour. This December the “Law on Protecting the Family Through the Promotion of the Culture of Chasity and Hijab” went into force; egregious punishment it meted out if any of the 74 articles are ignored.
Searingly intransigent is the father “Iman” recently promoted an investigating judge, given a gun for protection, because of the nefarious nature of his position; the gun goes missing, unearthing crippling familial discrepancies; mother “Nejmeh” facilitates the necessities of her husband and daughters, neglecting her own self-awareness, cleaning, cooking, scrubbing dishes and pots, “cleanliness” equated order and godliness. Daughters “Rezvan”, twenty-one and teenaged “Sana” boil and rile at their father’s limited, unrestricted self-righteousness and archaic principles; he feels they stole his gun which could be catastrophic for his career. Fascinating is a narrative of past and future where all parties are incapable of understanding, listening, perpetually camped in adversarial territory. In the final scene the ruins of Iman’s ancestral estate are the backdrop for the reenactment of the folkloric tale of the Sacred Fig; the seed, in order to thrive, eventually devours the host.
FIVE STARS!!!!!
Peneflix
