Directors: Alis Asgari, Alireza Khatami (Iran). Year of Release: 2023
Tehran, the present day. We start with a long shot of the city with all its skyscrapers, residential areas, and mosques. The shot lingers and holds for what seems like a couple of minutes, but who knows how long these things last in real life? As we hear traffic, police sirens, and school bells, occasionally lights go on and off. For the most part, though, the shot remains the same – a view from distance of a modern city with lots going on, about which we know little.
We start with a man trying to register the name of his newly born son. He and his wife have decided on David, which is also the name of her favourite singer. The bureaucrat at the other end of the conversation patiently but intransigently explains that this is not possible. “David” is not on the list of approved names. It is not a religious name (irony alert). Could he consider the name Davood? Or something more Iranian? Maybe he too has a favourite singer?
Cut to: a clothes shop. A pre-school girl is dancing along to the TikTok video in her head. She wears a Mickey Mouse shirt and pink headphones, which provide the soundtrack to her dance. In the distance, we hear her mother speaking to a shop assistant who every so often brings her something to try on. The girl is about to start school, and is expected to swap her pop culture clothing for something which is more austere and uncomfortable to wear.
The structure of the film is becoming clear. We are to be treated to a series of short vignettes of people dealing with literally faceless bureaucrats. The camera Is trained on the applicant, and we never see, although we occasionally hear, the person they are talking to. Sometimes the demands of the bureaucrats are unreasonable, often they are unreasonable, but mainly they are just doing their job. The problem lies not in the person asking the questions but in the questions themselves.
All bureaucrats work in some way for the government, but they are not all civil servants. Aram is called in by her headmistress. At first, her crime is unclear. The headmistress starts the interview by asking if Aram has a boyfriend. As it goes on, we hear allegations that Aram has been spotted coming to school on a motorbike ridden by a boy. In this case, there is a twist in the tale, and Aram is able to negotiate a suitable compromise with which she can escape the expected dishonour.
Men are diminished just as quickly as women. Farbod applies or a driver’s license. The man opposite needs to know the meaning of Farbod’s poetical tattoos, and asks increasingly intrusive questions. The clear message is that bureaucracy has entered every aspect of Iranian life. Anything which requires approval from a government representative leaves you subject to questioning which puts your whole lifestyle under investigation.
Sadaf is in front of the road police who have caught her on camera both speeding and driving without wearing the hijab. She contests that the photograph is not of her. It shows someone with long hair – who she claims is her brother. Sadaf’s hair is cropped. In proving her case, she makes 2 moral sins – showing her hair and admitting that she had chopped it off. Whether she is telling the truth is less important than the humiliation which she is forced to endure.
Faezah has a job interview. It is a liberal company – she wouldn’t even have to wear the hijab at work – and the pay on offer is good. Before long, the questions of the interviewer become increasingly intrusive. The interview is in a hotel room, and he is increasingly keen that she stays. There is little direct coercion, but there is a clear implication that social progress is only possible if you accept unacceptable demands from people in power.
It is maybe Faezah’s scene which makes it clearest that Irdische Verse is not just about Iran. Sure, it was made about the same time as the Jin, Jiyan, Azadî movement, when Iranian women – and not just women – had a sense of power and the strength to challenge institutional sexism and wider oppression. Taking its inspiration from #metoo, this was an national movement but it was never just an Iranian movement. It addressed problems which were much more universal.
Irdische Verse is thus able to transcend an intrinsic problem in showing oppositional Iranian films in the West. Many critics and viewers automatically see them as confirmation of the superiority of the West. And yet the problems depicted of bureaucracy and the abuse of power structures by government officials are not limited to Iran. As director Alireza Khatami said in an interview: “pick any country, and any law you want, put a magnifier on it, and it will sound absurd.”
The greatest quality of Irdische Verse is the way in which it exposes the hypocrisies in the very particular way in which Iranian bureaucracy impedes freedoms without offering any concessions to the idea that more freedom is available in the West. Unlike recent films like The Persian Version which affect an equidistance between East and West while championing Western “freedoms”, this is a film made for people in Iran who want to change society without paternalistic Western help.
Of course, the film can still be read as a shameless apologia for Western “freedoms”, but in a world dominated by US and European imperialism, which piece of Art can’t suffer this fate? Indeed Iran’s Women, Life, Freedom movement has been misappropriated by some Western girlboss feminists who would like to suggest that life for working class people of both sexes in the West Is fine and dandy. But this is not a film to reassure the rich and powerful. It breathes resistance, as it should.
CinePhil 