There might be some way to depict the Iranian Revolution
on film, but Septembers of Shiraz is
not it.
This drama about a Jewish family persecuted in Iran once
Islamic fundamentalists seized power of the government simplifies too much,
failing to provide much of the necessary context required to understand the
motivations of its characters. Instead of illuminating, the film
languishes—spending so much time on scenes of Adrien Brody being tortured and
Salma Hayek-Pinault crying that it fails to make any kind of point aside from “The
Iranian Revolution was bad, and most Iranian Muslims involved were hypocrites.”
And, well, that’s a point that tons of American action
movies already de facto give us in their depictions of the Middle East. Academy
Award winner Argo did it, and Jon
Stewart’s very underrated Rosewater did
it, and both of them had more nuance and subtlety than Septembers of Shiraz.
The film, “based on true events”
and the 2007 novel by Dalia Sofer, centers on a secular Jewish family living in
Tehran in August 1979: Husband Isaac (Brody), a jeweler, and wife Farnez
(Hayek), a writer-turned-housewife. They are educated and wealthy, sending their
teenage son to a boarding school in the United States, but it’s clear that the
country is changing around them. The Iranian Revolution is becoming more
violent as Islamic fundamentalist factions led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
wrestle power away from their socialist, intellectual, and student allies, and
the country is becoming more conservative and oppressed by the day.
Why did the Revolution happen? What
caused so many Iranians to push against the influence of the West, especially
the United States? What brought about their antagonism toward Iran’s Jewish
population, which had a presence in the country for thousands of years? Septembers of Shiraz doesn’t address
any of those questions, even though it wants to weave a story from the answers.
Within the first few minutes, Isaac and Farnez go from having a fancy party
blasting disco to a news report about how the Revolutionary Guard is running
Tehran. “Our country’s coming apart at the seams!” Isaac yells, and that’s
about all the political-upheaval explanation we get.
Instead, the film goes heavy on
the torture and mind games that Isaac and Farnez are subjected to: Isaac is
arrested and made to undergo vigorous questioning and beatings about alleged
ties with the Israeli government and the former Shah of Iran, while Farnez
turns to their housekeeper, Habibeh (Shohreh Aghdashloo) for comfort, even
though Habibeh’s son Morteza (Navid Navid) has become a member of the
Revolutionary Guard and is trying to turn his mother against the family. “When
I listen to him, he makes a lot of sense,” Habibeh tells Farnez. “Why should
some people live like kings, and the rest like rats? … What if we want our
mullahs to rule us?”
The conversations between
Farnez and Habibeh, which address issues of religion, labor, and class, are the
best parts of Septembers of Shiraz,
and come closest to acknowledging some of the major motivations of the Iranian
Revolution. Farnez is elitist, and Habibeh is disenfranchised, and the reality
is that they can’t see eye-to-eye on everything—that’s not how capitalism
works. But Hayek-Pinault is her best when she’s coldly pointing out how much
she and her husband have done for Habibeh and her son, and Aghdashloo has
always been good at projecting insidious shame and resentment.
Brody, though, is stuck in a
torture storyline that feels both exploitative and underdeveloped. He gets a
good scene toward the end of the film when he faces off against Morteza,
questioning him about why he’s wronged their family, but that’s about all Brody
gets to do.
There are too many unanswered
questions in Septembers of Shiraz,
and too many distractions. Goofy things like Brody and Hayek-Pinault’s failed
Iranian accents (both sound like a British Dracula) will take you out of the
movie, but so will the sense that an incomplete story is being told—that while
Isaac and Farnez certainly doesn’t deserve what happened to them, just like
thousands of Iranians didn’t, there was more to the Iranian Revolution than
just a bunch of thugs high on power trips, looting houses and abusing
strangers.
“They didn’t need a reason,” a
character says about how the Revolutionary Guard and the Muslim fundamentalists
are bleeding the country. But Septembers
of Shiraz tells a disappointingly superficial story to make that point.
Rating:
1.5 out of 5 Guttenbergs
