The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam

At the beginning I just followed my friends to support the independent film industry. After I watched it for the first time, I felt in love with the movie. I am a detail oriented person and love to watch movies, which keeps you busy to catch very small details and Kayvan packed it with so many details. After the show he added much more details to it by explaining about the cast and all the background thoughts, actions, struggles. This made me to go back twice to see the movie. For a film without Hollywood support, it was amazing to see such a perfection. To me Kayvan is a very talented young director and soon he will be very successful in his profession. I have a great respect for the people who are fighting for their passion! Thanks Kayvan & Co. You will have always my support!

I went to see this film only to support the independent industry, but ended up truly enjoying the movie. The characters are memorable, the story itself is wonderful, the acting is superb, and the music is just the icing on the cake. This movie makes me want to connect with others, and apparently the other viewers felt the same as we were all discussing the message afterwords.

For a film of this magnitude to be someone's first film is truly astonishing. Kayvan has amazing talent and yet is humble.

...the most important thing your elders can give you is their words, their stories, pieces of their hearts.

Are you going to be a Keeper?

Writer/Director Kayvan Mashayekh has created a fine film biography of the 11th century poet/philosopher/mathematician Omar Khayyam and in doing so has presented his viewers with much food for thought. An Iranian immigrant to the US, Mashayekh set out to not only share the rich cultural heritage of his homeland, but he also found a way to make the story even more meaningful: 'The Keeper' refers to the member of Iranian families (or all families for that matter) whose role it is to preserve and share and perpetuate the history of the family, saving ties to the past to assure they never are forgotten. Oral histories these, but in Mashayekh's hands (with writing assists from Belle Avery) this story draws the viewer into an Iranian family's life of diaspora and the deep tug to remain connected its dazzling past. The film is timely to say the least, and the message is one that will benefit the audiences fortunate to see it in understanding a controversial country and its people.

Young Kamran (Adam Echahly) sits beside the bedside of his dying older brother Nader (Puya Behinaein) attentive to the stories about the family's tie to the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. The oral history is parceled out as the older brother dies and when death prevents the conclusion of the history young Kamran sneaks away to England where he encounters an elderly heiress (Vanessa Redgrave) who shares with him the handmade book of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and directs him to its source. Kamran then travels to Iran to his elderly grandfather (Dariush Iran Nezhad) who rejoices in the fact that Kamran is so committed to the family history and proceeds to share the mysteries of the hallowed ancestor.

This contemporary story serves as a reference point to depict the actual times of Omar Khayyam (Bruno Lastra), revealing the man's childhood with his commitment to learning and to his two close friends Darya (Marie Espinosa) and Hassan (Christopher Simpson). Omar pursues learning and Hassan follows soldiering: they both love Darya but she is sold into slavery. The chain of events is unraveled slowly as we see every step of Omar's education into astronomy, mathematics, philosophy and poetry. He is a Muslim who is a lover of reason and tolerance, a man who keeps his pledges of trust and honor and translates his emotions into poetry that will live far beyond his time. Persia is invaded by the Turks with Sultan Malikshah (Moritz Bleibtreu) and the sultan is wise enough to employ the gifts of Omar for his court. The ruthlessness of the times destroys much of the empire: the Christian Crusaders and the Saracens destroy the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the seeds of struggle that persist to this day are sewn. But above it all is Omar's commitment to reason and to tolerance and his power is felt both at the time of the devastation and even to this day.

The film was shot almost entirely in Uzbekistan and other exotic locations not usually seen by US audiences. The added features on the DVD include a very fine commentary by the director and by an authority on Omar Khayyam who manages to give us a terrific history lesson! There are also production comments that share some of the coincidental beauties and difficulties in shooting this film. The actors are all fine: one wishes for more depth to their characters, which should have been the province of the writers. But the overall effect of this visually stunning film is one of reverence for Iran's past and for the legacy of Omar Khayyam. It is a fine story and an equally fine history lesson.

Omar Khayyam was a Persian astronomer, mathematician, and poet in the 11th Century, famous today for Edward Fitzgerald's 1859 translations of his works into English. The Keeper is a well-meaning and handsome (if a bit stolid, and poorly edited at times) attempt to render his life meaningful today, written by Iranian-American lawyer/filmmaker Kayvan Mashayekh.

To keep things relevant, Mashayekh presents through the eyes of a young Iranian-American boy in Houston (Adam Echahly) who is a descendant of the family who takes it upon himself to "keep" and transmit the story. The title character (Bruno Lastra) is presented in an admirable if a bit sycophantic light, as is his love story with Darya (Marie Espinosa), to whom he composed most of his most famous love poems. The scenes (set in Uzbekistan, with period jaunts elsewhere) are ably filmed and mostly elegant, although the level of the actors' engagement doesn't rise above a slow simmer most of the times. The principal conflict is between Khayyam and lifelong friend Hassan (Christopher Simpson), which Mashayekh hopes to make emblematic of a host of larger conflicts - between science and religion, between universalism and sectarianism, between worldliness and Islamic separatism. It succeeds only in pieces. The editing is also a bit spotty, and at certain points I felt that too much of the story had been cut.

The film is one of those that serves a valuable public function; informing the movie-going world about Khayyam's legacy and the larger history of Islamic science and mathematics is a meaningful one, and I saw a host of Iranian-American families at the screening taking part in their cultural heritage. It doesn't win on purely cinematic terms, but it's an engaging and wholly good-hearted exercise regardless.

I only happened upon the website for this film (http://greatomar.com/) a couple of weeks ago (May 2006), purely by coincidence. Having not heard a thing about the film here in Australia, I was curious as to how good it could be. Checked the trailer and it looked authentic, ordered the DVD from the site, and having just watched it I can honestly say it is inspirational.

Without a doubt there is no better time for Persians and non-Persians alike from around the world to actually come to grips with just how rich and varied 2,500+ years of Persian history has been. And what better way than to watch a film which has so obviously been made out of the motive to educate, entertain and inspire.

If the movie does have a flaw, it's that the main characters seems to grow too quickly into their legendary statuses. However this is clearly due to time/financial constraints, perhaps also with a clear eye to the restlessness of modern audiences. The location scenery is both beautiful and authentic, the costumes and acting are more than passable - Omar (Bruno Lastra) in particular does a tremendous job, and most critical of all, the essence of the story is encapsulated perfectly.

My deepest thanks to Mr. Mashayekh for making this wonderful film, and again I encourage you all to see it for yourselves. I promise you, you won't be disappointed.

Cheers, Koroush Ghazi