Reading Lolita in Tehran

This is not an easy watch, and the documentary style opening anchors it firmly in reality. We are very much in Iran in the late 70s, but we could equally be anywhere else where oppression exists -- where a new beginning turned into a living nightmare.

Azar Nafisi, confidently returning from America, experiences the grim reality of Iran in the 80s. Exuberant and self-assured, her behaviour couldn't be further from what's expected of her as an educator and a woman.

Lead actress Golshifteh Farahani has the gravitas and leadership required for the role, but also the levity and mischief that fuels Azar's acts of resistance. She creates an alchemy with the superbly matched ensemble cast, translating the political dynamics into painfully accessible human relationships.

"There's a lot on the line for me", says a visibly tortured security guard to a non-compliant Azar, putting the responsibility on HER to save HIS skin. That scene really drove home the grotesque unfairness debilitating both sides.

As the film progresses, you feel it viscerally: sickened and squirming, eyes brimming with tears, then warmth and joy spilling into your belly. What really shows the brutality of the regime is not even the dramatic scenes of obvious shock value. It is the small everyday moments that constantly grate on dignity and liberty, until the only choice left is to leave.

And equally, it is the small everyday moments of defiance and connection that make you revel in joy and resistance. As the real life Azar Nafisi says in her book, these women "never had a private corner", and it is in her living room, in each other's company, that they experience privacy and individuality.

The film asks a lot of you, but the aftertaste that remains is not of oppression or tragedy. It's one of defiant joy, unquenchable hope, a love for Iran, and the safe haven of connection.

In the early years following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Saddam Hussein violated the treaty signed with the previous Iranian government and launched an invasion, driven by a desire to access open waters. The Iranian people have historically demonstrated that when facing foreign aggression, they set aside internal disagreements and unite to defend their homeland.

However, the film portrays the war as a concern exclusive to hardline conservatives, implying that intellectuals, such as university students, are detached from that reality. At one point, a student who has returned from the front line sets himself on fire in the middle of class, claiming he was deceived.

But deceived by what? He went to war to defend his country against an aggressor-an Iraq that initiated the conflict. Where is the deception in that?

The film also shows women being flogged for having romantic or sexual relations with men. In reality, no woman is flogged merely for not being a virgin or for being in a gathering with men. Such punishments, when they occur, require legal evidence and a judge's order.

I was born and raised during the early years of the Revolution. I witnessed the limitations and have, on occasion, even been assaulted by religious hardliners. I lived that reality. I know that era of Iranian society. So I consider myself qualified to reject this film's portrayal.

The film is highly exaggerated. It portrays women as the primary victims, whereas in truth, restrictions applied to both men and women alike. The depiction of religious extremism on campus, forced confessions, and fabricated punishments is misleading and overstated.

In one scene, a woman nostalgically remembers a time when shops were open, contrasting it with a present where cafes and bookstores are shuttered, presenting the country as desolate and dark. This is simply false. Even during the war-and especially after-it's well known that the development and growth which had begun during the Pahlavi era continued and still does.

This film is no different from the biased Instagram or YouTube videos where a content creator, driven by a specific agenda, tries to paint Iran in an unfairly negative light and portray it as backward.

A literature teacher returns to Iran after the revolution in 1979 and with her own eyes, which get wetter and wetter as the film goes on, sees the changes that happen in her beautiful country and how women suffer injustice, violence, and some of them are violently raped and executed. It looks unbearable but she stays and even continues to teach this banned Western literature in secret. Her story is heartbreaking, and with her eyes we see other stories and broken lives; but what is even more important is that maybe, hopefully, in the future the people of Iran will be able to watch this. As part of their history. As part of their troubled past.

Can art in general and literature, specifically, save the world? Or at least make it better? Or at least create for those who love them - creators and consumers - an inner fortress where they can take refuge in times of hardship or in places where authoritarian systems impose their dictates? This is the question posed by the 2024 film 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' directed by Eran Riklis, an adaptation of the autobiographical book by Azar Nafisi, an Iranian writer living in exile. Definitive answers cannot be given, but the questions themselves open a debate that is more important than ever in times when dictatorships dominate much of the planet and the dangers of sliding towards dictatorship and censorship - political or puritanical - are real in almost every other place in the world.

It is not easy to make a film about the power of words. Another Israeli director, Joseph Cedar, tried with 'Footnote'. Eran Riklis did not seek spectacular effects, emphasizing the narrative and the characters. The cinematic version of Azar Nafisi's memoirs is reorganized into four chapters that capture (not in strict chronological order) four moments of the author's time in Iran. 1980 (the year in which the writer, together with her husband, an engineer, return from America with the hope that they can contribute to building a modern and democratic Iran), 1995, 1988 and 1996. Each of the four sections is named after the title of a book by an important English-language writer that Azar Nafisi shares with her Iranian students: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Vladimir Nabokov, Henry James, Jane Austen. She begins her teaching career as a professor at the University during a period of transition. The religious and political pressure of Islamists is increasingly evident and some of her students, supporters of democracy, are arrested, tortured, and a few are executed. The status of women is deteriorating, the wearing of the hijab becomes mandatory, censorship is intensifying. She resigns from her position at the University to return after a few years, finding among her students many young people disappointed and traumatized by their experiences on the front lines of the war between Iran and Iraq. After her second university experience fails, she creates a private literary circle, in which the students are all women. The risks are enormous because all the books studied are banned. Along with good literature, the students learn from her about the taste of freedom and the culture of debate. But can this inner fortress protect the group of women from the world around them? How long will they last, how will they resolve the contradictions between their inner freedom and the oppression that surrounds them? Neither the students nor the teacher can avoid the contradictions and the difficult questions.

Most of the characters are women and the feminist message of the film is clear and strong. The main role is played by Golshifteh Farahani, a beautiful and luminous actress, who radiates with the character's wisdom and compassion. The entire cast of actors and especially actresses, most of whom are Iranian actors living and working in exile, was excellent, even if the other female roles are not that well written and the female characters in the student circle are not differentiated enough. The documentary sequences from the filmed actualities of the time are intelligently inserted and define well the context. The first chapter, which seemed to me the most cohesive, also exposes another important idea. Democracy, with the principles of equality and respect for the citizen and the natural and fundamental rights of every human being, is hard to win, through struggle and suffering, and easy to lose. Azar Nafisi and those around her had placed their hopes in the revolution. They love their country. She and her husband chose to return to their homeland and then tried to continue living there. By creating a bubble of freedom for her students through the reading circle, she opened their eyes and taught them to think independently and to challenge what they consider unfair. The most beautiful scenes of the film seemed to me to be those in which the women share moments of inner freedom, as well as the most intimate confessions, using the words and ideas from the books that had been hidden and forbidden to them until then. Also touching is the connection between the heroine of the film and the mysterious intellectual with whom she secretly exchanges books, avoiding the police who monitor them everywhere. Anyone who has lived under an authoritarian regime can understand these scenes very well. Dictatorships fear the power of the free written word. 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' - for all its cinematic shortcomings - is a tribute to courageous women, in Iran and elsewhere, who fight for their natural rights and to the books that preserve and spread beauty and freedom in their pages.

Let's start with the story or rather the lack of one There was no clear plot or direction and what was there was so disjointed and unengaging that I found myself completely uninterested in what was happening It felt like the filmmakers were trying to make something profound, but ended up with an incoherent mess instead The characters were another huge letdown None of them were remotely compelling or worth caring about They felt flat and underdeveloped and I never once found myself emotionally invested in their struggles I was just waiting for it to end, hoping for some kind of resolution or revelation, but nothing ever really happened The acting was absolutely atrocious The performances were stiff, lifeless, and completely unconvincing. It felt like none of the actors had any genuine connection to their roles, and their dialogue often came off as forced and unnatural. This lack of chemistry between the cast really sunk the whole film And then there's the direction wow. Just... wow. It was an absolute disaster. The pacing was sluggish, the cinematography was uninspired, and the overall tone of the film felt more like a high school project than a professionally made movie The direction did nothing to elevate the material, and in fact, it only made the film more excruciating to watch In short, Reading Lolita in Tehran is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It fails on every level, from the plot to the performances to the direction. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone it's an exhausting, forgettable experience that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.