Towers of Silence

This is an art film and a little on the unfathomable side unless you happen to be Pakistani, or at least I hope it's more coherent to a Pakistani audience. Personally, I couldn't understand it. It's creatively edited and framed and it becomes progressively more watchable as it goes along, but the fundamental problem is that it's an "art film."

Jamil Dehlavi's films are something else entirely, he is a true genius when it comes to digging into all sorts of wild themes, we're talking avant-garde, historical dramas, religious tales, conflicts, myths, even deep dives into society and economics. Honestly, he's one of those rare living directors who just gets cinema on a fundamental level. Even in his 70s, this radical filmmaker is still pumping out movies, and I'm totally buzzing for his next one, which was announced back in 2020. It's a real shame his name, and especially "Towers of Silence," barely ever gets mentioned. This film is criminally overlooked in any list of surreal cinema, and I just had to talk about this dreamy nightmare.

"Towers of Silence" is a semi-autobiographical journey, a collection of childhood memories that bring to life the story of his uncle, who actually eloped with the daughter of a Zoroastrian high priest. Jamil Dehlavi pulls a piece from his family's past and his country's history and wove it into the narrative. The visuals and story are basically his memories of witnessing Zoroastrian funerary rituals, with scenes effortlessly drifting between past and present, sometimes even existing as both at once. Dehlavi just melts together these intense landscapes of sex, politics, death, and faith, all while he becomes utterly fixated on these death rituals - it's all so striking, especially with the lingering shots of vultures, skulls, and skeletons. There's so much happening here that trying to sum up the plot would be totally pointless. You just have to experience it.

Visually, "Towers of Silence" is like this incredible fusion, as if Katsu Kanai, Amos Gitai, José Val del Omar, Shirin Neshat, Parviz Kimiavi, Fernando Arrabal, and Bahram Beizai all got together and shot something with Rafael Corkidi on cinematography. And adding to all this haunting beauty is the soundtrack, which really amplifies the film's sensuality, all warbled with Hindustani music. Seriously, I wish someone would take these visuals and create a music video for a black metal band, or even some killer Melechesh songs.

Anyway, the 1st reviewer finds it disjointed but no big deal. After all, as David Lynch famously said, "I don't know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn't make sense." And that's exactly the kind of experience Dehlavi invites us into here. It's not simple, and it's not easy to just jump into, but it's a film you experience and feel, just like our own dreams, fears, memories, and nightmares. Everything's raw, direct, and completely unfiltered, exactly as it should be. For me, his films consistently leave me utterly flabbergasted and full of awe at every single moment.

The movie had great cinematography. The director maintained a dark and gloomy atmosphere throughout the scenes, while also connecting them with mystery. However, the director exhibited a significant obsession with death, which does not align with Zarathustra's teachings. Zarathustra emphasizes the importance of life over death, with death representing Ahriman and light representing Ahura Mazda.

The director's fixation on death carried out even the portrayal of life, such as the scene in the breaking of a turtle's egg. Love was also portrayed in a dark manner, and the overall tone of the movie was serious and gloomy. Even the director's own fate within the narrative was bleak, and the movie concluded with a theme of death. A movie about Zarathustra should instead focus on themes of light, love, progression, growth, and consciousness.

Zarathustra, amongst all the religious founders, is the only one who is life-affirmative, who is not against life, whose religion is a religion of celebration, of gratefulness to existence. He is not against the pleasures of life, and he is not in favor of renouncing the world. On the contrary, he is in absolute support of rejoicing in the world, because except for this life and this world, all are hypothetical ideologies. God, heaven and hell, they are all projections of the human mind, not authentic experiences; they are not realities. Zarathustra is unique. He is the only one who is not against life, who is for life; whose god is not somewhere else; whose god is nothing but another name for life itself. And to live totally, to live joyously and to live intensely, is all that religion is based on.

(Zarathustra: A God that Can Dance by Osho)

Jamil Dehlavi is a fascinating filmmaker, controversial in his home country Pakistan. My first encounter with him was his film about Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was played by the legendary Sir Christopher Lee. This film, Tower of Silence (1975), is his first feature film, which he also wrote, produced and directed. It is a highly mysterious film of c. 50 minutes, which will leave you in awe.

The elegant black and white cinematography keeps you hooked for its entire duration. Scenes set in the present and past are interwoven, making you question their coherence. The images are haunting, grotesque and surrealistic, but at times also tender. It shows some of the enigmatic aspects of the religion of the Zoroastrians.

Animals have a particular role, as independently coexisting beside human beings. There are ants in the toilet, and vultures eating human flesh. Together with its surrealistic atmosphere, it reminded me of Luis Buñuel's and Salvador Dalí's Un chien Andalou (1929), or the cruelties in Alejandro Jodorowsky's films.

This movie deserves a reappreciation!