La vie sur l'eau

I was most impressed by this movie, especially since I was going to it (with my wife) out of a sense of duty: it wasn't one of my choices at Toronto Film Festival. Frankly, I expected to be baffled and bored, as I have been by terribly earnest subtitled movies in the past. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it held my interest from the first scene. The unusual setting had a great deal to do with this -- the ship's crumbling superstructure, its dank and scary innards, the small domestic comforts of its tenants, the vast watery landscape outside -- all beautifully filmed. You are dumped right into the middle of all this, as if you were one of the tenants newly arrived, and watch a newbie get the full treatment from the Captain -- the leader and self-styled benefactor of this band of poor outcasts. You find your way around and get to know the people and their ways, but this is not a documentary, nor does it pretend to be. Our interest is not sociological, but just human. The Captain is at the centre of all this, and his character is at issue throughout. Is he really a saviour and benefactor, or is he just using the young men on board as a source of cheap (free, actually) labour so he can steal the remaining crude oil and valuable parts from the ship, before its owners send it to be cut up for scrap? By the time you have absorbed enough of the narrative to wonder about this, you have grown acquainted enough with the tenants' problems and aspirations to care deeply about this, and to follow his actions with keen attention. In the end, the viewer has to make up his own mind about the character of the man, the rightness of his actions. There is no foregone conclusion.

Iron Island (Jezireh ahani 2005), the second film written and directed by Iranian Mohammad Rasoulof, is a loosely constructed parable. Rasoulof conceived his tale originally as a theater piece, then turned it into a film by adopting a derelict oil tanker in the Persian Gulf as the setting and populating it with non-actors, sunni ethnic Arab Bandaris, a marginal group in Iran. The resulting style is a cross between Makhmalbaf and post-war Italian neorealism. One might think of the rusty ship with its squatters as like the shantytown in De Sica and Zavattini's Miracle in Milan, but things here are grimmer and more elemental.

Everything revolves around a kind of benevolent dictator, a "Captain" (well-known actor Ali Nasirian), who cuts deals, settles disputes, and gives out orders. The Captain's full of friendly greetings for everybody but up close is an exploiter and not to be trusted. How all these people wound up here is a mystery but it provides Rasoulof with a ready-made microcosm. The meanings are up to you.

There's crude oil on the ship and a gang of boys the Captain keeps working for him carry it and carved off scrap iron and sell both to buyers on land. Later the boys find a TV and get it working but the Captain grabs it and throws it overboard in anger. There's a teacher who teaches his charges to read using old newspapers and explains that the ship is in the sea and the sea is beautiful and is part of the world. Later when things get complicated because the Captain is going to give up the ship he removes the students and leaves the teacher to make chalk and give lessons to an empty classroom, and donkeys are stabled there instead.

There's a special boy named Ahmad (Hossein Farzi-Zadeh) whom the Captain has adopted as his protégé but rather looks down on. The boy's in love with a girl on board, but she's to marry an older man the captain has arranged and he forbids Ahmad to go near her. But he cannot obey. Things are bartered and in one brief but highly charged scene Ahmad and the betrothed girl he fancies without seeing each other exchange clothing -- his T-shirt; her veil -- back and forth on a rope, as if they're undressing for each other and also trading love tokens. When the wedding takes place, in his frustration Ahmad steals the Captain's motorboat and escapes from the ship, but he's caught and subjected to cruel water torture with the entire community watching on deck: now we know this dictator isn't really so benevolent after all.

The Bandari women wear veils that look like Venetian carnival masks. There's a dark, bright-eyed little boy people call Fish who rescues aquatic creatures who've slipped into the hold and takes them up and frees them. There's an old man in shades who stands outside looking at the sun all day, awaiting a sign. There's a handicapped boy whose daily assignment is to operate the mechanized lift that's used to bring people up and down from the ship. He also gets to carry out the water torture -- because Ahmad, bound hand and foot, is lowered into the sea on the lift -- and he revels in it.

The teacher has been conducting a test that shows the ship is sinking. The captain rejects this assertion at first, but bowing to the inevitable in time gets everybody on board to sign over power of attorney to him, takes them on a "pilgrimage" to the desert, and sells the ship to businessmen for scrap. He promises the people will have a town that will be beautiful, but we don't believe him. The last images are of Fish trying to save fishes along the shore – he has run away, but his project seems more futile than ever, though just as sweet.

Rasoulof's narrative is rather haphazard. At times it seemed to me the relationships might have had more depth if the people were presented in an ordinary community, the boy's longing for the betrothed girl, for instance, and the schoolteacher whose classroom is at the whim of a local mayor. What would have become of the boy freeing fishes and the old man staring at the sun in normal conditions I don't know. The rusty ship may have struck the director as a wonderful idea but it turns out to be a bit of an albatross, a weighty but empty metaphor distracting us from more interesting human detail. But since this captain and his arbitrary world sticks in the mind, perhaps the whole thing wasn't such a bad idea after all. The cinematography makes good use of the authentic faces and the natural, often very low light – contrasting with dazzling moments of sun. There are really three films here: one composed of of lovely images, another of rough parables, a third of social anecdotes.

J.Hoberman wondered in his review how this film was shown at home and what it would mean there. It was shown in the New Directors/New Films series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (March 2006) and then at Cinema Village, also in New York, but the film hasn't been shown in Iran yet, so those questions can't yet be answered. ©Chris Knipp 2006

This is the second feature film of the brave young director Mohammad Rasoulof, who after winning so many international awards for 9 feature films he directed and wrote, depicting veiled criticism of life in Iran, is currently imprisoned in the notorious Evin prison in Iran. "Iron Island" won the Golden Peacock for the best film at the Indian International Film Festival. His subsequent 8 films have won major awards at Cannes (twice), Berlin (Golden Bear for Best film), Chicago (Best Screenplay), Denver (Best Film), Dubai (Best Film), Durban (Best Feature Film), Hamburg (Political Film Award), Milwaukee (Best Director), Sydney (Sydney Film Prize), and Telluride (Silver Medallion Award).

"Iron Island" is a contemporary Noah's ark, where a disused oil tanker, awaiting shipbreaking, provides refuge for homeless poor Iranians, young and old, under a seemingly benevolent "Captain" who is able to provide food and medicines for the refugees by selling metal parts and oil in the ship. The Captain is a veiled representation of the Iranian Government, which is dictatorial and brutal to those who step out of line while appearing to be benevolent. The motley refugee group represents the innocent who accept their fate without being able to question their benefactor. This film may not be as sophisticated as Rasoulof's later films but it makes you think beyond the obvious tale. Rasoulof is definitely one of the finest filmmakers in Iran, now languishing in prison. His crime--he made movies critical of life in Iran in the recent decades--films that won so many major awards and acclaim that few other filmmakers worlwide can equal.

One of the best movies ever made from Iran, it carries you into the world of destruction, by an enormous old ship that is slowly shinking, by a population that lives homeless in this Iron Island and with the rules of it.

A must see to realise about a world that brings us there, outside our living room. Maybe you think that this movie is because of the women revolution happening now, in that country, but no! It brings you much more. Much intensity, diverse characters and displays a reallity that is there in front of you, but we deny to watch it, cause we think it comes from another world, but is not, it comes from a world we are living and all of it is happening right now.

You will not find a better metaphorical study of Post-revolution Iran than this film, one so threatening that the Iranian authorities tossed famed director Rasoulof into the brig. A self-absorbed captain of a stalled and sinking ship runs his vessel like a clueless despot, ripping off hard-working but naïve passengers. Exploited onboard youth get meaningless education, and a lovelorn adolescent who bolts for a better life gets tortured, mostly to deter other kids. The lying captain inefficiently uses the scant ship resources, like steel and oil, and misapplies the proceeds to strand his impoverished subjects in an arid land. There is a bud of hope at the end, but like reality, if you blink you will miss it. AfroPixFlix drops a 10-forked anchor.