Zagros

This interesting movie gives you insight into the traditional gender norms within the Kurdish community. Without surprise, we see, as the story unravels, how these gender roles are oppressive to women. However, the movie also shows how patriarchy can be suffocating to men as well, especially to men who challenge prevailing gender norms and are torn apart by having to choose between family/honor/traditions and their personal beliefs. The struggles of the main characters seemed, almost unfortunately, realistic to me, as were their acting performances. I settled on a rating of 7 for this movie (would have given it 7,5 if I could) so I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone willing to question their own prejudices...

Shakespeare wrote this story more than 400 years ago and, not surprisingly, made a much better job of it. This Belgian-made film by a Kurdish director is competently made with decent acting throughout. All technical aspects are good, and it is quite watchable, but let down by the story and especially the characters. While Othello is a strong and positive figure, deluded by the much cleverer Iago, Zagros, on screen most of the time, is foolish, weak-minded and pathetic. He presents an appearance of wanting to sympathise with his slandered wife, yet is prepared at every turn to doubt her and believe the slander, which contains nothing clever at all. Sometimes this is taken to silly extremes, as when he cruelly mistreats his frightened daughter in a swimming pool or walks the streets of Brussels, showing photos to strangers with no common language and asking whether the daughter looks more like him or a man he suspects.

I should be rooting for the wife here, but she too is foolish and indecisive, contributes to her own problems and arouses little sympathy. 'You are a good man,' she tells Zagros early on, presumably because he usually stops short of physically attacking her. When others do, she apparently becomes too 'weak' to defend herself. She fails, for an age, to eject her hostile and vile father in law from the Brussels apartment she allows her husband to share, and does so only when subjected to extreme and deliberate provocation. It's almost certain that her only smart move, her flight from a village where she seems to be almost universally despised, was forced on her by her concerned, stronger and more independent sister Eliz. As for the husband's appalling family, they seem to hate for its own sake and in the most unreasoned ways - there is no depth of character to see in any of them, nor anything of interest.

There was only one review when I wrote this. That reviewer seems attracted by a 'romantic' society where everything 'has its simple place'. He may be unaware that attitudes like this prevail throughout the rural Muslim world and far beyond, with women routinely regarded as property and offered less respect than is due to an average beast of burden. If you share this ignorance, then you should definitely watch this and believe every word. The 'simplicity' in such places is due to strict imposition of rigid rule-sets, either by old men or by religion (often the two are not so different) aimed among other things at maintaining the tyrannical patriarchy.

The character who did interest me was Eliz, the gun-toting guerrilla sister, who seems to have the craven village bullies entirely cowed. I wanted to know how, in a society as extreme as this, she was able to use political unrest to achieve an impressive degree of emancipation - in absolute contrast to the fate of her supposedly 'modern' sister. Insofar as anything ever gets sorted in this film, it's always Eliz who gets it done, but unfortunately the director didn't seem interested in this character.

Very believable struggle beween the traditional Kurdish sociëteit and modern western life. The romantic village life in Kurdistan is in this movie unmasked in a vilifying way. We long sometimes to that safety of simple life of this shepherd Zagros in a society were everything has its simple place and where you are one with the community where you live in. Like Zagros says it in the beginning of the movie sitting with his beautiful wife and sweet child in the Kurdish landscape and says that this is the most beautiful place in the world. I heard once a western journalist say in a documentary about life in the Kaukasus meeting people demonstrating and celebrating their oneness in such a village: "You live in a real community. We westerners lost our tribe." And yes we do have that feeling of loss living our individualistic often lonely western lifes. We go on holidays to tiny Italian villages, old little towns in Bulgaria, kampungs on Bali to experience the seemingly harmonious life where people feel close and caring for each other. But this film demonstrates how oppressive such a traditional community can be. We see a few people trying to free themselves from that tiranny of gossip and strict traditions by emigrating to the modern west. If this works is put into question. Escaping to the west one always takes the belief in the conventions of the tradition with him or her. In this movie only the people who are traumatized deeply by the terror of the traditional village make a successful escape because they don't see a way back. But also for them the village will always come after them.

A film about a profound lonely man, about family and jealousy. It reminds Othello , using the tradition of East. Corect crafted, it is saboted by the end who you hope be open. For a Eastern, Albanian, Kurdish or Serbian, all is clear. And only the wrong final solution can be a problem. For the cinema viewer, the great problem remains the expectation. It deserves be better and it has all the pieces to be. But something, and the main excuse is its status of debut of director is not real convincincing. Zagros is too weak and the reactions almost fakes. But , sure, it is a decent film.