Pane e fiore

There is absolutely nothing bad I can say about this film. I was lucky enough to attend a screening of this gem last night at the Alamo Drafthouse. The show was nearly sold out, for good reason.

This film is about a real life experience that Mohsen Makhmalbaf had at the age of seventeen. When he was seventeen, he stabbed a police man while participating in a demonstration. He was imprisoned for five years. Twenty years after this event took place, he has made amends with the policeman he stabbed and is now making a film about this incident.

The film is a work of art. It is beautifully shot, with no over the top camera work and editing. The film is masterfully directed and it is very humanistic. This film will probably prove to be one if the most important films in the history of cinema, especially to Iranian filmmakers. I would recommend this film to any and everybody.

The Iranian cinema is perhaps the most self-reflexive of all national cinemas. Though it owes much to the development of Italian neo-realism, the Iranian cinema today is not just an extension of its predecessor's concerns about cinematic truth but a formal inquiry of the nature of cinema and the "truth" that lies within and outside of art. Jacques Rivette's groundbreaking "L'amour fou" already sets the stage in 1968 when he investigated the symbiotic relationship betwen art and life by using two different film stocks, 16 and 35 mm., to represent "reality" as it unfolds in front and behind the camera respectively.

In Moshen Makhmalbaf's 1996 masterpiece "A Moment of Innocence" twenty years separates a key moment in time and the recreation of it. The incident occurred when Makhmalbaf was only a youth who participated in an anti-Shah demonstration which led to the stabbing of a policeman and his imprisonment for the next five years. In an attempt to recapture this moment Makhmalbaf decides to a make a film within a film casting all the original participants (including the policeman) to play themselves as mentors to their younger selves, (i.e., actors) guiding and instructing them in the making of this "fictional" documentary.

It is not surprising that non-professional actors are employed here to both maintain a semblance of reality and to keep cinematic distortion at bay. But paradoxically, the young non-professional actors chosen to play Makhmalbaf and the policeman of their youth are as similar as they are dissimilar from their counterparts, thus, setting the stage for exploring the many tensions that exist between past and present, art and life, cinema and reality. This type of casting not only blurs the line between fiction and reality but also the distinction between documentary and narrative filmmaking.

The preoccupation with the phenomenological aspects of the cinema is as much the focus of this work as is the dramatization of the event leading up to the pivotal moment, then and now, reconstructed as a memory film as well as a product of the filmmaker's imagination to help correct an incident that only becomes clear to everyone involved after twenty years have elapsed. This celebrated moment which occurs at the end of film effectively captures the past by placing it in the present context much as if past and present suddenly converge and share the same space and time, thereby allowing us to see loss and recovery unfold simultaneously. That lost moment is now regained twenty years later through art's ability to heal and transform Makhmalbaf and his crew--thus altering the "reality" of life. The final shot is both life-affirming and referential because it so eloquently evokes the cinema's first prominent use of the freeze frame in Truffaut's "400 Blows"--if only to remind us just how far the cinema has come along. Like Truffaut's autobiographical based character Antoine Doinel the cinema has indeed grown up.

From what I've seen of Iranian Cinema, it seems to be that it is simultaneously simple and extremely complex. Simple in the way they capture real life moments, or simply cinematography-wise. Things look exactly how they would look in real life, the directors struggle is not to give reality another layer but to show it exactly like it is. Complex because it operates on so many levels. In "A Moment of Innocence", we talk about the meta-comment on cinema and its attempt to recreate reality, how we perceive our memories and how we would prefer real life to be like. The two main characters and their "young" counterparts are very elaborate, we get to know how their beliefs differ, how closely they resemble each other and what their goals become once they start to understand the way others think.

Beautiful imagery that transports us to the streets of Iran and its snowy roads, fantastic music and a brilliant ending that leaves us glued to the screen.

It is true that from a purely technical perspective, the freeze frame at the end of this film is quite revolutionary. A lot of viewers have expressed some positive comments about it. Hence, it would not be an understatement to call it one of the best moments in the history of cinema. However, Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf goes much more beyond this accomplishment as 'A moment of innocence' attempts to recreate an important event of the past in present times for future generations using existential themes and film making process. As a young man, while protesting against Shah's regime, director Mohsen Makhmalbaf had stabbed a police man. Although he chose an autobiographical episode which occurred many years ago, there has been no attempt made by Makhmalbaf to glorify neither violence nor revolutionary ideology. It appears as if everybody has become more compassionate including the young actor chosen to represent Makhmalbaf. This pacifist strategy brings everybody connected to the film to the conclusion that violence is no solution if the world needs to be changed. It is only through love can somebody aspire to change the world.

Makhmalbaf has arguably created one of the MOST interesting films I have seen in my entire life.

Casting young men unexperienced in acting to portray himself and the policemen he stabbed when he was 17, the director separates himself and his young self from the policemen and his; they separately train the actors portraying themselves 20 years earlier during an anti-Shah demonstration.

Culminating in the showdown between the young actors, the truths behind the situation unbeknownst to both director and policemen become evident. An extremely powerful film, and I advise you to stop at nothing to view it.