Jazireh ahani

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.

"Iron Island (Jazireh ahani)" vividly works on at least three levels. Opening with a prayer, the premise itself is visually arresting and the story is simple but imaginative.

Settled on an abandoned oil freighter off the coast of an unnamed Middle East peninsula, a rag tag community of squatters is ruled by a wheeling-dealing landlord, a benevolent, Messianic dictator of a captain, like out of a Werner Herzog film, controlling a limited barter economy with the outside world. The huge hulking ship in the bright blue sea is eye-popping, but it even feels like writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof is just pointing his camera at at a documentary of how traditional families adapt to such a physical and economic environment while retaining their social structure with its rigid gender and age stratification.

I equally believed, on the one hand, this could be a post-apocalyptic society as in the "Mad Max" movies or "Waterworld", the new "Battlestar Galactica" or even "Land of the Dead" or, on the other, that it could even have been based on a true story, as much as "Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai)" was based on a real incident in Japan of abandoned children.

But it works equally well visually, emotionally and intellectually as a brilliant allegory, not necessarily of Iran but of any traditional, isolated society with a rotting infrastructure, selling off its resources and émigrés to global capitalism and living off the promises and lies of its paternalistic leaders.

Working under the captain's watchful eye, the frustrated school teacher, a Cassandra-like scientist, uses the Islamic madrassas style of repetitive memorization. But with only old newspapers about a mysterious war and enemy as texts, the students are required to repeat truisms about the glories of living on the sea. Unfortunately, the English subtitles do not translate what is on the black board so some subtleties are doubtless lost.

Just as any society has channeled restless adolescent boys into armies, the "Captain" (a marvelously oily and charismatic Ali Nassirian) organizes the boys on board into teams of coordinated manual labor to salvage resources on the ship that have the breathtaking look of "Nanook of the North" teams ritualistically pulling together for a common goal and their choreography is a wonder. Even so, they still keep trying to get snatches of contact to the outside world with satellite TV and radio.

But we get caught up on in the story of one of these adolescents, his assistant, a lovelorn orphan (played by Hossein Farzi-Zadeh who also movingly played a similar young man in "Beautiful City (Shah-re ziba)"), who stands up to him, recalling "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner", or a more cerebral "Star Wars", with an even more dramatically wrenching rebellion. How young love finds an outlet even through elaborate burhkas is a touching tribute to the universality of the human spirit. The audience held their breaths as to who would win the battle of wits and endurance.

Women are especially ground under in this patriarchal society, with physical and labor restrictions and barely puberty arranged marriages around issues of honor. A lack of health care particularly affects the constantly pregnant, child-caring women.

The premise doesn't make 100% practical sense and the ending is so ambiguous that the guy next to me optimistically thought it was happy for all, while I was cynically dismayed. But the images are unforgettable.

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.

While the works of maestro Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf are part of a more philosophical, sometimes Godardian/Haneke avant garde film school, Iron Island represents another side of iranian cinema, one that is closer to the classic "greek" Hollywood style. The plot driven film. But this is a plot driven film that also uses the plot to present a satire of the society. Not only the iranian but a more general comment on the modern society. The director is very precise and throughoughly chooses simple but strong symbols on presenting his work. A miniatyre society (on a rusty old oil tanker in the persian gulf that is constantly sinking) lead by captain Nemat. There is a fully (dis)functional society on this boat. Nemat is a strong totalitarian leader but a balanced person thats very hard to judge. Nemats complex character is one of the most well crafted and vital parts of this film. There is also a love story off course. A forbidden love between two of the youths on this boat. Nemat, these two youths a teacher/scientist and dozen of other characters each represent a person and a way of thinking that in addition to being autonome characters also are used to show Nemat. These persons are also used to show Nemat, by showing Nemats reaction to these people.

Also the imagery is fantastic. The old rusty tanker a great contrast to the blue sea. Brown and yellow against the blue sea and the sky. Nemats (Nassirian is one of the most important theatre and film actors in Iran) face expressions alone, are just incredible (one can see parallels in the use of face expression to Eisensteins "Potemkin").

In short, Iron Island is one of the most interesting Iranian films in a long time.

RECOMMEND FOR EVERYONE

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'Island' floats in a sea of humanism.

Like the great Iranian filmmakers, Rasoulof has no use for the artificiality of heightened drama. He opts, instead, for a more universal humanism, which is a better teaching tool. The captain, of course, is no less than a professor of cockeyed optimism. Even if the ship sinks, as far as he's concerned, hope still floats.

The most fascinating thing about life is our unique experiences as people, which includes our loves, our sacrifices, our joys, our successes and failures . ABOVE ALL how much time and feelings & care for other ? That you have !!! Feelings of mystery.