"Protest" - Masoud Kimiai (2000)

Writer-director Masoud Kimiai has been an important Iranian filmmaker over a fifty-year career that spans both the pre- and post-revolutionary periods.  However, his most influential films – Gheisar (1969), Dash Akol (1971), and The Deer (Gavaznha, 1974) – came early on, before the 1979 revolution.  But despite the vast changes in the Iranian social climate that have occurred since then, he has generally maintained his usual  focus on two main themes:

• loyalty, honor, and revenge 
• the disastrous effects of drug addiction. 

Of his more recent (i.e. post-revolutionary) films, though, one of the more interesting has been Protest (Eteraz, 2000), because it presents a more subtle and ambiguous picture of the normally crowd-pleasing themes of revenge and honor.  In fact the film presents the narratives of two men who go through an existential examination of just who they are and how they identify with and relate to the traditional socioculturally-defined themes of dignity and honor. 

The film starts by telling how Amir Farmanzad (played by Dariush Arjmand) vengefully murdered the unfaithful wife of his younger brother Reza (Mohammad Reza Forutan) in order to preserve his family’s dignity and self-respect.  He willingly and pridefully confessed to the crime and was immediately sent to prison.  When he learned that the woman he killed was pregnant with the unborn child of her paramour, Ahmed, Amir, rather than feeling any remorse, felt that his victim was even more guilty and more worthy of being murdered.  In short, Amir is a quintessential example of a man for whom dignity and family honor are the highest values.  He is willing to give up his own life in his efforts to maintain these tribal values.

In fact Amir had sacrificed his own career opportunities in order to work and earn money that could support younger brother Reza’s education.  But Reza’s college education evidently exposes him to higher, more humanistic, values than those of his brother.

The scene shifts forward twelve years, when Amir is released from prison.  Before he departs, his fellow prisoners, in particular a powerful gangster named Mohsen Darbandi (Mehdi Fat'hi), celebrate Amir for his heroic act of honor killing.  Just before his release, Mohsen gives Amir a valuable ring and urges him to look after his woman, Majdi (Bita Farahi).

When Amir gets out of prison, he is met by his family and learns that they have been shielding him from some awful news.  His father has died; his mother has become blind; and his opium-addicted brother-in-law’s mismanagement has led to the family’s financial ruin.  When Reza has a chance to talk with Amir alone, he tells him that they all now live in a different world, where revenge and concern for selfish dignity are no longer the highest values.  Instead, the world (in Iran) has embraced the higher, more rational and universally benevolent, values.  They have the following exchange on this matter:

Reza: “The days of such [vengeful] reactions have passed.”

Amir: “So what about dignity?  [Things may have changed,] but is conscience not there
             any more?  Honor and dignity can’t be taken away.”

Reza:  “I was talking about today’s sense of reason, a progressive society."

Although Reza humbly acknowledges the sacrifice that Amir made, he tells him that what he did was wrong and even led to the ruination of their own family.  And even Ahmed, his dead wife’s lover, has lost his mind with grief.

Thus there are two ways of looking at the world that have been identified:

• The Tribal
  This focusses on dignity, honor, and loyalty.  Resentment is harbored, and revenge is the primary operation of justice.  Amir is associated with this view.
   
• The Rational Humanistic
  This focuses on human reason, human rights, and universal values promoting the common good.  Although Reza has been exposed to both moral regimes, he is now ready to embrace the one he has more recently learned – that of Rational Humanism.

Note that I have on several occasions commented on how mistaken is the notion that dignity can have objective validity and on the even more absurd idea that dignity can be so objectively identified that it should be recognized as a universal human right (see, for example, my reviews of The Last Command (1928) and Bicycle Thieves (1948)).  Dignity is a subjectively perceived posture, like pride, that is usually only internally assumed.  In this connection I have cited two references that shed further light on this topic [1,2].

Thus the Tribal moral regime, at the root of which is an obsession for dignity, is a false perspective founded in resentment.  Unfortunately, in the world today we are faced with a rising tide of what is referred to as “populism”, but which is really a return to tribalism under another name.  There is little in the way of policy that connects the various political figures who are currently regarded as populists, such as Bernie Sanders, Norendra Modi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Donald Trump.  What these  populist figures do have in common are calls for a restoration of lost dignity which has allegedly been damaged by shadowy elites.  Their popularity is fuelled by the  resentment invoked by their clarion calls for an authoritarian leader to suppress and punish these ill-defined elites who have attacked our dignity [3].  

To counter this rising support of authoritarian populism (which is another form of Tribalism) among the wider population, I have proposed a more compact and easy to remember formulation of the basics of sociopolitical Rational Humanism, using the acronym RMDL, in order to make it easier to conceptualize and discuss in wider forums [4]. RMDL stands for four basic pillars of sociopolitical Rational Humanism:

• Human Rights.  These include freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom to watch and listen, freedom from torture, etc.
   
• Open Markets.  There needs to be regulated markets that allow for the open exchange of goods and services across society.  This includes necessarily ensuring there is sufficient wealth equity across society so that there can be widespread, fair exchange.
   
• Democracy.  Some form of democracy involving universally inclusive enfranchisement needs to be in place.
     
• Rule of Law.  There needs to be a written set of laws that are made known to everyone and that can be changed by actions of the democratically-elected government.

In the context of the film Protest under discussion here, we could say that these two social themes of Tribalism and Rational Humanism offer a conceptual background for our two protagonists, Amir and Reza, as they separately struggle to come to grips with who they are.  The rest of the film now follows two parallel and largely separate narrative threads showing their contrasting worlds.

Amir’s world is the lower-class, crime-tinctured milieu of the urban jungle, which is a favourite setting for writer-director Kimiai.  Amir goes to look for a job by visiting Mohsen’s agent, Fathollah, who operates a cockfighting pit for unsavoury gamblers.  When Amir asks Fathollah for a job but only making “clean money”, Fathollah reminds him that no money is clean.  Corruption is a part of everything.  The dark world Amir inhabits is also hinted at by showing a shadowy figure who watches him ominously from the background during one of Fathollah’s cockfights.  This turns out to be the embittered Ahmed, the lover of Reza’s murdered wife.

Amir, himself, is shown to be tough, but he comes across as an essentially good-hearted and well-meaning person.  The crime he committed was an act of self-sacrifice for his family’s honor and not one motivated by greed.  When he visits Ms. Majdi, who turns out to be gangster Mohsen’s sister, he sees that she is a hard-working seamstress and finds himself motivated to protect her when she is bothered by a street tough. 

Meanwhile Reza is shown socializing at a restaurant with his former university classmates and discussing their favourite topic: Reformist Iranian politics.  Even among Reformists, though, there are disagreements and lively discussions.  They talk about the difficulties President Mohammad Khatami is having getting the Reformist agenda implemented, and a key issue discussed is whether the priority should be placed on opening up the economy or emphasizing freedom and human rights (i.e. whether RMDL dimension ‘R’ or ‘M’ should be prioritized).  This policy divide existed even within a single Reformist party, which is here loosely referred to as the “Kargozaran party”.  This was actually the Executive Construction Party, whose official news outlet was the Kargozaran newspaper.  The party’s two leaders, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Gholamhossein Karbaschi, differingly championed the M and R issues, respectively.

One of the friends at these discussions is Ladan, Reza’s new fiancé, who was recently attacked while peacefully distributing leaflets at a demonstration and now sports a black eye.  Reza also has another close friend, Ghasem, who shares Reza’s lower-class status and who suffers from opium addiction. Ghasem warns Reza that Ladan’s educated, higher-class family background means that she is not a good marriage match for him. 

All of these discussions make Reza stressfully wonder who he is and where he is going in life.  He has embraced new humanist values, but he feels himself unworthy of his brother Amir’s devoted (even though wrongful) sacrifice.  The only job he has been able to find after all of Amir’s sacrifices to fund his education is the humiliatingly low position of a pizza delivery boy. 

Further self-doubts presumably affect both Reza and Amir when they visit their younger brother Yousef, who suffered a brain injury when he was beaten while participating in a peaceful demonstration at his university.  Yousef is a sensitive and innocent young musician who harbors no resentment and now smiles at everything he sees. 

All of their separate encounters weigh on both Amir and Reza.  Amir, who had dreamed of marrying the seamstress Majdi, finally decides that the murder he committed has permanently polluted him and has made him unworthy of her.  He terminates his relationship with her and renounces further association with Mohsen’s gangster family.  Similarly, Reza, feeling that he and Ladan belong to two different worlds, terminates his relationship with his fiance, too.

The final fates of Amir and Reza offer a striking contrast.  After watching another cockfight and seeing Ahmed there, Amir steps outside and fatalistically invites the murderously intentioned man to finish him off.  The vengeful Ahmed goes ahead and fatally knifes Amir and then runs away in the night.

Reza’s ending is different.  At his work he is assigned to deliver a stack of pizzas to an upscale party and is shocked to discover when he gets there that the party is for Ladan’s wedding to a mutual friend of theirs.  Ladan and Reza momentarily exchange painful eye contact before Reza returns to his pizza café.  There he meets some of his old-college friends returning from Ladan’s party, who backhandedly console him by reminding him how filthy-rich Ladan’s family is and how she belongs to a different world from theirs. 

But then Ladan, still in her wedding dress, unexpectedly shows up at the café.  She has apparently had a last-minute change of heart.  She has renounced her Tribalistic arranged marriage and come to Reza to embrace the higher and universal feeling of boundless human love.

Kimiai’s other films often deal with honor and revenge in ordinary Iranian society, but Protest offers a more subtle treatment of these themes.  It gets the viewer inside the heads of its two main characters and presents these people grappling with changing social values. 

Admittedly, though, the film has some significant limitations.  The storyline is fragmented, and the film consists mostly of conversations shown in relentless back-and-forth closeups, which is a difficult cinematic rhythm to employ at length.  Another serious flaw is the treatment of the vengeful figure of Ahmed lurking in the shadows.  This is not well identified and signalled visually, and it represents a botched narrative opportunity for Kimiai.

Nevertheless, Protest probably deserves more appreciation than it has received.  It offers a thoughtful picture of Iranian society in disruption and of people trying to come to terms with it.
★★★  

Notes:

1. Steven Pinker, “The Stupidity of Dignity, Conservative Bioethics' Latest, Most Dangerous Ploy,” The New Republic, (28 May 2008).    
2. Samuel Moyn, “Dignity’s Due”, (2013), The Nation, (4 November 2013).    
3. George Weigel, “Democracy and Its Discontents”, National Affairs, number 35, (Spring 2018).   
4. For further reflections on RMDL, see my reviews of 
• Head Wind (2008)
• Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012)
• Manuscripts Don’t Burn (2013)
• An Enemy of the People (Ganashatru, 1989)
• Michael Moore in Trumpland (2016)
• Taxi (2015)
• The King and I (1956)

"Dash Akol" - Masoud Kimiai (1971)

Iranian writer-director Masoud Kimiai has had a productive and continually active fifty-year career, but his most prominent and well-received work came relatively early on.  One of those early successes was Dash Akol (1971), which concerns love, honor, and survival among street toughs in the Iranian urban environment of an earlier period.  It is based on the short story “Dash Akol” (1932) [1,2] by Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951), who is one of my favorite writers. 

Now considered one of the major Iranian literary figures of the 20th century, Hedayat spent his early adulthood studying European literature, and during his tragically shortened literary career he introduced a number of Western motifs and perspectives into Iranian settings. As a result, his writing covered a range of styles, and some of his most famous works, besides “Dash Akol”, include "The Benefits of Vegetarianism” (1927), “Three Drops of Blood” (1932), The Blind Owl (1937), "Don Juan of Karaj" (1942), and “The Dark Room” (1942) [3,4].  To me, though, Hedayat’s very best work has an unforgettably macabre flavor, and he is essentially the Edgar Allen Poe (who was in fact one of Hedayat’s models) of Iranian fiction.  His principal characters are often beset with extreme loneliness and inexpressible existential fears, including fears of these same characters’ own self-destructive impulses.  In these Hedayat stories, the world itself is frequently ominous and unknowably misshapen. 

So one of the virtues of a Hedayat story is the eerie mood that the story evokes.  And it is a credit to Kimiai that he managed to conjure of Hedayat’s prose-induced mood of “Dash Akol” with his cinematic presentation of the story.  This was accomplished partly by means of many shadow-laden scenes in deep focus.  In addition, the emphatic and melodramatic music of Esfandiar Monfaredzadeh, the style of which is not normally to my taste, is effective here in sustaining the brooding and expressionistic mood that overhangs the story.

The world in which the story “Dash Akol” is set concerns the almost lawless and anarchic urban environments of an earlier day.  In such settings in 19th century Iran (Qajar period), there arose the notion of the luti, who was essentially a street thug and who sought to be the “boss” of his neighborhood. A luti was an uneducated lower-class hooligan who heavily drank alcohol, engaged in promiscuous and exploitative sex, and generally bullied anyone in the neighborhood who didn’t bow down to his belligerent dominance. Respect and fearful obsequiousness was what the luti constantly demanded from all others of his class.

During the same Qajar period there emerged also the countervailing notion of the lutigar, which was something of a chivalrous knight dedicated to helping the poor and protecting the weak from exploitation. Patrolling the neighborhood with his identifying tassel and his sheathed sword, the lutigar would be always ready to come to the aid of oppressed or disadvantaged people.  Those who were lutigar (aka javanmardi or fotvvat) followed principles of generosity and courageous self-sacrifice and were considered to be pahlavan (heroes) in their neighborhoods.  (Note that the notions of luti and lutigar have a much older ancestry, but the present-day understandings of these terms seem to have crystallized in the 19th century [5,6,7]).  Of course the boundaries between a lutigar and ordinary lutis may not always be clear.  But in Dash Akol, it is clearly the case that Dash Akol is an honorable lutigar, while his antagonist, Kaka Rostam, is just a despicable luti.

Masoud Kimiai’s script for Dash Akol follows Hedayat’s story pretty closely, but Kimiai did introduce some changes that I think were enhancements to the overall narrative and which I will identify below.  The story is somewhat episodic but passes through three main sections.

1.  Dash Akol, the most honorable man in Shiraz

The opening sequences show the street thug Kaka Rostam (played by Bahman Mofid) in a teahouse and boastfully claiming to be the boss of Shiraz.   While Kaka is bullying a serving boy, Dash Akol (Behrouz Vossoughi) arrives carrying his signature caged parrot and challenges Kaka.  They immediately get into a sword fight that results in Dash Akol getting the upper hand. But rather than killing Kaka, Dash Akol lets him go with a humiliating warning.  This of course is a major loss of face for Kaka.

Then a messenger arrives summoning Dash Akol to the lavish residence of Hadji Samad, a respected and reverent man who is now on his deathbed.  Saying there is noone more honorable than Dash Akol, Samad announces that Dash Akol is to be the executor of his estate.  Dash Akol doesn’t want to take on the burden of such a task, but his honor forces him to accept the responsibility.

At Hadji Samad’s funeral, one of the many grieving women in full, face-covering chadors almost faints; and Dash Akol is summoned to sprinkle some water on her face to revive her. When her facial veil is lifted for a moment, Dash Akol looks into her eyes and is stunned by her beauty. This young woman, Marjan (Mary Apick), we later learn, is Hadji Samad’s 14-year-old daughter.  When she walks away, Dash Akol picks up the black hand scarf she had dropped and puts it in his pocket.

2.  The Estate Executor
Dash Akol assumes the role of the estate executor, but he becomes depressed because he has fallen madly in love with Marjan.  He knows that he is more than twenty years older than the girl and below her class.  In addition, he feels that his many facial scars from past blade fights make him too ugly to win a pretty girl’s love.

The scene now shifts to a wine house that features musicians and a beautiful dancer, Aghdass (Shahrzad).  A thuggish patron starts bullying Aghdass, but Dash Akol, who is also there, chases the thug away. Aghdass clearly likes Dash Akol and dances for him, but Dash Akol is too drunk and sorrowful to respond to her, even spurning her invitation to come to her room.  She tells him that “when a man is sorrowful, he is an ocean of sadness.”

Kimiai’s script has two significant changes to Hedayat’s story here. The dancing girl, Aghdass, is not in Hedayat’s original story, but including her has the effect of adding substance and contrast to the romantic theme. In the original story Dash Akol has romantic dreams of Marjan.  That element has been omitted in the film and replaced by the more upfront presentation of two contrasting forms of femininity. Mary Apick, an Armenian Iranian actress with refined beauty who plays Marjan, has an almost ethereal image to her. Shahrzad, who plays Aghdass, is more physical and earthy. Kimiai captures this by focussing on the sensual movements of Shahrzad’s hands and feet as she dances. In particular, there is something inexpressibly visceral about the image of human feet, and here it serves to connect the viewer with Aghdass.

Another change that Kimiai made concerns the wine house proprietor, Isaac.  In Hedayat’s story he is sneeringly portrayed as a slimy Jew, reflecting Hedayat’s apparently prejudicial tendency to look down on any Semitic influences on pure Persian culture.  In the film, though, Isaac is portrayed as a sympathetic and helpful person.

The rest of this sequence shows Dash Akol diligently attending to the estate he is managing.  His honorable reserve prevents him from interacting with his beloved Marjan.  But there is one atmospheric shot showing him on one of Shiraz’s rare snowy days looking down from an upper-level window on Marjan in the estate compound courtyard as she marvels at the snow.  To drown his sorrows over Marjan, Dash Akol spends his time drinking araq (a high-proof alcoholic liquor) and pouring out his broken heart to his parrot.

In the original story, seven years are said to pass while Dash Akol spends his time managing the estate and brooding over his impossible love. In the film, this passage of time is not so evident, but it is clear that Dash Akol’s withdrawal from the street culture has emboldened his enemy Kaka to boastfully claim that Dash Akol is chicken and has become a mere servant in the Hadji Samad compound.

3.   Marjan’s Wedding
Eventually Marjan’s mother receives a marriage proposal for her daughter’s hand from a handsome young man of a prosperous family.  Dash Akol feels honor-bound to accept the proposal when Marjan’s mother consults with him. In Hedayat’s story the marriage proposal comes from a man said to be older and uglier than Dash Akol, but Kimiai’s change here in the story also seems appropriate in terms of romantic tragedy.

Rather than attend the wedding, the depressed Dash Akol goes to the wine house and gets drunk. Aghdass approaches him and finally declares her passionate love for him.  She drags the inebriated Dash Akol to her room, and they spend the night making love.  Their scenes of lovemaking are intercut with Marjan and her new husband going to bed on their wedding night.

That night on the way home, the still drunk Dash Akol runs into Kaka and his gangsters, who proceed to rough up the sorrowful Dash Akol.  Finally Dash Akol challenges Kaka to a final battle to be held in front of everyone at the city square.  Dash Akol then goes home to prepare for the sword fight, working out at the local zurkhane (house of strength).  The lonely man also speaks to his only confidante, his parrot, rhetorically saying to it that it is his love for her that has killed him.

The battle in the city square finally takes place, and the epic struggle in the shadows of various arcades occupies more than five minutes of screen time.   Dash Akol finally gets the advantage, but as a man of honor, he throws down his sword and lets Kaka go.  He turns his back on his adversary, telling him, “I told you I never kill dogs.”  Kaka picks up his sword and fatally stabs Dash Akol, who with his last remaining strength strangles Kaka.

On his deathbed later, Dash Akol tells Isaac to give his only possession, his parrot, to Marjan.  The next day the parrot is delivered to Marjan, and the film depicts exactly the event that is recounted by Hedayat’s final words in the story [1]:

That afternoon Marjan put the cage in front of her and stared at the bird's multi-colored wings, hooked beak, and round tired eyes. Suddenly the parrot, in a voice that echoed Dash Akol's, said, "Marjan... Marjan... you've killed me. Whom can I tell? Marjan, your love has killed me."

Tears ran down Marjan's cheeks.

There are some rough edges to this film production.  In particular some of the rapid-fire, nearly subliminal, editorial cuts don’t work and are only distracting.  Also, some of the melodramatic histrionics go too far.  But overall, Kimiai’s moody mise-en-scene creates a somber atmosphere that is surprisingly effective. 

Ultimately, Dash Akol knew that he could have asked for Marjan’s hand and that both the girl and her mother would have accepted.  But he felt that such an act would have been a betrayal of his honorable commitment to Hadji Samad.  To take advantage of his position as Hadji Samad’s estate executor would have been a failure to live up to his standards of a lutigar.  This is not just a matter of losing face; it represented a sincere commitment to live up to a high standard. 

In this sense Dash Akol’s life existed on two levels.  On one level was an abstract plane where the idealistic principles of lutigari and Marjan’s heavenly eyes resided.  On a lower level was the plane of real, embodied engagement.  It was on this lower level that Dash Akol performed his heroic deeds and could have had a lasting love with Aghdass.  You cannot really live on that upper level; you can only refer to it as a beacon to guide you. Dash Akol was a good man, but he suffered, because he was unable to fully bridge the gap between these two levels. This led to the grim outcome. 

The film’s closing statement is Sadegh Hedayat’s gloomy pronouncement on man’s perpetual existential loneliness:

 “Life has many problems that you may have to suffer all by yourself.”

★★★½ 

 

Notes:

1. Sadeqh Hedayat, “Dash Akol” (Kimberley A. Brown, trans), Bashiri Working Papers on Central Asia and Iran (Iraj Bashiri), (1999).
2. Sohila Sarem, “DĀŠ ĀKOL”, Encyclopedia Iranica, (30 August 2011).       
3. English translations of many of these works can be found at
• Iraj Bashiri, "Sadeq Hedayat's Corner”, Bashiri Working Papers on Central Asia and Iran, (n.d.).   
4. For D. P. Costello’s English translation of The Blind Owl, try here.
5. Anthony Shay, “A Rainbow of Iranian Masculinities: Raqqas, a Type of Iranian Male Image”, Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont, (1 January 2017).   
6. Willem Floor, “LUTI”, Encyclopedia Iranica, (15 March 2010).     
7. Arley Loewen, “KĀKAGI”, Encyclopedia Iranica, (19 April 2012). 

Masoud Kimiai

Films of Masoud Kimiai:

• Dash Akol - Masoud Kimiai (1971)
• Protest (Eteraz) - Masoud Kimiai (2000)
• Friday's Soldiers (Sarbaz-haye Jome) - Masoud Kimiai (2004)

"Friday’s Soldiers" - Masoud Kimiai (2004)

Friday’s Soldiers (Sarbaz-haye Jome, 2004), by well-known Iranian writer-director Masoud Kimiai (Gheisar, 1969; The Deer, 1974), offers another example of the popular revenge motif.  As is characteristic of the genre that helped make Clint Eastwood famous, much of the film depicts some gross and cruel injustices that are suffered by the protagonists, who then render a bone-crunching payback to the wicked perpetrators in the closing scenes.

This particular revenge story concerns the events around one particular weekend when some young Iranian soldiers get a weekend pass to visit the “outside”.  The story passes through five distinct stages: the introductory scene, three scenes that depict the poisonous state of their society, and finally the cathartic conclusion.

1. The Barracks.

We are introduced to three of the four principal protagonists in this scene.  Asef is a new recruit who chooses to install his belongings in the lower bunk of a bed, the upper bunk portion of which is occupied by Reza.  Reza resents the sent of Asef’s eau de Cologne (signifying Asef’s higher class status) and thuggishly challenges him.  A bloody fistfight ensues, after which the two are hauled before their gray-haired superior, the “sergeant”.  Despite the brutality of their fight, Reza and Asef dismiss the whole thing as a little macho-laden dustup, and soon they become friends.  Together with another conscripted soldier, Saeed, who wishes nothing more than to leave the army and the country altogether, they all decide to go on a weekend leave.  The sergeant also decides to join them, and they set off on their outing.  

2. Reza’s Place. 

Reza wishes to visit his ailing mother, but upon arrival he learns that she has already passed away and the mourning is already underway.  He learns that his elderly father had neglected and presumably antagonized the ailing mother by recently taking on a young sighe (temporary additional wife).  Reza’s sister has just murdered her abusive, drug-addicted husband and will face a cruel justice.  After the agony of much wailing and multiple revelations and recriminations, the four soldiers leave Reza’s residence and are joined by Reza’s brother. 

3. The Sergeant’s Place.  

The group now visits the sergeant’s home, where a young female family member is apparently suffering from epilepsy.  Asef watches the girl’s fit in horror and is evidently disturbed that the girl is likely doomed to be treated as a social embarrassment. 

4. Asef’s Place.  

After a stopover to observe Reza’s brother at a recording studio session, the group, now joined by Asef’s sister, Noghre, go to Asef’s luxurious family residence. The class difference separating Asef from his companions is clearly on display in this scene.  This sequence, the longest in the film, is centered around Noghre, a beautiful, educated woman who has recently descended into drug addiction.   Asef urges her to abandon drugs and return to a normal life, but she tells him that her drug addiction stems from despair over the murder of her beloved, a well-known professor famous for his knowledge of poetry and philosophy.  The professor was murdered, we eventually learn, by a jealous young gangster who lusted after the beautiful Noghre.  The depraved gangster then took advantage of the grief-stricken Noghre’s resulting weakness over her lover’s death and got her enmeshed her in drug addiction, his own professional specialty.  When our “Friday’s Soldiers” learn about this, they immediately commit themselves to taking revenge on the entire gang. 

5. Revenge at the Slaughterhouse. 

The four young men and the sergeant equip themselves with clubs and then get Noghre to guide them to the gang’s headquarters at the slaughterhouse.  As soon as they arrive, they start knocking heads, and the next two minutes of screen time show a blood-spattering melee, with the Friday’s Soldiers barely holding their own.  They eventually succeed in their mission, though, and they all head back to the barracks to get aid for seriously wounded Saeed.  However, the closing shots of the film show the soldiers’ return impeded by a political demonstration that is underway in the city, as the big city seems to swallow up the soldiers and their concerns as if they hold no significance.

Overall, Friday’s Soldiers has serious weaknesses, and yet there are some attractive features to it, too.  On the down side, the narrative lacks coherence, and the middle three acts to the film come across as random and disconnected.  The acting in the film also has serious limitations, with overwrought histrionics substituting for serious dramatics.  This difficulty is exacerbated by Iranian social custom, which is typically highly emotive in many social situations, such as during grieving periods after a family death.   Thus the emotional scene at Reza’s place, with all its crying and wailing, seems artificially overwrought, insincere, and unconvincing.

Despite the overall mess of the story, however, the over-the-top, impressionistic images presented here have their mysterious upside, too.  They turn the film into a weird impressionistic phantasmagoria that plays according to its own mad logic.  This is particularly effective in the lengthy fourth act, “Asef’s Place”, where Noghre’s half-crazed recounting of her tragic descent begins to take over the entire film.  Her story begins to infuse the film with an overall theme.  These soldiers, for various reasons dropouts from their particular social circumstances and from Iranian society as a whole, couldn’t deal with all the contradictions and dissatisfactions in their lives.  But once they hear Noghre’s story, they have had enough; they resolve to stay and fight for justice.

Although the word “Friday” in the title may merely suggest that this is the last day of their brief weekend pass, it can also can carry the connotation of the Islamic holy day, the day of peace and mercy.  These “Friday’s Soldiers” see a society around them that is in decay, and action must be taken to set it aright.  The expressionistic cinematography emphasizes their emotional turmoil by constantly inserting  reaction shots of the protagonists, as they watch and react to one horror after another.

Unfortunately, such a moral interpretation of Friday’s Soldiers is undercut by the final, violent action of revenge.  Thrashing and stomping on those who are judged to commit wrong will not solve the problems in society; it merely perpetuates the cycle of hatred and violent reaction. All revenge films suffer from this basic moral discrepancy.  Such violent "retribution" may supply some visceral satisfaction, but it is only a primitive, animalistic response.

One final word needs to be said, however, in appreciation of the haunting, moody musical score by Peyman Yazdanian, who also scored the music for The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), Going By (2001), and Fireworks Wednesday (2006).  It’s so good that it alone elevates my rating of the film by half a star.
★★½