"The Deserted Station" - Alireza Raisian (2002)

Like a number of other contemporary Iranian works, The Deserted Station (Istgah-Matrouk, 2002), a film directed by Alireza Raisian, presents mundane events and circumstances that manage to evoke larger themes concerning the lives of the characters.  Reminiscent of earlier Italian films such as those by Michelangelo Antonioni, these Iranian films often involve an educated, urbanized protagonist for whom an encounter with ordinary people in the countryside elicits philosophical introspection about life's purposes.

In the case of The Deserted Station, the story concerns a young married couple driving across eastern Iran on their way to making a devotional visit to the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad.  The film proceeds at a leisurely pace to acclimate the viewer to the slow pace and sense of isolation of the Iranian desert. In fact for the film's first six minutes, one only sees images of the desert road and the driver, who is always shown in a tight camera frame so that one can’t be sure if he there is anyone else in the car. Eventually one is able to see that there is a passenger, the driver's wife, who though never named, turns out to be the story's real protagonist. 

As they drive through the barren landscape of Semnan province during the early morning hours, the driver Mahmood, who is a professional photographer, wanders off the main road in pursuit of picturesque images to capture with his camera.  When a deer surprisingly bolts in front of their car on the road, Mahmood’s wild swerve to avoid hitting it causes a mechanical break down.  Suddenly in this desolate landscape they are in need of a repairman.  It turns out that the only evidence of nearby human habitation is a tiny mud-brick community inhabited almost exclusively by women and children.  The men of the area, we are told, have all gone off to find work in other locations, and there is now just one remaining able-bodied male: a solitary local herder, Feizollah, who somehow manages to embody most of the traditional male-supplied services that are needed in the village.  Not only is Feizollah the local handyman, he is also the only literate person, which means that if the fatherless children in the community are to get any education, he must be their teacher.

Feizollah tells Mahmood that he can repair their car, but the two of them will need to travel by motorcycle to the regional service town in order to buy a spare part.  This will take most of the day, so that in the meantime, Mahmood’s wife will have to look after the school children while the two men are gone.  We will eventually see that here are about twenty children of various ages in Feizollah’s school, about 80% of whom are boys – girls in this village apparently tend to get married off to other villages at a very early age.  Mahmood’s wife is hesitant she can take over the class so easily, but Mahmood assures her that she can do it and reminds her that she has taught classes before.

The key element underlying this narrative, which is something that takes some time to make itself fully evident, is that Mahmood’s wife is pregnant and that her two previous pregnancies ended as stillbirths.  She is consequently tormented by the traditional view that she cannot be a complete woman until she has become a mother, and her trip to Mashhad is evidently being undertaken in order to carry out religious rituals and to pray for the birth of a healthy baby.  So her encounters with the village children, who are largely parentless, naturally invoke her motherly instincts, what role she can play, and her concerns about what fate may have in store for these children.

The rest of the film meanders along in its own desultory fashion showing various classroom scenes with the children, which are intercut with scenes of Mahmood and Feizollah discussing aspects of the lifestyle of the region while riding together on the motorcycle across the desert.  This motorcycle conversation is very reminiscent of a similar scene in Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), which is not so surprising since The Deserted Station is based on a Kiarostami story, and he is also credited, along with Kambuzia Partovi (Café Transit, aka Border Café, 2005), for the script of The Deserted Station.  Another cinematic homage may have been associated with that of the elderly illiterate railroad switchman, who was the only other male besides Feizollah in the village.  The man’s stubborn repetitions a minimalist set of actions and phrases evoked the similar behaviour of the switchman of an earlier well-known (and over-praised) Iranian film, Still Life (Tabiate Bijan, 1974).

Gradually a philosophical metaphor begins to take shape.  This little village of parentless children becomes a microcosm for the great mass of humanity who seek to know what is “out there” and important.  The village teacher Feizollah is a practical man and at his own expense has devoted himself to teaching these children about the outside world.  He is understood to be knowledgeable concerning many things, and for a day at least, Mahmood’s wife has become his surrogate.  For these children, Feizollah, and now Mahmood's wife, are almost celestial beings who can provide guidance for their following.  But what should that guidance be?  In fact Mahmood’s wife knows quite a bit about the outside world that she could tell these children, but she begins to see that the some of the truly important aspects of life are right in front of us – right here and right now.  There is a scene where she is following Feizollah’s lesson plan and instructing the children about Christopher Columbus’s discovery of a new continent, facts which the children try to memorize.  But we have to ask ourselves, what can these children really understand about another continent when they know very little about even the next town?  Aren't there more essential things for them learn?

There are further metaphors evoked when the children run to a railroad siding where some abandoned passenger cars are rusting away – the "deserted station". They use the train cars for a purpose other than for transport – they begin playing a game of hide and seek. Seeing this, Mahmood’s wife becomes pensive as she wonders perhaps where the "train of life" is taking all of them.  One of the older boys wants to run away from the village in order to learn where those trains he sees, which always pass by their village without stopping, are going.  Mahmood’s wife understands his longing to know about ultimate destinations, and yet she also knows that this is something that perhaps can never be really known.  Thus she is torn: she wants to help these children, but how?  She can only comfort them and try to imbue in them more down-to-earth truths, such as that they should support each other and not tease anyone among them who is afraid.
                               
There are some other rather oblique socio-cultural references in the film that were not entirely clear to me, but that may suggest social commentary:

• The appearance of the deer in the desert road was a highly unlikely and somewhat miraculous event for that region of Iran.  The matter-of-fact Feizollah seemed to have thought that such an appearance must have been illusion.  Did this have symbolic connotations?   
• While on their motorcycle ride, Feizollah discusses his unsuccessful attempt to be elected to the Iranian parliament.  There may be some social commentary about the Iranian political process embedded in their remarks.
• Also during their motorcycle trip, Mahmood remarks that on several occasions that day he has seen women being carted away on trucks by soldiers.  Feizollah seems oblivious to these sightings.  I am not sure what this discussion might mean other than to remind us that women in the Iranian countryside live very circumscribed lives.

Rather than resolve these issues at the end, The Deserted Station concludes by metaphorically presenting this state of hesitation and doubt. This ending seems quite artificial, but it is smoothed over by the sensitive dramatic portrayal on the part of Leila Hatami (Leila, 1996; Low Heights, 2002; A Separation”, 2011) as Mahmood’s wife, who generally sustains an appropriate contemplative mood throughout the film. In addition the music by Peyman Yazdian (The Wind Will Carry Us, 1999; The Wind Carpet, 2003; Crimson Gold, 2003; Friday's Soldiers, 2003; Fireworks Wednesday, 2006) is, as usual, effective in support of the film's reflective atmosphere.
★★★

"A Separation" - Asghar Farhadi (2011)

A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin, 2011) is an intense Iranian domestic drama by writer-director Asghar Farhadi (About Elly, 2009) that has drawn immense critical favor and won multiple awards.  The film opens with a married couple facing directly into the camera and giving testimony concerning their application for a divorce.  At first site, this looks very much like another version of Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday (Chaharshanbe Suri, 2006), which told a searing story of a bickering married couple and their inability to fashion a stable marriage relationship.  But A Separation proves to be quite different.  While both halves of the married couple in Fireworks Wednesday were unforgiving and unsympathetic characters, the married couple in A Separation, Nader and Simin, are reasonable and understandable.  We can empathize with each of them and understand why they act as they do.  What distinguishes them from each other, as the ensuing events will demonstrate, is that Nader is the principled idealist, while Simin is the pragmatist. Popular cultural expectations about gender roles often lead us to expect the man to be the pragmatist and the woman to be the principled idealist, but it is just the opposite in this case.

There is another significant aspect of A Separation that distinguishes it from many Iranian films, indeed from most films across the international spectrum, concerning the focus of the domestic interaction.  In many Iranian films, the focus is on the difficulties that women face in a conflicted and changing society that has traditionally placed severe restrictions on them.  In this film, however, the primary focalization and the underlying themes that drive the narrative are centered around the husband, Nader.  

The opening scene quickly and clearly reveals the main aspects of Nader and Simin’s situation. Simin has been working diligently for a year-and-a-half to acquire a visa to some overseas country, where she expects that they can have a better life for themselves and their eleven-year-old daughter, Termeh.  And now, finally, they have been granted the visa and have been given forty days in which to respond, that is, emigrate to their long-sought country abroad.  But Nader, who had originally cooperated with Simin’s efforts to emigrate, now refuses to go – he says he cannot abandon his father, whose Alzheimer’s condition requires round-the-clock care.  Nader is quite willing to allow his wife to leave, but he doesn’t want to hand over custody of Termeh to Simin, and the Islamic law of Iran evidently gives the husband  the authority in this situation.  So Simin and Nader have agreed to go through uncontested divorce proceedings in preparation for a further decision in connection with who will wind up with Termeh.  The magistrate listening to their divorce deposition, however, refuses to grant them a divorce, even though both Simin and Nader are in agreement about that issue.  He says their reasons for seeking a divorce are insufficient for dissolving their marriage.

The viewer can understand and even sympathize with the positions of both Simin and Nader.  Both of them are reasonable and civilized, but they have different outlooks.  Simin is practical and judges the good action by the likely beneficial consequences to come from it.  For Nader, his good actions are determined by his own inner moral compass, which is not governed by externally defined rules or outcomes.  This is exemplified by an exchange between Simin and Nader, when she points out to her husband that his dementia-stricken father at this point doesn’t even know that Nader is his own son.  “But I know him,” Nader responds.

Nader even decides to let Termeh go abroad with Simin if she chooses, but the girl decides to stick by her father at home. Simin moves out of the house, in preparation for her move abroad, and from here on, we follow what goes on at home with Nader and his daughter and father. It’s evident that Nader is a caring and thoughtful man and father, but he is clearly under stress.  He has a full-time job to attend to, his wife has just left him, he has to look after his terminally ailing father, and he must look after Termeh and help her with her schoolwork.  This stress and pressure on Nader will only intensify as the narrative progresses.

Nader proceeds to hire a caretaker woman, Razieh, to look after his father while he is away at work during the day.  Razieh comes from a conservative, lower-class background and is hesitant about the moral implications of being alone at home with another man, even if that man is almost insensate with dementia.  But with her husband unable to find work, she desperately needs the money and goes ahead with the job.

Not long after Razieh starts work, Nader comes home early one day and finds Razieh away from the house and his father half-dead on the floor of his bedroom, with his hands tied to the bedposts.  Razieh had tied the old man up to the bed and had gone out to attend to some other chores. In her absence, the father had fallen out of bed, leaving him in a precarious, immobile position on the floor. Nader manages to revive his father, but he is still very disturbed about Razieh’s neglect. He retains his composure, but his stress level has increased markedly. When Razieh returns to the apartment shortly thereafter, Nader confronts her with what has happened to his father and the fact that some money has been taken from his bureau.  He dismisses Razieh on the spot and orders her out of the house.  Razieh protests her innocence about the missing money and refuses to leave the apartment, so Nader pushes her out the door and locks it.  

The seemingly minor act of pushing Razieh out the door turns out to be a major event and brings woe to everyone.  Nader soon learns that Razieh was pregnant and had a miscarriage.  She charges Nader with assault, because she says she fell down the stairway leading up to his apartment when she was pushed out the door.  Nader expresses his sorrow and sympathy for what happened, but asserts that he is innocent of the assault charge.  Because Razieh was 19-weeks pregnant, Nader learns that he can be charged with murder and be sentenced to prison for up to three years.  A key issue is whether Nader knew that Razieh was pregnant when he pushed her out the door.  If he did, then the law says he is culpable for a murder.  

The rest of the film revolves around unraveling what happened when Nader nudged Razieh out the door.  Did she really fall down the stairs (the viewer doesn’t see it)?  Did the alleged fall cause the miscarriage, or was there some other incident at that time?  Did Nader really know about Razieh’s pregnancy?  We viewers knew, but Nader swears he did not, and we are moved to take Nader at his word.  Little scraps of evidence come out here and there.  All the way along, we are looking to see if Nader will be found guilty of the charge.  We are also judging Nader, ourselves, along with Termeh, according to our own moral compasses.  

A key moment in the story occurs when Termeh confronts Nader with her doubts about whether he knew about Razieh’s pregnancy before the shoving – there are inconsistencies in what Nader testified to the authorities.  With his integrity as a parent on the line, Nader confesses to Termeh that he did know about Razieh’s pregnancy before the act. But he denied knowing to the authorities, because the rigidity of the law doesn’t take into account the fact that at the moment of his nudging her out the door, he was not mindful of her condition. He knew, and yet he didn’t know, he tells Termeh.  According to the letter of the law and according to the strict, conservative moral code followed by Razieh and her husband Hodjiat, Nader is a liar and guilty of a crime.  But Nader tells Termeh that he still believes he is innocent of the crime of murder, but the rigidity of the law compelled him to cover up his foreknowledge of Razieh’s pregnancy.  Termeh is anguished to hear this, but stands loyally behind her father’s testimony when she is interrogated by the authorities.

The pragmatic Simin reenters the situation and tries to come up with a practical solution.  If they are willing to pay a diyya (“blood money”) of 40 million tomans (about US$ 40,000) to Razieh and Hodjiat, Nader can avoid going to jail.  Simin approaches Razieh and Hodjiat and gets them to agree to a payment of 15 million tomans.  If Nader confesses to the crime and pays the blood money, he can avoid going to jail.  But Nader doesn’t go along with this arrangement, because it would entail his admission that he committed murder.  He believes in his own innocence.

The acting in A Separation is very good, particularly that of Peyman Maadi in the role of Nader. Indeed all of the performers, including Leila Hatami (Leila, 1998; Low Heights, 2002), give convincing and subtle performances [1]. On the other hand, the shaky hand-held cinematography in the film is a distraction and an irritation.  Farhadi has chosen to track his players in closeup and medium closeup as they move around the setting.  Such close-in filming requires an extremely steady camera, particularly when the character movement stops and slight movements of what are supposed to be static images are more noticeable.  Unfortunately this kind  of steady image control is not what we get in A Separation. 

As I mentioned above, there are two judgement examinations of Nader’s behaviour going on in parallel in the film: the official legal case conducted by the civil authorities, and our own private assessment. The ingenue Termeh acts as something of a surrogate for our own assessment of Nader: she knows as much as the viewer and also sympathizes with both parents. At the end of the film, the official examination by the civil authorities is resolved, but Farhadi chooses to leave Termeh’s own, personal assessment open.  Termeh is asked at the end of the film to choose between two different ways of looking at the world: that of Simin or that of Nader.  Both of them are more flexible and complex than the strict moral bookkeeping characteristic of conservative societies,  but they have differing outlooks.  I believe I know which one Termeh chooses, do you?
★★★½ 

Notes:

1. An earlier version of this review contained an erroneous mention here of Niki Karimi.

"Low Heights" - Ebrahim Hatamikia (2002)

Low Heights (Ertefae Past, alternate English title: Low Altitude, 2002), is an Iranian film directed by Ebrahim Hatamikia that takes on the daunting task of combining bald humor with the terror-filled anxiety of an airplane hijacking.  Released shortly after the 911 terrorist hijacking in the US, the film recounts the story of an Iranian domestic flight from Abadan to Bandar-Abbas that is hijacked by one of the passengers, and most of the film takes place inside the cramped quarters of the plane in flight.

The script by Hatamikia and Asghar Farhadi has some unusual aspects, even for the wide scope of the action-adventure genre.  First of all, the focalization is not from the perspective of an innocent passenger caught up in unexpected circumstances, but from the point of view of the hijackers, Ghasem and Narges, played by Hamid Farokhnezhad, who would later star in Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday (2006), and Leila Hatami (Leila, 1996).  Second, domestic and social issues are a significant subtheme of the story. In fact the determination of some people to get out of Iran was a theme continued in Farhadi’s later, A Separation (2011). 

The movie begins in the Abadan airport, where Narges is anxiously awaiting her husband, who is late for the scheduled takeoff.  At first her anxiety appears to be due to her attempts to conceal her pregnant condition – evidently pregnant women are not allowed to fly.  But after Ghasem arrives, it ultimately becomes clear that he intends to hijack the plane to a foreign destination (Iranians ordinarily need to get exit permission to leave the country, and apparently Ghasem cannot obtain this).  In order to carry out this scheme, Ghasem had sold all his possessions and bought airplane tickets for his entire extended family, promising them all jobs that he had secured for them at the Total petroleum company in Bandar-Abas.  Ghasem’s plan was to populate the plane, a two-engine propeller aircraft that can hold maybe fifty, with people from his own extended family, who would then be expected to support him in the event of chaos on the plane, even though they are not in on his plot. 

Of course, nothing can be expected to go according to plan, especially in a caper film.  Leila is afraid of the violence and hides the gun to be smuggled onto the plane from Ghasem, thereby foiling his plan at the outset.  But Ghasem goes ahead anyway and violently jumps the onboard security officer, brutally beating him half to death and stealing his gun.  The passengers are terrified by the vicious assault and watch in horror as Ghasem tells them, at gunpoint, that he is hijacking the plane to Dubai.  Hoping to quell their resistance, Ghasem explains to them that his plan is to escape from Iran to a better life in a country free from drug-addiction, dusty poverty, and corruption, and he says anyone else can join him.  Ghasem was only trying  to calm them down, and even he is shocked to learn that most of the passengers almost immediately appear ready to sign on with him and be partners to the caper.  This is perhaps a biting social comment about despair in Iran, perhaps especially relating to the Abadan area, which suffered so much devastation during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.  A further revelation of the passengers' eagerness to get away from the oppressive conditions in their home country is demonstrated when one female passenger removes her head covering in preparation for her new life abroad.  Ghasem admonishes her and tells her to remember that she is, after all, a Muslim and must continue to behave like one.  But it turns out that the woman’s supposedly bared head was actually covered by a blonde wig – this is presumably a further sardonic gesture by the filmmakers to steer their way around, and ultimately comment on, the restrictive gender-based censorship in Iranian films and society as a whole.

Of course, most of the passengers in the plane are from Ghasem’s and Narges’s extended family.  In fact many of the able-bodied male passengers, who might be presumed to be capable of taking some action, are brothers of Narges.  But these brothers all appear to be somewhat dimwitted buffoons, whose clownish presence goes well beyond mere comic relief.  This is the major problem with the film, and they turn the film into something of a farce.

As I said, nothing is expected to proceed simply in a story like this.  There are violent shifts in dominance, as Ghasem loses control to the beaten-up security guard, who immediately orders the pilots to leave Dubai, where they are about to land, and head back to Bandar-Abas.  A rather mysterious and opportunistic passenger, Ali-Reza, asserts himself and is at various times an accomplice of both Ghasem and the security guard.  Then Narges, customarily nonviolent but loyal to her husband,  grabs a gun and engages in a shootout to reassert control of the plane for Ghasem.  From this account you won’t be surprised to learn that much of the story seems unrealistic.  The motivations of the characters are lacking.  The back-and-forth swings of control are outlandish.  In such circumstance it’s not even unexpected when Narges’s pregnancy comes strikingly back to the viewer’s attention later on.  As a result, the film careens back and forth between gut-wrenching terror and the absurd antics of the nitwit family members onboard.  It would have been more effective either to make the entire film an action-packed thriller or to make it a ridiculous joke, but the hybrid structure shown in Low Heights is a mid-level compromise that doesn’t work.

Perhaps most detrimentally, though, the passengers appear to be far too relaxed and jocular for such an anxiety-filled situation.  In fact many of the acting performances are downright farcical and over-the-top.  Even Leila Hatami, an accomplished film actress, seems much too calm for these circumstances, with only a slightly worried expression to furrow her brow when things get out of control.  Only Hamid Farokhnezhad (Ghasem) and Gohar Kheirandish (Ghasem’s stepmother) give convincing performances to keep things going.

The cinematography in Low Heights, however, is quite good.  Veteran director Hatamikia manages to maintain a dynamic visual continuity and flow within the confined space the aircraft interior.  He also employs a creative solution to the problem of realistically depicting violent action scenes by showing distorted, slow-motion images of visual fragments – effectively evoking the kinds of images that one retains in one’s memory after a personally violent experience.  This corresponds to my own recollections of violence – they play out in slow motion in my mind, with twisted, exaggerated images of particular moments extending over the mental landscape.

The enigmatic ending of Low Heights shows the passengers with a perhaps absurd sense of hope, although their various dreams and assessments of their circumstances are all a jumble.   But even with that vaguely hopeful closing, combined with the other comic moments in the film, the viewer is hardly likely to come out of this viewing experience with anything other than disappointment and a sense of despair.
★½

"Leila" - Dariush Mehrjui (1998)

Dariush Mehrjui, one of the great Iranian filmmakers, was among the first to draw international attention to Iranian cinema with his groundbreaking Gaav (1969). Leila (1998), perhaps his finest work, tells the story of the tensions that are brought to bear on a young newly married woman who discovers that she is infertile. This may not sound like a subject with universal dramatic appeal, but in fact the film is an extremely well-crafted exploration of the human psyche that goes beyond those particular circumstances.

In all of Mehrjui’s films there is a subtle tension between the outlook of the individual and the cultural norms of society – a tension which goes beyond the simple black-and-white dichotomy of a heroic individual struggling against selfish and materialistic social forces. Mehrjui’s skill in exploring the nuances of these tensions is what makes him a leading exponent of Existentialism in Film, and certainly Leila stands as one of his best. Note that for various social and psychological reasons that I won’t delve into here, the Existentialist film protagonist is usually a man (a notable exceptions is Antonioni's Red Desert), but in Leila it’s the feminine perspective that takes centre stage, with the script based on a story by a woman, Mahnaz Ansarian.

The entire story of Leila is depicted from her individual perspective, and it is presented as a subjective recollection of past events. There are no scenes from any objective narrator’s point of view. In the beginning of the film, Leila recounts her upper-class family's gathering involving the preparation of a shol-e-zard (a form of Persian pudding) in connection with a Shi’ite Moslem religious day commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. This five-minute opening scene can serve as a reminder to Westerners that the extended family is a dominant factor in all Iranian social life. It is at this feast that Leila captures a distant glimpse of a young man, Reza, that her brother has brought to the gathering. In voice-over Leila then quickly reveals she and Reza were married two months later – a jump in the narration that gives one the feeling of just how abrupt and business-like their courtship must have been. But in a series of brief scenes that follow, we soon see that this particular match was a stunning success – they are blissfully happy with each other and share a vital and caring relationship. It is also clear early on that both Leila and Reza are highly educated and live in a modern big-city milieu furnished with the latest electronic technology. They represent modern Iran.

But not long later, the central problem of the film is presented. For many Iranian marriages, it is expected that the wife will very soon become pregnant after the honeymoon. This doesn’t happen for Leila and Reza, and after visiting some medical clinics, they learn that Leila is infertile. Knowing how important it is in Iranian society for the wife to be a mother to the husband’s children, the self-effacing Leila humbly offers Reza the chance of divorcing her so that he can find someone to bear his children. Reza, a modern, educated Iranian, scoffs at such an idea, and tells Leila that he married her for herself, not for baby-making. They then set about exploring various medical options that might lead to successful childbirth. When those options are exhausted, they then consider adopting an orphan; but nothing works out. Throughout this period, Reza and Leila are seen as a loving couple, but from Leila’s voice-over narrative one can feel the increasing pressure that is being placed on her. The problem is her problem, and the entire extended family on Reza’s side wants to know every detail of their clinical and orphanage visits. This absence of privacy is typical in Iranian families and is part of the life there: everyone knows all your personal details.

At another outdoor family gathering, Reza’s mother takes Leila aside and tells her that she must consent to Reza’s having a second wife (permissible in Iran) in order to produce a male heir. The mother has four children, but only one son, Reza, and she feels that it is mandatory that Reza produce a son in order to continue the line. Although some reviewers have seen Reza’s mother as an evil witch, she is not presented in an unrealistic manner. True, she is insistent and conniving, but in a society where women have no overt power, one needs to learn other kinds of behaviour in order to get one’s way. Her weapon, which is sometimes all that an aging parent has left, is guilt, and she alternately scolds and wheedles Leila not to be selfish and to allow her husband, whom Leila claims to love, to gain what she claims he really wants: fatherhood of a son.

Later, Leila tells Reza about what his mother has said and wonders whether maybe she is right. But, again, Reza dismisses such an idea as ridiculous. He is a modern, educated man who loves his wife, and he will not have anything to do with backward polygamous practices. Nevertheless, Leila, who strives to be a good, loving Moslem, is affected by her mother-in-law's insistence and guiltily wonders if she, herself, is a selfish woman. She tells Reza that she will not stand in the way if he want to have a second wife.

As the story progresses, Leila’s mother-in-law continues to push her case, almost like Iago whispering into Othello’s ear, and tells her that Reza really does long for a son, but is afraid of offending Leila. Reza, for his part, insists that his mother is crazy and that he has defiantly rejected her proposals. But since we are only seeing the world through Leila’s eyes, we never see him stand up to his mother, Leila is only told about such things second-hand. But Reza’s mother is also telling Leila, second-hand, that Reza really does desperately want a son and wishes Leila would consent to his having a second wife. Whom is Leila to believe? She wants to believe Reza, but the increasing doubts about her self-worth and her desire to follow the path of righteousness pushes her in the mother-in-law’s direction.

Eventually the guilt-ridden Leila is convinced by her mother-in-law that if she really does love her husband, then she must insist that he go ahead and attend interviews with candidate second wives his mother has found for him. Of course, she is horrified by the thought of a second wife coming into her household, but she sees the entire process as something of a test of their love. She belives that she should make everything possible for Reza so that he can follow the path of his true happiness. If they are truly in love and they are willing to give up all for love, then everything should come out all right. This is the crux of the struggle in the film. Both Leila and Reza are striving to come to terms with both modern Western liberal thinking and traditional Iranian cultural practice that are frequently in conflict. When in doubt, Leila falls back on the conviction that she loves her husband, totally, and that she should be absolutely unselfish. As more and more pressure is placed on her, she is many times seen praying to God and asking for forgiveness. Reza, too, tries to accommodate the people around him in order to avoid stirring up trouble. In fact, this is what many modern people have to do in traditional societies -- after all, they cannot transform an entire society over night, can they? And, anyway, these moderns still usually have a strong feeling for the positive values that are part of their traditional culture. They do not want to reject their traditional culture entirely, but instead are looking for some sort of middle way.

So Reza, trying to follow the path of least resistance, agrees to see the candidate women, but he also tries to incorporate Leila into the process. He states that he will only marry a second woman if Leila approves the choice. Again the pressure is placed back on Leila, and it’s beginning to take its toll. Reza wants Leila to accompany him to the fiancé interview rendezvous, but Leila has to be dropped off nearby and must endure a humiliating and stressful wait while the interviews takes place without her. By now Leila’s only means of support come from her inner conviction that the must act selflessly and align herself with the will of God. Even when Reza’s sisters rally to her support and tell her to put an end to this second-wife operation, it is too late, and Leila is already too far down the track of her own obsession with selflessness. The sister-in-laws' supporting arguments are only directed towards Leila's selfish interests, and, anyway, Leila has become increasingly alienated from the idea of salvaging her diminished position in the family.

Finally, a suitable bride is found, and Leila cannot find it in her heart to disapprove. On the wedding night, Leila realises that she must sleep in the spare bedroom, and she finally breaks down and flees to her parents’ home. The next day Reza comes to Leila’s parental home and begs her to return. He informs them all that he was so distressed by her anguish that “he couldn’t do anything” that night (a fairly bold statement to appear in an Iranian film). He insists that he only took the second wife because that was what he thought Leila wanted: she had pushed him into it. But Leila is unmovable; the loving relationship they had is now gone forever.

In the final scenes, Leila recounts how Reza soon had a child, a daughter, by the second wife, but since there was no love in that relationship, Reza granted that women a divorce. At the end, he comes with his little two-year-old daughter to another family shol-e-zard feast for the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, hoping to somehow get Leila to come back to him. But for Leila, whose feeling for Reza is now mostly pity, their relationship is dead.

There are three themes that can be discerned in Leila, but most critics have only focussed on the first one. The other two themes, however, are what give the film its potency and artistic expression:

1. The first theme is the issue of the role of women in Iranian society. Women have no rights and are browbeaten over the course of their upbringing to see themselves as servants to their husbands. To a Western observer, the entire story seems outrageous. How could Reza consent to a second wife, if he claims to be a modern? Indeed, most Iranians also see the plot as bordering on the absurd. In fact, many Iranians reject the story as being so outlandish that they cannot engage with it. But I think this theme is merely a metaphor for the other two themes below.
2. The second theme is more general and concerns the difficulty that young people inevitably have (and this can apply anywhere) accommodating to the demands of society. In this sense, we can compare Leila to Elia Kazan’s Splendour in the Grass (1961), in which two young teenage lovers are almost driven mad by the conflicting pressures they feel in their Midwestern US society. In Leila, both Reza and Leila are trying to walk a tightrope that will enable them to have their own personal, romantic relationship and still live within the demanding and pervasive social context of Iranian society.
3. But it’s the third theme that I find most interesting and what ultimately makes the film profound: the theme of self-destructiveness, here on Leila’s part. Iranians have a word in Farsi, “ghahr”, which is difficult to translate precisely but refers to the tendency of psychological withdrawal from an associate who has committed some offense. Rather than becoming hostile when one is offended, the Iranian who is “ghahr” with someone withdraws from any further interaction. This withdrawal is not just the external manifestation of silence; it is an inner psychological withdrawal from the person who has offended – one shuts the door. People from all cultures have this tendency, but Iranians have developed and refined this kind of response more than others. In a sense, one might say that being ghahr may have some useful qualities, because it eliminates the chance of further abrasive interactions: fistfights are less likely to break out. But being ghahr is an act, not only of destroying a relationship with someone, but also of self-destruction. We withdraw to a privileged inner sanctum and are no longer able to engage in an unguarded, loving relationship with the other. In this film, we watch Leila’s relentless withdrawal, despite her sincere efforts to act in a loving way. This is the great tragedy.

Donato Totaro has remarked on the scenes in both Leila and Josef von Sternberg’s Morocco, in which the principal characters ripped off pearl necklaces that had been given to them. In both cases the rejection of these attractive ornaments signify a breaking away from roles that have been set out for them in order to pursue the lonely path of self-realisation. However, their two paths are not the same. In Morroco, Amy Jolly recklessly abandons everything else for true love. Leila, on the other hand, has abandoned even that.

A story like this cannot be told effectively without considerable artistic investment. The acting in the film is superb throughout. In particular, the luminous Leila Hatami, daughter of well-known Iranian film director, Ali Hatami, gives an outstanding performance in the title role. A hauntingly beautiful woman, she conveys vulnerability, tenderness, and emerging anxiety through the subtlest facial expressions. More generally, the fact that all the characters are realistically presented is what keeps this film, whose plot always teeters on the edge of unbelievability, absorbing all the way.

Because this story is entirely Leila’a narrative account, there are camera effects used to portray the psychological stress she is under. For example there are a great many close-up shots of Leila occupied with ordinary household activities. These include handling traditional artifacts, such as samovars, as well as more modern devices, such as cordless phones. These all give a focus and tempo for the world of practical activities in which she lives. Telephones are a metaphor for the relentless intrusive acts of her mother-in-law, who is constantly calling and demanding an update concerning the couple’s private life. Mehrjui frequently has red-tinted shots and fade-outs to red, instead of black, to convey the emotional distress (more effectively used here than in Sara, Mehrjui's 1992 film that is worth comparing to Leila). To present some of the most intrusive and jarring statements from her family members, as well as some of Leila’s own telling reflections, Merhjui breaks the “fourth wall” and has people speaking directly to the camera. This serves to remind us that what we are seeing is not documentary reality, but Leila’s heartbreaking story.
★★★½