Josef von Sternberg

Films: The Salvation Hunters (1925), The Exquisite Sinner (1925), A Woman of the Sea (1926), Underworld (1927), The Last Command (1928), The Dragnet (1928), The Docks of New York (1928), The Case of Lena Smith (1929), Thunderbolt (1929), The Blue Angel (1930), Morocco (1930), Dishonored (1931), An American Tragedy (1931), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934), The Devil is a Woman (1935), Crime and Punishment (1935), The King Steps Out (1936), Sergeant Madden (1939), The Shanghai Gesture (1941), Macao (1952), Anatahan (1954), Jet Pilot (1957).

The greatest American director, Josef von Sternberg, was born in Austria in 1894 and finally moved permanently to the US at the age of 17, where he immediately began to work in the film industry as a technician. But despite a lifetime devoted to film, the period of his greatest productivity only spanned a period of a little more than a decade: The Shanghai Gesture (1941) was the last work stamped with his signature virtues. Moreover, because he launched Marlene Dietrich’s film career and made seven movies with her, his career is frequently dismissed as only an instrument to her stardom. Nevertheless he should be recognized as the great Romantic Expressionist of American cinema and an influential precursor to the film noir period that flourished in the 1940s and 50s.

By the use of carefully composed and sculpted imagery, von Sternberg always maintained an externalised mood of fatality and romantic longings. Most of von Sternberg's films were recorded on black-and-white nitrate-based stock, which had a higher resolution and much greater f-stop range (approximately 8 camera f-stops) than the acetate-based color film (4-5 f-stops) that began to come into usage later, in the 1940s. Using the nitrate stock of his period, von Sternberg was able to achieve an exquisitely crafted imagery of chiaroscuro that evoked a dominating mood to the scene. (The full range and beautify of this chiaroscuro is lost on most modern prints of his films.) Perhaps his closest modern equivalent is Wong Kar Wai, who has managed to achieve similar effects with different cinematographic techniques. Both, however, manage to capture the eternally elusive and fascinating nature of the women who occupy our dreams.

There has always been an opposition between Expressionism in Film and what we might call “Realism in Film”. For the latter, cinema is used to depict “objective” reality that is independent of any subjective view. As such, it was seen as a mechanism to reveal the real, objective, everyday lives of people, particularly common people. One could say that the growing preference for “realism” in the 1930s was influenced by the impressive achievements of science and technology, along with attendant socio-political philosophies, such as scientific Marxism, which promised to raise the standards of society by scientific means. There was also a growing facility in narrative manipulation by means of editing and montage, which was advanced and promoted theoretically by progressive Russian filmmakers of the period. Increasingly, films had flashbacks, dream sequences, and complex parallel actions, which could accelerate the pace of action. Von Sternberg’s films, however, never explored this narrative territory. The plots of his films were usually not very complicated, and they took their time to reach their conclusion. For this reason, his films began to decline in popularity towards the end of the 1930s. Perhaps for similar reasons, Won Kar Wai’s films have never been box-office smashes, despite the passion of his devotees.

What von Sternberg’s (and also Wong Kar Wai’s) films have is the power to present the world, not as seen by the mechanical camera, but as experienced by the perceptive mind – the mind that is preoccupied with love, passion, and honour. This kind of film has its own claim to “realism” that can perhaps be more authentic than our lowest-common-denominator representation of the world of “facts”. This is the existential realism that one finds in the works of Dostoyevsky, and so von Sternberg was perhaps the ideal director to portray Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.

Andrew Sarris has commented astutely on the career of von Sternberg:

In a sense, Sternberg entered the cinema through the camera rather than the cutting room, and thus became a lyricist of light and shadow rather than a master of montage. The control he achieved over his studio surrounding encouraged him to concentrate on the spatial integrity of his images rather than on their metaphorical juxtaposition. Sternberg’s cinema, for better or worse, represents a distinctively Germanic camera movement – from Murnau and Lang – in contrast to Eisenstein’s fashionably Marxist montage.

. . . Everyday life, as such, seldom appears in Sternberg’s cinema. His characters generally make their entrance at a moment in their lives when there is no tomorrow. Knowingly or unknowingly, they have reached the end or the bottom, but they will struggle a short time longer, about ninety minutes of screen time, to discover the truth about themselves and those they love. Although there is much violence and death in Sternberg’s world, there is relatively little action. The various murders, duels, executions, suicides, and assaults serve merely as poetic punctuation for lives drifting to their destination in reflective repose. Death in this context is less a conclusion than a termination. The paradox of violence without action is supplemented by the paradox of virtue without morality.

. . .Sternberg’s films are poetic without being symbolic. We need not search for slumbering allegories of Man and God and Life, but rather for a continuous stream of emotional autobiography.

(from The American Cinema: Directors And Directions 1929-1968, by Andrew Sarris)

Many of von Sternberg’s films are lost or are currently unavailable for viewing. Those that are left are mostly beautiful, poetic and haunting. They achieve this grandeur, because they strike a chord and call on our deepest sense of wonder about life and love.

(See also "Josef von Sternberg", by Tag Gallagher.)

"Fata Morgana" - Werner Herzog (1971)

Fata Morgana, one of German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s earliest films, was shot in 1968-69, shortly after the release of his first feature, Signs of Life (1968). The film wasn’t released until 1971, apparently because Herzog was struggling to edit the footage while working on what would prove to be his breakthrough film, Even Dwarfs Started Small, which was released in 1970. Although Fata Morgana still has its devoted followers, it’s primarily of interest today for the light it throws on some of Herzog’s recurrent themes that appear in his later films.

Certainly Herzog is one of the great representatives of Expressionism in Film and a person whose highly original cinematic vision has encompassed both fictional and documentary filmmaking. His go-it-alone originality, however, has consequences: he sometimes seems to push his vision at the expense of cinematic craftsmanship. For example, he boasted that he shot and edited Woyzeck (1979) in 22 days, and it shows. You are best advised to avoid seeing Woyzeck if you want to retain an unblemished image of Herzog’s filmography. Fata Morgana is another example of a project that needed more care and forethought. It’s still somewhat interesting, though, if only because it is an example of a rarity: an Expressionist documentary film.

Fata Morgana was mostly shot in the southern Sahara region of Africa, where Herzog had to suffer through some extreme experiences that included severe illness and some jail time in Cameroon. When he returned to Germany with his camera footage, he then had to decide what kind of film he would make out of it. Apparently his initial idea was to take all the footage showing the desolate Saharan landscape and fashion a science fiction film about a dying planet, called “Uxmal”. Whatever initial notions that he may have had, though, nothing remains of science fiction in the finished product of Fata Morgana, as far as I can see. Nevertheless, Herzog has still claimed that Fata Morgana is a sci-fi film.

What he did come up with was a lurid portrayal of dystopia in the desert. As such, it reflects Herzog’s pessimistic view of man’s place in the universe and how far short this is from whatever romantic dreams that we may have. To me, Herzog is a frustrated romantic: he doesn’t want the world to be this miserable, but that’s the way it is, and we have to face it. Our hopes and visions concerning humanity, virtue, and the good life are merely illusions, “fata morgana”, if you will. There are other Herzogian elements here, too: obsessive men living at the remote extremes from normal existence, the alienation from nature, the fascination with the grotesque, etc.

Fata Morgana comprises three sections: "Creation", "Paradise", and "The Golden Age". Creation, the longest section at about 39 minutes, consists primarily of panning and tracking shots of desolate desert landscapes, mostly devoid of life. There is no live-action speaking in this section, only the voice-over narration from Lotte Eisner, who reads from the Popol Vuh, the classic creation text of the Quiche Indians of Guatemala. The Popol Vuh is an important work from the 16th century that is thought to reflect the stories of the Pre-Classic Mayan people. Lotte Eisner was a noted film historian who worked at the Cinematheque Francaise for thirty years and authored the classic text on German Expressionist film, The Haunted Screen. She seems to have been a significant Expressionistic influence on Herzog, and in fact a few years later in 1974, Herzog made a celebrated journey on foot from Munich to Paris to visit the 78-year-old Eisner at her sickbed (this may have helped – she lived another nine years). Eisner’s voice is only heard in this section of the film.

The narration of Creation relates how the great gods, the Mighty and Cucumatz, created first the world, then the animals, and then man. Their first attempts to create man were not very successful, since the created beings did not speak properly, so the gods destroyed them and tried again. The second time, they created man out of wood, but again these people didn’t speak properly, and so the gods destroyed them, too, this time by drowning them. It was only their third attempt that was successful. One wonders here if Herzog may think that the gods of today will consider our own existence on the planet to have been a failed experiment that should also be terminated. The images shown on the screen in this first part loosely reflect the narration, since there are no signs of life for the first twenty minutes or so, and no humans are seen until 25 minutes into the film. When we do start seeing people and their surroundings, it is mostly shots of ramshackle hutments in generally squalid conditions.

The second section of the film, “Paradise”, lasts about 26 minutes and now has a male voice-over narration. During this section a music track of Leonard Cohen’s ballads (such as “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Good-bye” and "Suzanne") is interlaced with some absurd, sarcastic poetry about Paradise (e.g. “In Paradise sometimes roasted pigeons fly directly into your mouth”). Most of the visual footage in this section is simply long shots taken from a moving vehicle of the desolate villages of the Sahel, including various shots of wrecked vehicles abandoned in the desert and shots of decaying animal carcasses. An exception is a sequence of a German naturalist who describes his intense determination to study how the monitor lizard, or in fact any animal, can survive in such a hostile climate.

The third section, “The Golden Age”, is a further plunge into even more bizarre, dystopic images that must have struck Herzog's fancy. There is a garish piano and drum duet performed on a stage in an apparently empty music hall; further absurd, voice-over poetry about some golden age; a scene of three giggling Germans reciting more nonsensical verse; and a man in a diving outfit lecturing about the attributes of a big turtle. The only common element to these scenes is their portrayal of the uselessness and triviality of man’s knowledge and accomplishments compared to the vastness of nature.

For me, none of this works (and remember I’m a fan of Herzog), so be warned. Although the travelogue-like images of the African villages are mildly interesting and the narration from Lotte Eisner is intriqueingly eerie, the film winds down at the end with more of a whimper than a bang. All you are left with is Herzog’s view of an ugly world that couldn’t possibly have been created by a loving God. It’s a world of squalor, misery, and death. Man’s attempts to survive in this hostile environment are inconsequential, pathetic and doomed. But despite some visceral imagery from remote locations, the presentation of this gloomy assessment is only schematic. The fundamental problem with Fata Morgana is that the narrative, such as it is, doesn't move much. There would be much better Herzog movies to come later.
★½

"Isle of the Dead" - Val Lewton (directed by Mark Robson, 1945)

Isle of the Dead was one of the last of Val Lewton’s films that were produced during the war period, which included The Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, and The Seventh Victim. The basic image of Isle of the Dead is inspired by the famous evocative painting by Arnold Böcklin. The story of this film has some philosophical affinities with I Walked With a Zombie, so it’s interesting to examine why it doesn’t quite measure up to the greatness of that previous film.

The story (a good review of which can be found here) is set during the 1913 Balkan war between Greece and Turkey, and it opens with a scene depicting the kill-or-be-killed brutality of war. Greek general Pherides (played by Boris Karloff, in one his finest performances) condemns to death an officer colleague who underperformed in a recent battle. An American war correspondent, Oliver Davis, who witnesses that scene begins a discussion with General Pherides that results in their joint intention to visit the grave of Pherides's wife on a nearby coastal island. During this sequence, we learn that the army is not only threatened by the enemy but also by the appearance of septicemic plague, which could cause massive casualties. Anyone who dies must be buried immediately in order to curtail the spread of the disease.

When they arrive on the isle, they meet a retired archeology professor, Albrecht, who is living in a house owned by a Greek woman, Madame Kyra, and served by a maid, Thea. Albrecht has offered shelter to three English foreigners seeking to escape the ravages of the war. Very soon one of these guests dies, and when General Pherides summons the military doctor, Dr. Drossos, he is informed that the guest has died from the plague. General Pherides, a man used to making tough decisions in wartime, decides to quarantine the island: in order to protect his troops on the mainland, nobody is permitted to leave the island. So the rest of the film is restricted to the fate of these seven people: General Pherides, Dr. Drossos, Oliver Davis, Madame Kyra, Thea, and the English diplomat, St. Aubyn, and his wife. Somewhat like Albert Camus’s The Plague, they all have their attitudes towards the threat of death.

Soon St Aubyn succumbs to the plague, and Madame Kyra, a woman steeped in superstitious beliefs of evil spirts, decides that Thea is possessed by the vampire-like evil demoness, Vorvolaka. General Pherides, a man guided by strict observance of the whatever laws are in force, dismisses Kyra’s old-wives tales as backward rubbish and out-of-tune with the modern world. Drossos, the doctor, has a firm belief in medical science, but knows that in the present circumstances, he is powerless. Albrecht is something of a pantheist and believes that preying to whatever god one might believe in will give some comfort. Mrs. St. Aubyn, Thea, and Davis are humanists, concerned with the welfare of the people around them and unwilling to submit to draconian schemes that are outside of their horizons.

As the plot unfolds further, we learn that Mrs. St. Aubyn suffers from a form of catalepsis that causes her to appear to be dead for perhaps as long as a day. She confesses this to Doctor Drossos, and tells him that she has always had a horrible fear of being buried alive. It comes as no surprise that Drossos soon succumbs to the plague, and when Mrs. St Aubyn later collapses, she is presumed to have died from the plague, too (but, of course, we suspect differently). So Mrs. St Aubyn is quickly entombed inside a stone casket in the ancient burial crypt.

Meanwhile Kyra has been working on General Pherides, insistently reminding him of her belief that Thea is Vorvolaka. Pherides is susceptible because of some earlier bad-feeling between himself and Thea over Thea’s dislike of his use of military force to solve all problems.

Although a warm sirocco now coming to the island means that it will kill off the plague-bearing fleas and put an end to the quarantine, Pherides cannot rejoice, because he feels the early plague symptoms and knows that his death is near. At the same time, we hear Mrs. St. Aubyn’s desperate screams from the crypt and know that she has awakened, but is still entombed. Meanwhile Davis, now amorously protective towards Thea, urges her to stay outside in the evening, away from Kyra’s accusations. As Thea approaches the crypt, she sees in the dark shadows Mrs. St. Aubyns, who has broken out of her casket and is now utterly mad. Mrs. St. Aubyns, in her deranged state, grabs an ancient trident relic and kills both Kyra and Pherides. She then runs away from her pursuers, towards a terrace cliff wall, where she jumps off the edge to her death.

It is interesting to compare Isle of the Dead with I Walked With a Zombie, since both films present conflicting world-views concerning life and death. Isle of the Dead, offers a clash between scientific beliefs and those of witchcraft, while I Walked With a Zombie depicts a similar clash between Western European thinking and Voodoo. In addition, both films feature brooding atmospheric and evocative black-and-white cinematography, in which characters move about in a shadow-laden interiors and exteriors. But I Walked With a Zombie is definitely superior in all respects, and here are a few areas in which Isle of the Dead is deficient:

1. Although the mise-en-scene of both films is superb, Robson’s cinematic sequencing and editing in Isle of the Dead cannot measure up to Tourneur’s work in I Walked With a Zombie. Isle of the Dead has frequent mildly jarring straight-on-axis cuts to medium shots and close-ups. There are also a number of repetitive front-facing followed by back-view shots of people walking. This is somewhat surprising, given Robson’s role as film editor in I Walked With a Zombie.
2. The plot structure in Isle of the Dead is not well motivated. Why would Mrs. Aubyn not inform others about her cataleptic tendencies after the death of Drossos, given the proclivity of people on the island to bury anyone who appears to be dead? How did she get out of that casket so quickly? Granted such an entombing experience might drive one mad, why did she suddenly become a homicidal maniac? Why does Thea wander over to the crypt when she was waiting outside the house? And the act of Mrs. Aubyn jumping off the terrace is a much too tidy way to finish off the loose ends.
3. The island black people in I Walked With a Zombie are treated with some sympathy and depth, and their world-view is given some weight that balances that of the Western European view. In Isle of the Dead, on the other hand, the superstitious beliefs in the Greek demoness Vorvolaka seem absurdly backward. This reduces the tension between the two perspectives and deflates one’s interest.
4. Despite the superb performance by Karloff, who manages to present the character of a fanatic autocrat with some degree of sympathy and believability, the performances of Jason Robards Sr. (as Albrecht) and Marc Cramer (as Oliver Davis) are completely unconvincing. Robards, who was an established stage-actor, is much too jovial and avuncular for the circumstances of this story. Cramer is so casual it's as if he has jumped into this film from another film set. It seems like everything is a joke to him.

Still, the atmospheric scenes of Thea wandering around in the darkness and getting fleeting glimpses of the mad Mrs. Aubyn in the shadows are gripping. And Boris Karloff’s intense performance alone makes the film worth seeing.
★★★

"Taxi to the Dark Side" - Alex Gibney (2007)

Taxi to the Dark Side is an Oscar-winning documentary written and directed by Alex Gibney, who in 2005 attracted considerable attention for his film, Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room. But Gibney’s Taxi is far superior to his Enron, a film that had extraordinarily revealing documentary footage but was nevertheless bogged down with a confused narrative and focus. Gibney's use of a more controlled tone works wonders in Taxi to the Dark Side, in which he lets the outrageous evidence presented speak for itself.

The overarching narrative covers the tale of a young Afghani taxi driver, Dilawar, who was imprisoned in Bagram Air Force base in 2002 and eventually tortured to death there by US military personnel. He was never charged with a crime, and the evidence seems to indicate that he was entirely innocent of any wrongdoing. There is a danger here of adopting a shrill tone of outrage over events like this. The public has already seen disturbing images from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib plastered all over the media and is likely to turn away in fatigue with the reaction, “yes, we know that some bad things have been done, but this is war.” Gibney follows a more subtle course.

Early on we see interview clips from military interrogation personnel who were at Bagram and who calmly describe the procedures that were in force there. These men appear to be reasonaly articulate and express awareness that the conditions imposed on many of the prisoners were unbearable. It is only later on, after we have gotten to know these people as basically normal human beings, that we learn that these same people have been charged with acts contributing to Dilawar’s death. The case is slowly developed that what happened to Dilawar was not the result of “a few bad apples”, but was an inevitable consequence of something far more sinister.

The “dark side” in the title is a reference to Vice President Dick Cheney’s remarks after the 9/11 terror attacks concerning what course of action must now be followed.

“We have to work the dark side, if you will. . . . We’re going to spend time in the shadows. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods available to our intelligence agencies ... It’ll be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”

The film shows how torture was introduced at Bagram and endorsed at the highest levels, before being transmitted to Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (aka GTMO), a more explicit and scientific programme was introduced to see what the US military could gain from the use of torture. Gibney covers all of this in detail, and presents a number of disturbing pictures concerning the “stressing” of prisoners that the public is unlikely to have seen. All of this is presented by Gibney in an almost infuriatingly reasonable and progressive manner. The facts and images pile up gradually, leaving us amazed at the depths to which the United States government has fallen. The damning material explicitly describing torture techniques in force at US incarceration sites is intermixed with newsreel and interview footage of Donald Rumsfeld, various military interrogators, and other military and political figures. Notable is the interview footage with John Yoo, a former assistant to the US Attorney General, who believes in and has written legal memos supporting the US President’s right to order the torture of prisoners and to violate the Third Geneva Convention (which is supposed to guarantee humane treatment of prisoners of war). Watching Yoo's staggering remarks is depressing, but the disturbing attitude they reveal and the extent to which they humiliate the US on the world stage is something that must be faced.

Gibney also has a brief but useful coverage of the bogus “ticking bomb scenario” argument that is often used to justify torture. Apparently this situation is routinely presented on Fox Television’s Emmy-award-winning serial, 24 (a show that I never watch), wherein torture is invariably found to save the day. Perhaps that show has contributed to the American public’s blithe acceptance of torture.

A few damning facts are presented without much comment. The US has imprisoned over 83,000 people since the GWOT (Global War on Terror) began, and none of them have been brought to trial. Only 7% of those imprisoned in Afghanistan and Iraq were captured by US military personnel. The remaining 93% have been captured by armed Afghani and Iraqi groups who turn their prisoners over for bounty payments from the US government, without any vetting of the “charges” or possibility of those captured to have a public hearing. More information on this subject can be found in the recent NY Times review of Jane Mayer's book, The Dark Side and the article, "Official American Sadism" (Anthony Lewis, New York Review of Books). But however much one might read about this subject, it will not match the personal sense of involvement that comes from the film experience.

How hopeless is the situation now? One positive first step to take would be to have everyone you know see this film.
★★★★

"Marooned in Iraq" - Bahman Ghobadi (2002)

Marooned in Iraq (Gomgashtei dar Aragh) was Bahman Ghobadi’s second feature film, following on from the amazing achievement of his debut effort, A Time for Drunken Horses. Like that earlier film, the setting is Iranian Kurdistan and the language spoken in the film is Kurdish, not Farsi. Marooned in Iraq, though again dealing with the harsh reality facing Kurds, adopts a lighter tone than A Time for Drunken Horses and could be said by some people to be a tragicomedy. In this respect, the film raises a question:

Does this film successfully combine humour with the macabre circumstances of war in an authentic way? In fact, is that even possible? In this connection, Roberto Benigni’s film, Life is Beautiful (La Vita è Bella), despite its popularity, was not in my view a successful combination of these two themes. So did Marooned in Iraq succeed where Life is Beautiful, in my view, did not?

The story of Marooned in Iraq concerns a renowned retired Kurdish musician, Mirza, who has received word that his former wife, Hanareh, now in Iraqi Kurdistan, urgently needs his assistance and wants him to come to her. This is not such an easy thing to do. The Kurdish border area is very rough terrain, and it is full of armed bandits and smugglers who prey on anyone travelling through the area. In addition, the setting is apparently during the time of the Iran-Iraq war, and Iraqi warplanes are bombing the area, while the Iraqi military is impressing stray civilians captured to serve in their army. So Mirza summons his two sons, Barat and Audeh, both of whom are also musician/singers and formerly members of Mirza’s group, to accompany him on the dangerous trip across the border in search of Hanareh. On their journey through the ruggedly beautiful mountains of Kurdistan, the three travellers find themselves engaged in various misadventures with colourful people from villages of the region. The early episodes are shown with energy and broad humour, but they progressively become more enshrouded with the grim realities of war as the film proceeds. And the frequent sound of Iraqi jet planes flying overhead is a constant reminder of the violent circumstances in which the Kurdish people find themselves.

Early on, as they drive in Barat’s flashy sidecar-equipped motorcycle, they encounter a man who has flogged a mullah, and the three travelers stop to lend assistance. It turns out that this violent man is unhappy that the mullah has not stopped the family of the woman he wants from marrying her off to someone else. In short order he and an accomplice get the upper hand and march them all of at gunpoint towards the village where the wedding will take place. Mirza and his two sons are quickly recruited into a performance for the wedding ceremony, where the musicians perform their lively and passionate song, "Hanareh" -- a high point of the film. But this scene is eventually interrupted by an exchange of gunfire between the unhappy suitor and the bride’s father.

After escaping that fracas and getting back on the road, the trio are stopped by armed bandits who rob them of everything: money, motorcycle, clothes, and even Barat’s gold fillings. It’s not long before they hitch a ride to the next village and see their motorcycle having just been sold in the bazaar. Later, they come across a school teacher who is teaching war-orphaned children about airplanes. Airplanes have a good side and a bad side, he tells them: they carry goods and people, but they are also employed for dropping bombs. He takes the children to a hilltop cliff, from where they throw dozens of paper airplanes, a visual symbol highlighting the contrast between the innocence of the Kurdish young people and the harsh cruelties of the ongoing war.

Finally, they come to a newly discovered mass grave of Kurdish civilians executed by Saddam Hussein’s military, and reference is made to a nearby mass grave that has 15,000 corpses. As the going gets more dangerous and the threat of the two sons being impressed into Iraqi military service more evident, Mirza finally makes his way alone on foot to the city where Hanareh is supposed to be.

What he finds is that most of the men are dead and many of the women are disfigured and enfeebled by the effects of mustard gas from Iraqi air attacks. Mirza is finally directed to a woman whose voice is ruined by the mustard gas and who is so disfigured that she refuses to show her face, who knows something about Hanareh. Fully covered from his sight, this woman (who may, in fact, be Hanareh) informs him that he cannot meet Hanareh, but that Hanareh wants him to take her young daughter to Iran with him for safety. Mirza sets back on foot with the child on his back, and the long closing shot, reminiscent of the final shot of A Time for Drunken Horses, shows Mirza crossing over the barbed wire fence that marks the border between Iraq and Iran.

Although the film was released to the Western public at about the time of the US invasion of Iraq, which, of course, entailed a heightened public awareness of the Iraq situation and which may have influenced the title change, the events in the film appear to be set just after 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war. This is because of the depiction of what appears to be the effects of the Iraqi chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, which killed around 5,000 people. That attack was clearly an attempt to kill civilians and has been labelled an act of genocide by Human Rights Watch. Here is what the BBC said about it:

Most of the wounded, who were taken to hospital in the Iranian capital Tehran, were suffering from mustard gas exposure. Those who escaped death have developed respiratory or visual problems from the cocktail of chemicals dropped on the city. According to some reports, up to 75% of the victims were women and children. The injured survivors seen by reporters showed the classic symptoms of mustard gas poisoning - ugly skin lesions and breathing difficulties.

The US government initially ignominiously claimed that the attack was from Iran, but evidence showed that it was an Iraqi attack. Certainly Ghobadi wants a reference to that atrocity to be recorded and remembered in his anthem to the Kurdish people. Marooned in Iraq was given an award at the Chicago Film Festival, but because the US government resisted giving Ghobadi a visa, he refused to accept the award.

With all these grisly goings on, I come back to the question posed earlier? Where is there latitude here for authentic humour? Or do the humourous earlier scenes just sit uncomfortably with the latter parts of the film? In the case of Marooned in Iraq, I believe that the parts do make a coherent whole. The film is not just a comedy, but actually a tribute to the Kurdish people and to their culture, which (as I understand it) encompasses a life full of hope and passion. This is why music is such an essential element to the film. It’s not just that the principal characters happen to be musicians, but that music is a deep-level tonic that fortifies Kurdish people to engage in life passionately, in all its circumstances. In fact an alternative title of the film in Iran was “Avazhayé Sarzaminé Madariyam” (“Songs of My Motherland”). The music here has some of the same features and attractions as gypsy and flamenco music, which also expresses an earthy passion for the joys and sorrows of life. Both the gypsies (Roma) and Kurds are stateless peoples who have endured centuries of persecution as minority populations, but something inside them has enabled them to endure. For his part, Ghobadi has ended both of his first two films with Kurdish people passing across borders that he considers to be artificial, political separations that only cause problems and set people against each other. He explicitly has Mirza stomping down on the barbed wire marking the border at the end of the film, thereby offering his own opinion of the value of borders.

Another subtext in Marooned in Iraq is the place of Kurdish women in society. Women seem to be symbolic of a hopeful future for the Kurds. Early in the film during a brief interlude shot mostly as a lyrical series of closeups, we see village women industriously working together to make mud bricks. Women shown later in the refugee camps are all working to help their people. Mirza and his two sons are all seeking different women in the film. Moreover, Mirza is trying to find his former wife, Hanareh, Audeh is looking for another wife so that he can finally sire a son (he already has seven wives and 11 daughters), and the bachelor Barat is looking for his soul mate. Audeh never finds that 8th wife, but he does get his wish for a son by being persuaded to adopt two orphan boys that he intends to train as musicians. Barat falls in love with a women without having seen her face, but simply by virtue of having heard her beautiful singing voice. When he talks to her (only seeing her shadow behind a wall), he tells her that he loves her beautiful voice and would like her to be his bride. She says she will accept on the condition that he teach her to sing, and when he responds that Iranian women cannot sing in public, she runs away. Near the end of the film Barat meets this woman again, where she is searching for the body of her brother. This time, with his eyes more open now (he has finally taken off his self-image-enhancing sunglasses that he has been wearing throughout the film), he humbly offers whatever assistance he can provide. She doesn’t answer, but does show her face to him. So he, too, finds grounds for a more hopeful future.

In the story, Mirza’s Hanareh, who had dreamed of being a professional singer, had run away to Iraqi Kurdistan with his best friend, Seyed, 23 years earlier. If you date this film from its release in 2002, this earlier event would be placed right after the Iranian Revolution and the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, when women were banned from singing in public. Although the Halubja poison-gas bombing massacre suggests to me that this film should be placed just after 1988, Ghobadi has admitted in an interview that the explicit reference to 23 years earlier was meant to coincide with the decree banning women singing in public.

Given what must be difficult shooting conditions, Marooned in Iraq has outstanding production values. The cinematography is excellent, and Ghobadi employs scenic cutaways skilfully to maintain a fluid visual rhythm. Unlike some other Iranian filmmakers, Ghobadi employs numerous camera setups in order to maintain a continually interesting visual profile for the film. The rugged Kurdish landscape presents a picturesque backdrop, but Ghobadi chose to shoot during the winter, when much of the mountain scenery was covered in snow. He chose this time of year so that the mountain background would be more bleak and abstract and not dominate the figures in the foregound.

It’s also interesting that Ghobadi did manage to achieve a humorous tone for certain scenes, even though he was working with an entirely nonprofessional cast. He has said in interview that he spends months with his main actors before shooting starts in order to learn about their characters. Then he only asks them to behave in ways that are natural to their personalities. In Marooned in Iraq, two of his actors were professional singers (Mirza’s two sons) who were used to projecting their personalities in passionate songs, and so could project in front of the camera, too. This is perhaps why Ghobadi had the characters shouting at each other much of the time. Mild, subtle interactions would more likely have exposed the inexperience of his actors.

The overall message of the film is a tribute to the unyielding hopefulness of the Kurdish people and their musical culture that supports that hope. Mirza never gets to see Hanareh in the film, but he brings back her young daughter to Iran. It is she who represents the hopeful future for Kurdistan.
★★★½