Trailer Time: Argo

Less than a year after Asghar Farhadi brought Iran to Hollywood with his piercing dramatic thriller, A Separation, Ben Affleck is doing the opposite and taking Hollywood to Iran with Argo. Set during the 444 day hostage crisis in Tehran, Affleck's period political thriller tells the story of a fake film crew who enter Iran to take 6 of the American hostages back with them under disguise.

Iran-themed films taking Hollywood by storm?

Part of me, as an Iranian, is excited to see Tehran in a major Hollywood production, though the film is actually shot in Istanbul, Turkey and the disastrous mistake of showing one of city's most iconic mosques in the trailer when it's supposed to stand in for another location promises more ignorant missteps in the architectural department. To the film's credit, however, I have never been to a city that resembles my hometown more than Istanbul does.
The other part of me dreads the prospect of seeing the film in full. The hostage crisis is, by all accounts except the one given by the far right conservatives of the Iranian regime, a scar on the face of Iranian history. It's an event that accelerated Iran's isolation from the West and became a blatant example of the government's disrespect for international diplomacy. I haven't seen the film so it'd be presumtuous of me to accuse it of anything, but there really aren't many ways the story can be spun and none of those will bolster the image of Iranians in the West.
It's disappointing that with so many years gone after the crisis, this film should come a mere few months after Asghar Farhadi's pitch-perfect Oscar speech pleaded for a better understanding of Iranians as "people who respect all civilizations and cultures." 
The politics aside, Ben Affleck has been maturing as a director and this trailer gives us every reason to believe he can conjure up something as exciting as The Town or Gone Baby Gone. The film will be released in Canada on October 12th.

I'm an short-tempered impatient son of a bitch!

I'm a little late to the party with this news, but better late than never, I guess. Last week we saw two new pieces of promotional material for one of my most anticipated films of the year, Polish maestro Roman Polanski's Carnage. It is adapted from Yasmina Reza's play titled God of Carnage and stars Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly. 

Carnage is about two couples who get together to discuss a fight that broke out between their children at school. I really like the poster as I think it does neat job with the characters, giving them all equal space, and I really like the color scheme and the facial expressions, especially those of Kate Winslet. The trailer does an even better job of conveying both the dramatic and comedic aspects of the film and gives a glimpse of these great actors in action. 

I could hardly be more impatient for this film, but if the trailer and the poster don't do anything for you, let me remind you that the man behind the camera has given us films like Knife in the Water, Chinatown, The Pianist and The Ghost Writer before and Yasmina Reza is the playwright behind Art, one of the greatest modern plays. Throw in those actors and ...

*Carnage will be released in Canadian cinemas on November 25th, 2011 through Mongrel Media. 

Trailer Time: Circumstance

The trailer for Circumstance, Iranian director Maryam Keshavaraz’s first feature film debuted yesterday. The film is set in the Iranian capital Tehran (actually filmed in Beirut, Lebanon) and is about a family’s struggle with their daughter’s rebellious teenage life. Circumstance won the audience Dramatic prize at Sundance this year; a prize previously given to films like Lee Daniels’s Oscar-winning Precious and last year’s Happythankyoumoreplease.











The trailer’s actually not bad. It promises an interesting youthful perspective on the condition of teenagers in Iran, and having grown up there myself, much of the trailer ring so true. Also, filming in Beirut with unknown Iranian actors gives the filmmakers the freedom to take any turn they want with the story. Needless to say, depiction of the underground party, or even merely showing the girls without their scarves would have been impossible had the film been made in Iran. Making a film with homosexual undertones? Don’t even think about it! So overall, I’m a Yes, and I’ll definitely watch this film. However...

Unlike most of the Iranian community on the internet, I’m still gonna keep my expectations pretty low. For one thing, I can’t think of a single film that was made outside of Iran about Iranians that was praised by Iranians as much as it was by others. Most recently, Shirin Neshat’s Women without Men which also dealt with women’s issues in Iran, and also won awards at major film festivals (Best director at Venice) left me with an empty heart after I’d anticipated it for more than a year, mostly because it was much more directed toward foreign art film followers than someone who’s actually familiar with the context of the film. It will go unnoticed by those of you who read the subtitles but here, the lines, even in these short two minutes, sound like they’ve been translated from English rather than written in Farsi in the first place, something that reminds me of the monotonic and overbearingly mechanical dialogue of Neshat’s film. (And in her film, the script was actually translated!)

Also, it seems like Keshavarz is trying to cover A LOT of ground in this film – homosexuality, oppression, religion, politics, and women’s issues. I’ll be the first to admit that religion and politics have been woven into the fabric of Iranian living for so long, it’s virtually impossible to leave them aside no matter what the film’s about, but still, is it a good sign if the trailer is showing bits and pieces of everything, as if it’s trying to prove that the film is aware of ALL these issues? I’d be happier if the trailer focused on the central relationship. I think I’m being too cynical but to be honest, I’m mostly put off by the soundtrack and its repeated use of the word Zoor (Farsi for force, or in context, pressure) than I am with the actual film. The images and the dialogue already transfer the message, Thank you!

Anyway, as I said, I’ll certainly watch this film. Regardless of its quality, I don’t get that many chances to watch people speak Farsi on the big screen and even if the film discusses too many issues without dealing with any of them in depth, I still can’t deny my interest in any of those issues. One can never judge a film by its trailer anyway. It can always go both ways. Let’s hope this is more of a Precious than a Happythankyoumoreplease.

*No Canadian release date has been announced yet, but south of the border, the film opens in August.