Post by Bozur on Feb 15, 2006 23:58:22 GMT -5
MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE DESERTED STATION'
After a Breakdown, a Chance for Uplift
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: December 3, 2004
First Run Features
Leila Hatami stars as the stranded, despondent wife in the Iranian film "The Deserted Station."
Children are like medicine; they cure your pain but create a new one," observes Feizollah (Mehran Rajabi), a wise, good-hearted teacher, part-time mechanic, father of two girls, and saintly hero of Ali Reza Raisian's film "The Deserted Station." Feizollah cares for the all-but abandoned children left for months at a time in a remote desert village while their fathers disappear to work as laborers in Iranian cities. He has single-handedly founded the one-room school where he serves as schoolmaster and surrogate father. He has even bought the children's supplies with his own money earned from farming livestock.
The Iranian movie, which opens today at the Quad Cinema in New York, is a bluntly heart-tugging city-mouse, country-mouse fable in which the unhappy wife (Leila Hatami) of Mahmood (Nezam Manouchehri), a successful photographer from Tehran, reconnects with fundamental human values after the couple find themselves stranded in the hinterlands.
Driving from Tehran to Mashad, they get lost on a desert road when their car breaks down after nearly hitting a deer and swerving into a dune. Mahmood has taken the scenic, seldom-traveled route to photograph the landscape. Without explicitly editorializing, the film portrays him as a detached aesthete, out of touch with humanity, especially his childless wife.
Seeking help in a nearby village that appears to have been carved out of the rocks and sand, he meets Feizollah, its only full-time adult male resident. Feizollah, who has a motorbike, suspends his usual routine to help Mahmood, while the wife substitutes for him as a teacher.
Bitter and ashamed after two miscarriages, she finds the interaction with the children, who quickly come to adore her, a profound emotional experience. As she quietly blooms, the camera contemplates Ms. Hatami's beautiful face with an almost religious reverence. Once the car is fixed, she is loath to leave the children behind.
Like so many Iranian movies, "The Deserted Station" is deeply suspicious of modern technology. Before the story ends, Feizollah's motorbike also breaks down, further delaying the couple's exit. But the movie's vision of a subsistence way of life is idyllic only to a point. In the village, we meet a deformed 8-year-old girl who is isolated from her peers, and we witness the birth of a stillborn sheep, a sight that makes the wife sick to her stomach. One old woman observes dispassionately: "That's life. One is born; one dies."
A poignant recurrent image shows the trains that rattle through the desert and kindle a desperate urge among the children to run after them. In one possibly imaginary scene, the wife and her students play a mystical game of hide-and-seek in the empty cars of two passenger trains stopped in the middle of nowhere.
"The Deserted Station" arrives with impressive credentials. Kambozia Partovi, who adapted the screenplay from a story by Abbas Kiarostami, also wrote the celebrated film "The Circle." The film reiterates a favorite Kiarostami theme: that material wealth may be the enemy of spiritual well-being and maintaining a sense of place in the world.
If repetition has stripped Iran's post-revolutionary cinema of some of its modish luster, "The Deserted Station" is still a valuable addition to a literature whose characteristics are now internationally well-established. Minimalist, often child-centered and focusing on primary man-and-nature relationships, Iranian movies were greeted in the 90's as a miraculous antidote to modern post-industrial angst. The scent carried by those gusts of pure, dry air from the wilderness may be familiar, but the air still refreshes.
'The Deserted Station'
Opens today in Manhattan.
Directed by Ali Reza Raisian; written (in Persian, with English subtitles) by Kambozia Partovi, based on a draft by Abbas Kiarostami; director of photography, Mahammad Aladpoush; edited by Hossein Zandof; music by Peymen Yazdanian; production designer, Mohsen Shah Ebrahimi; produced by Mr. Zandof; released by First Run Features. At the Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 88 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Leila Hatami (the Wife), Nezam Manouchehri (Mahmood), Mehran Rajabi (Feizollah) and Mahmoud Pak Neeyat (The Signal Guard).
After a Breakdown, a Chance for Uplift
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: December 3, 2004
First Run Features
Leila Hatami stars as the stranded, despondent wife in the Iranian film "The Deserted Station."
Children are like medicine; they cure your pain but create a new one," observes Feizollah (Mehran Rajabi), a wise, good-hearted teacher, part-time mechanic, father of two girls, and saintly hero of Ali Reza Raisian's film "The Deserted Station." Feizollah cares for the all-but abandoned children left for months at a time in a remote desert village while their fathers disappear to work as laborers in Iranian cities. He has single-handedly founded the one-room school where he serves as schoolmaster and surrogate father. He has even bought the children's supplies with his own money earned from farming livestock.
The Iranian movie, which opens today at the Quad Cinema in New York, is a bluntly heart-tugging city-mouse, country-mouse fable in which the unhappy wife (Leila Hatami) of Mahmood (Nezam Manouchehri), a successful photographer from Tehran, reconnects with fundamental human values after the couple find themselves stranded in the hinterlands.
Driving from Tehran to Mashad, they get lost on a desert road when their car breaks down after nearly hitting a deer and swerving into a dune. Mahmood has taken the scenic, seldom-traveled route to photograph the landscape. Without explicitly editorializing, the film portrays him as a detached aesthete, out of touch with humanity, especially his childless wife.
Seeking help in a nearby village that appears to have been carved out of the rocks and sand, he meets Feizollah, its only full-time adult male resident. Feizollah, who has a motorbike, suspends his usual routine to help Mahmood, while the wife substitutes for him as a teacher.
Bitter and ashamed after two miscarriages, she finds the interaction with the children, who quickly come to adore her, a profound emotional experience. As she quietly blooms, the camera contemplates Ms. Hatami's beautiful face with an almost religious reverence. Once the car is fixed, she is loath to leave the children behind.
Like so many Iranian movies, "The Deserted Station" is deeply suspicious of modern technology. Before the story ends, Feizollah's motorbike also breaks down, further delaying the couple's exit. But the movie's vision of a subsistence way of life is idyllic only to a point. In the village, we meet a deformed 8-year-old girl who is isolated from her peers, and we witness the birth of a stillborn sheep, a sight that makes the wife sick to her stomach. One old woman observes dispassionately: "That's life. One is born; one dies."
A poignant recurrent image shows the trains that rattle through the desert and kindle a desperate urge among the children to run after them. In one possibly imaginary scene, the wife and her students play a mystical game of hide-and-seek in the empty cars of two passenger trains stopped in the middle of nowhere.
"The Deserted Station" arrives with impressive credentials. Kambozia Partovi, who adapted the screenplay from a story by Abbas Kiarostami, also wrote the celebrated film "The Circle." The film reiterates a favorite Kiarostami theme: that material wealth may be the enemy of spiritual well-being and maintaining a sense of place in the world.
If repetition has stripped Iran's post-revolutionary cinema of some of its modish luster, "The Deserted Station" is still a valuable addition to a literature whose characteristics are now internationally well-established. Minimalist, often child-centered and focusing on primary man-and-nature relationships, Iranian movies were greeted in the 90's as a miraculous antidote to modern post-industrial angst. The scent carried by those gusts of pure, dry air from the wilderness may be familiar, but the air still refreshes.
'The Deserted Station'
Opens today in Manhattan.
Directed by Ali Reza Raisian; written (in Persian, with English subtitles) by Kambozia Partovi, based on a draft by Abbas Kiarostami; director of photography, Mahammad Aladpoush; edited by Hossein Zandof; music by Peymen Yazdanian; production designer, Mohsen Shah Ebrahimi; produced by Mr. Zandof; released by First Run Features. At the Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 88 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Leila Hatami (the Wife), Nezam Manouchehri (Mahmood), Mehran Rajabi (Feizollah) and Mahmoud Pak Neeyat (The Signal Guard).