Even in Iran, rockers know how to pose.
(2009) Drama (IFC) Negar Shaghaghi, Ashkan Koshanejad, Hamed Behdad, Hichkas, Hamed Seyyed Javadi. Directed by Bahman Ghobadi
What if you lived in a place where expressing your deepest feelings could get you arrested? Where making the kind of music you loved was illegal? Sadly, there are a lot of places like that.
Iran is one such place. Negar (Shaghaghi) and Ashkan (Koshanejad) are a pair of alternative-type musicians who have just been released from and Iranian jail. Their crime? Performing forbidden music – without a permit. Hardened criminals, these two are.
They have gotten an invitation to play in London and they mean to take it but first they have to put together a full band. And they have to get a permit to leave the country, for which they require the services of a manager, who they find in Nader (Behdad). Nader links them up with a couple of shady businessman who will forge the papers they need.
However, Negar and particularly Ashkan are dead set on performing a final concert in Teheran before they go. That is going to produce some problems of its own – the police in Teheran aren’t particularly forgiving of young people expressing themselves, particularly in a proscribed manner.
Iran is a heavily regulated country with an extremely radical and conservative clergy calling the shots. Even house pets must remain behind closed doors (which is where the title comes from). Women, of course, are second class citizens, forbidden from studying, holding certain kinds of jobs and even of showing their face in public.
That kind of repression is bound to provoke some pushback, and a thriving independent rock scene has flourished in Teheran and other Iranian cities – there are supposedly more than 2,000 bands operating in Iran currently that play music that is against the law.
That the story takes such conditions so matter-of-factly is part of what makes the movie interesting. While they all hope for more freedom, it’s the world they all live in and they just try to get by the best way that they can. That part of the movie is fascinating. There is also a certain amount of charm, particularly in the music community which is extremely tight knit, crossing genre lines (which would never happen in the States or at least to the degree depicted here) in a kind of gallows cameraderie that would have to develop in a situation such as theirs.
What is even more thrilling is that the music in the movie is uniformly good. The band that the lead characters create (and by the way, the screenplay is based on the experiences of Negar and Ashkan, who are actual musicians) makes music that wouldn’t sound out of place in the hippest clubs in San Francisco, Austin or Seattle. The other bands play a variety of styles from rap metal to acoustic anti-folk to grunge, but all of it is uniformly good. For some of them, the film is going to be the only record of their creativity available to them, because recording music is prohibitively difficult in Iran.
With most of the actors being amateurs (Behdad is a notable exception and he is one of the bright spots in the movie), the acting can be a bit on the unrefined side. That does give the movie a greater sense of realism; it’s not quite a documentary in that sense but it’s as close as you come without capturing actual events.
There are some stark images in the film that are balanced out by a gentle sense of humor that shows up in unexpected places. I have to admit, I was captured by the movie’s charm and you can ride that an awfully long way. It doesn’t quite rocket the movie into instant classic territory but it is certainly worth checking out as an alternative to what you usually watch.
WHY RENT THIS: A look into a culture that has received almost no coverage in Western media and none at all in their own homeland. Great music and some gentle humor round out a nice film.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The acting is a little bit on the raw side and the production values are a little dicey.
FAMILY VALUES: There’s a little bit of language and some smoking.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Most of the bands seen in the movie are actual bands (or were) operating on the Iranian underground scene.
NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.
BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $879,937 on an unreported production budget; my guess is that the movie made a little money.
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
TOMORROW: Rango
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