It is nice, isn’t it, to go see a Kimyai movie and pick up plenty of one-liners and prankish dialogues that you gurgle afterwards and you learn from, which you like and get a few things out of. This time, however, once and for all, you may get it into your head that Kimyai is not a sloganeer, nor is he repeating himself, because when you get out of the movie theater you walk home thinking. Why don’t you admit that all those cinematic moments in his films have something different to say and that you like them, those moments of death, love, and scar, songs and music? The old critics of SAM Street (the office of Film Magazine), the youths of the days of Dandan-e Maar (The Serpent’s Fang), Qeisar and Dash-Akol, who cannot like Hokm have a right not to. Those who don’t expect Kimyai to create another masterpiece after Qeisar and don’t go to see him films, might as well not talk about his cinema. Those who create characters of their movies based on the Men of Kimyai will still go to see his films. Hokm will neither be given awards nor go to foreign festivals, which is good. His characters are neither too distant for you not to know them nor too close to cry for or chew gums with. You say that Kimyai’s E’teraz (Protest) is pseudo-political, that his Sarbazha-ye jom’e (Soldiers of Friday) is elegiac; you say that Faryad (The Cry) is full of plain mistakes, that the structure of Ziyafat (The Feast) is not consistent; you say that Kimyai has no longer anything to say and that he is going in circles; you say that his film are filled with unnecessary incidents. I will tell you that films that are vacuous and apolitical are good only for the new wave directors of Iranian metaphysical films; I will tell you that its better for Kimyai to publish his poems separately so that they don’t mix with his films, because you understand neither; I will say that to me the plain mistakes are part of his writings; I will add that if we are talking about structural consistency none of us should talk (and I am not the only one to say this). I will stub the butt of my cigarette in the half-finished coffee cup and say: how nice to have something in your heart called cinema. That’s it.

Cheating the Audience

People these days are talking about the latest film of the director of Qeisar. Some critics have said that with Hokm Kimyai has again found his roots. I went to see this movie with the thought that I may find something new by this veteran of Iranian cinema. Not five minutes into the movie, however, I suddenly felt as if it was cheating me. Three masked bandits break into the house of a wealthy man, to steal but also to settle old scores. FORUZANDEH (played Leila Hatami) is deeply resentful of this man because at some point, when he was her boss, he had seduced her and then left her to own devices (after flushing down her aborted child in the toilet). This is our first encounter with one of the main characters of the film, a bold and angry woman. The two other bandits (Bahram Radan and Pulad Kimyai) are former schoolmates of Foruzandeh, as we uselessly learn later.

In this city we hear of horrendous atrocities taking place every day that make us cringe, but I felt no affinity with characters of this film. This is due to a lack of character development. Kimyai has used every device at his disposal to make the film more appealing: music, men in Cadillac snorting cocaine, and surreal scenes of the drowning of a character whose place was never defined. All these made the script of this movie flimsy.

To make films for the new generation, and to talk about their predicaments and concerns, is something that many filmmakers today are attempting. But our young women and men have much more depth than the characters of this Kimyai movie.

Kimyai, Masud Kimyai

No. You shouldn’t look for cinema with all its familiar characteristics. Nor should you look for a story line or a tight plot. Nor should you look for a visual logic or dramatic dialogues. You should only look for Kimyai, Masud Kimyai. What's more, don't even think you are going to a movie. Think that you are going somewhere to see KIMYAI. In this way you will make things right. Now, the question of how much Kimyai, Masud Kimyai, is attractive to you; how much you want to follow his plain mistakes, as Hamed, our friend, put it; how much you are willing to put up with his repetitions, is something that requires lots of love, and sympathy and empathy and a passion for nostalgia, 'cause if you don't, this ornate encounter will not rub well, to hear this non-sense story repeated, to hear big words come out mouthful, of which we have heard and heard plenty enough in film magazines, and not only in film magazines.

That this won't suit you and that you have to heap scorn on the movie to make you feel better, is something that the special issue of many magazines have done many times over – and let's forget that something as crooked and wrong as Kimyai movies don't even deserve such heap.

I say all these acknowledging that I go to these reruns of Kimyai, Masud Kimyai, without expecting neither to see Qeisar nor to feel nostalgic for his utopian characters nor for the familiar music, cars, hats, and the dialect of his people that at some point make me cringe. I don't miss his movies but neither can I bring myself to ignore them. I go to see his movies without expecting much, but when the young – really young – people sitting next to me, who have no doubt seen many good foreign movies and listened to many good foreign music scores, laugh out loud, make jokes, and snub the movie, I fume and cool them down with a friendly reminder. That what I have just said I only see myself say them, along with all those film magazines that we know and they know why they are saying it, that we know and that they know. No. You shouldn't look for cinema, with all its familiar….

To these young – really young – friends of mine, whose yardsticks is eschewed, and who compare things that just don't compare, I am willing to stand up and defend this movie. Yes, I am willing to stand up to these young – really young – friends and give them a piece of my mind and turn into those characters there, on the screen of Kimyai – Masud Kimyai.