The Art
Drama Exhibition Film Literature Music
Editor's Corner
Editorial Feature Video
Around Town
Cafe Citylog Fiction Society Outdoors
Archive
Mailing List
The Herd in Trenches
By Jinoos Taghizadeh
jinoos@tehranavenue.com
July 2007
به فارسی بخوانيم
  Email to a friend


Last week at our meeting, when the writers started arguing about The Outcasts ("Ekhrajiha") I chose not to say anything. Arguing over the OBVIOUS doesn't appeal to me. I refuse weighing the pros and cons of Ekhrajiha. I don't see it worth criticizing. Some among the writers, parroted rightist newspapers: "Now, that he is holding the camera rather than the club, we must applaud. Everyone can change…." And those who had preferred to buy an illegal copy on the streets rather than seeing it in movie theaters: "Let's not forget that he was a club wielder, that he used to chock every word of protest out of us. And now that through the same club he holds a camera, he is chocking every penny out of our pockets, so…."

I am assuming that everyone knows {Haji Masoud Dehnamki}, the most reactionary club-wielder in the post-revolutionary Iranian political order, whose résumé also includes the publication of slur newspapers filled with gore pictures of war victims as pretext for sullying opponents.

I hadn't seen the film until last night, at home, and when I did, I felt the taste bitter of memories well up. This film is Dehnamaki's sneer at the naive, forgetful Iranian society. The box-office success of The Outcasts only proves our artlessness when it comes to our (recent) past. Technically, this is a film that has nothing to offer (mickey mouse plot, trite characterization, and rambling structure). It compares poorly next to the weakest examples of such comedies. Script consultants like {Peyman Qasemkhani} had probably nothing to do with it, except letting their names be used.

With the same shrewdness that he brought to journalism, Dehnamaki is sniffing out what works with the public. He is telling a populist, unimaginative tale with the help of stars from the film and television industries and banal SMS-like jokes. He pokes fun at everything that people like him would consider sacred -- the system, the religion, and right-wingers -- to better divert viewers from his diabolical past. He borrows generously from his former allies -- {Kamal Tabrizi}, {Reza Mirkarimi}, and perhaps {Ebrahim Hatamikia} -- to appear reformed. He makes use of innuendos whipped up by another one of his consultants, {Yousefali Mirshakak}, to package the movie as a what-you-asked-for. And many flocked to see The Outcasts.

Truly we deserve no better. We have turned into an absent-minded nation who prefers to efface its collective past and embrace any old marauder who until yesterday pickaxed at the pillars of our culture and integrity. He is selling us inanities only to laugh at all those who brought the ticket to his movie to in turn get a cheap laugh out of hackneyed jokes. We are that herd which will follow any wolf in sheep's clothing, whether he be talking about Reconstruction and Privatization or Freedom of Expression and Democracy or Oil Money brought to the Table of Every Iranian or the great promise of American Takeover. These are the angels with which we are fooled into entering paradise, not unlike the yellow-blond Marilyn who showed up at Vietnam military camps to woo desperate soldiers. The two angels are not unlike each other: They are candy for confused masses who are then told to cower in trenches and to go on landmines in the hope of getting something in return. And perhaps the only real thing about this movie is the scene where a soldier's legs are crushed underneath the moving tank.

Dehnamaki is a war veteran who got out of it in one piece. He is that shrewd mouse that never bought the promise of paradise. He stayed alive to revenge himself on those who fought the war. In the "night of operation" sequence, we hear him say, "What sacred bodies were lost in this war, Haj Masoud." What difference does it make to him if these bodies fought for the same causes; it is finally him who is co-opting their bravery. It was him who slurred all those who didn't agree with him and now he is using every means possible to present himself as a reformer.

At the end of the movie, he pays tribute to Iranian cinema's most notorious rabble. He pulls his dagger the way the paid mercenaries of the Shah did in the successful coup that overthrew Mosaddeq in 1952 or the thugs who attacked the student dormitory in 1998. Dehnamaki pours his most caustic bile on the students when he has his soldiers sing the very same anthem that students who supported the reformist Khatami sang, this time before going on landmines. These are students that not only had their tongues pulled but their every last teeth by the likes of Dehnamaki.

Such allusive delicacy was unexpected from the publisher of coarse magazines like Shalamcheh -- although money can bring delicacy the way it does many other things. Dehnamaki can afford to be generous with his cast and crew, building on the silence of {Bahram Beyzaie} and {Naser Taqvaie} or the emigration of {Amir Naderi} and {Rokneddin Khosravi}. He lavishly spends on his movie and employs the most expensive equipment for us not to forget that he is in the power seat, that he is that shepherd whose herd can only make him fatter while they are happy grazing the arid land of this culture.



Top