Persian Realm

Mehrban

Yes Absolutely I agree with you on all points.

DK

To me this is a very good example of how a government overreacts. As you say because of insecurity or immaturity.  To make GOV into a political threat is such a long stretch.  This movie is not about politics, OK the setting is a village in Iran and this villager is destitute, that is about it.  I found GOV to be more than anything a psychological drama more related to freud and Kafka (or their Iranian counterparts like Hedayat) for instance than Maxs or... anyway, I don't mean to name drop but the point is that by overreacting and ignorance a regime shoots itself in the foot.

Sometimes I think that there is a facet to our culture that truly gets in our way and that is that it is more important to us how we are preceived than how we really are.  I mean the govenment in Iran felt compelled to suppress the image of a destitute village in Iran so that the country does not appear backwards.  They could have thought well, yes we do have destitute villages but this is what we are trying to do to fix it.  After all everyone knew we had destitute villages in Iran and we still do.  This is besides the point that GOV was not about that anyway. 

Censoring in many ways says more about the one who censors than the piece being censored which you know already.  

As a piece of art to me GOV is probably superior to any other modern Iranian film I have seen.  It is efficient in its concept, setting, and telling of the story.  I think most other Iranian film makers are very good at creating vinniettes maybe because of political censorship and the fact that they feel they are not allowed to tell the whole story or..... but Mehrjui's GOV takes you to the bitter end of the story when even the wisest in the village loses it. 

Mehrban

Yes indeed it is a very powerful film. I'm not sure the film was totally censored as Mehrjui says but it was a first film and did not get a wide distribution at the time of its release in 1969. But I had read somewhere that the Shahbanou had seen it and was very touched by the movie and subsequently the film was Awarded the Golden Ibex at the Tehran  International Film Festival. But the film became controversial in some circles because they felt that the film was questioning the "success" of the White Revolution launched by the Shah in the 1960's. But I personally recall seeing a great deal of neo realistic style Iranian films being shown in Shiraz' cinema in the mid seventies and it had an important following. By then we had film critics on TV which started explaining Cinema as an Art form to a wider audience and kind of educating the viewer.

But its true that many middle class Iranians ( including my own partents) were not always comfortable with seeing such films denounce the social or moral misery that resulted from a rural exodus and the forced industrialization that overlooked the rural lifestyles. They wrongly felt that these films were encouraging some kind of self pity and miserabilism that was not uplifting nor served as good role models for a society that wanted to catch up with the so called "advanced" Western societies.

Also GAV is very much modeled on many soviet films of the 1950's or even 1930's that dealt with many social issues. These films were actually pin pointing real problems but like most works of Art they would not necessarily give a solution or a defenitive conclusion as to what should be done to solve them. So in a society like Iran with a thriving middle class with high expectations and a rural class trying to catch up with the rest of the country and given the lack of political maturity of our society ( partly due to lack of a genuine democratic culture) such films naturally divided public opinionor at worse were even wrongly deemed as "pro-communist" when in fact they were rather influenced by  "socialist" ideas that gave birth to the Italian neo realism films after WWII to which Mehrjui refers to in this interview.

But in retrospect it proves that often a work of "ART" can be decades in advance on its time because it expresses a universal truth that cannot be refuted only because of shortsighted Political convictions or social reforms even if the White Revolution brought a great deal of positive changes to Iranian society and in essence was quite necessary and inevitable to bring in Iran into the 20th century.

But it was certainly an error to dismiss such films as they often were on grounds that they were "dangerous" to society because they may encourage  "pro-communist" sentiments in the country. But then again interestingly but sadly Mehrjui was also censored by the current Islamic regime today for his film Santouri which also provoked controversy and debate on its intentions.

I agree entirely with Mehrjui when he say's that an artist should try and express what he feels is in phase with his own culture and even individuality even if it goes against what society or the government deems as politically correct or not. In the end its about artistic freedom and also social maturity to accept or not the visions and ideals vehicled in films, books or works of art that it encounters. For example look at the reaction many of us had to the film "300" often without even seeing the movie. It says alot about our own insecurities and subjectivity. Same thing for satrapi's Persepolis which was censored in Iran.

I think what matters is whether a film when intended to be thought provoking achieves what the director had in mind. It really doesn't matter if society likes it or accepts it. This is true even in a democratic society where films were not always freely distributed and at times censored. For instance Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) was censored in France until the 1970's because of the negative image it gave of the French Army during WWI. And Kubricks Clockwork Orange was taken off the British Screens until its release 20 years later on DVD because of an incident that took place in Great Britian where a Women was raped and killed by a group of Hooligans that claimed to have been influenced by the movie. This seems inconcievable today but censorship has always been imposed to various degrees in all societies often for hypocritical reasons but also because of society often feels insecure due to its own lack of maturity or definition of values.

That said I don't approve censorship but I can understand what can trigger it. For instance if one considers Horror films some films we consider classics today and even comic at times were frightening when released: Dracula, Frankenstein or even King Kong were deemed as frightening at the time as JAWS when released in 76.

Some of these films got PG ratings which today any teenager can watch JAWS today be it when it passes on TV.

But obviously Mehrjui's COW or Santour were faced with another type of Censorship which was Political and had nothing to do about PG Ratings. So attempting to discourage or censor such films were wrong in the first place. But I also think that filmmakers love it when their films provoke or are controversial for that way they more people will go and try to see it and it paves the way to turning it into a classic one way or another.

DK

I rented this film last year.  It is really powerful how this man's identity, work, income, happiness was fully invested in this one cow.  It is a very sad movie, but I think we all kind of become a little bit like what we have loved and lost (maybe not to let go).

The other character, I think his name in the film is Eslam is also very interesting.  He unravels at the end as well.

Thank you for posting this, it is interesting to hear about the film from the director directly - no pun intended.