Seeds of the Wild Fig Tree: A New Peak from Rasoulof (review)
Having left with a consolation prize at Cannes, this drama by the exiled Iranian filmmaker is of such infernal power that it would be wrong to reduce it to the sole context in which it was born.
The hot context surrounding a feature film can produce ambivalent effects. What is more, when the film is in competition at Cannes, where this presence can serve as a political manifesto at the expense of its artistic power alone. Mohammad Rasoulof, as we know, came in exile to present his Seeds of the wild fig treefleeing the mullahs’ regime which has prevented him from moving for years.
By giving him a consolation prize – the Special Jury Prize indeed smacked of a diplomatic draft – Greta Gerwig and her partners may have relieved him of a weight that he could have carried proudly. Because these Seeds is fundamentally a great film and if it is fully in keeping with its time (the rebellion movements that accompanied the death of the young Mahsa Amini, killed by the authorities for a “badly worn veil” in September 2022), Rasoulof’s cinematographic gesture places it well beyond that.
We could thus see as a declaration of intent this magnificent sequence where a mother rather reluctant to the freedom taken by her daughters vis-à-vis patriarchal power treats the bloody face of one of their friends molested by the police for not wearing her hijab. The swollen skin induces as much a sacrifice for the one who received the blows as a guilt for the one who until then refused to look the brutality in the face. Dressing the gaping wounds opens a breach in a suddenly universal reality. The filmmaker chooses to scrutinize these gestures in extreme close-ups reinforcing the immensity of the off-screen.
The immediate outside is constantly trying to force its way through. In this stifling family huis clos, the noises of a society that sees its youth rise up crack the edges of the frame and more surely the walls of the apartment in Tehran, almost the only place of the intrigue. It is first the implacable staging that resists, enhanced by a scenario that examines the beings with a crazy acuity. Because if Rasoulof’s political line seems clear, he seeks until the end to understand what guides his characters. Starting with the protagonist, Iman, a good father recently promoted within the administrative hierarchy of a revolutionary tribunal.
A promotion that will allow his wife and two daughters to finally live in the “four-room” he so desired and too bad if he has to sign death sentences without really trying to find out if the sentence is justified. The moral dilemma relating to this low work will gradually be lifted by this very convenient belief that God decides everything. Problem, in the street, the youth revolts and at home, Iman sees her two teenage daughters throwing back in her face the cruelty of the authorities of this country. The loss of her official weapon will precipitate the progressive breakup of a family framework that has become untenable. The concrete to the rescue of a present that we do not want to/cannot see.
The action of the film takes place in very few settings (the clandestine nature of filming requires it!), reinforcing this idea of physical, psychological and political confinement. The reverse shot of this bedroom drama is the real videos broadcast on social networks of the ultra-violent repression of the authorities. The fiction thus contaminated by reality is shaken, wounded. The fabrication of images and its different regimes (television news, mobile phones, cinematographic…) interpenetrate to probe a truth constantly confiscated and called into question. The perspectives of the frame thus blocked end up jumping, giving way to a finale that will replay in a deliberately excessive form the breakup of the family unit. From then on, everything becomes a parable, a metaphor and furiously tangible. Victory by chaos!
By Mohammad Rasoulof. With Misagh Zare, Soheila Golestani, Mahsa Rostami… Duration: 2h48. Released on September 18, 2024
