With “Earthly Verses” a sharp satire about the degrading power apparatus in the noisy juggernaut Tehran starts on April 11th. It is a critical and creative, enigmatic episodic film.
It is always admirable how Iranian filmmakers, despite merciless harassment, consistently pursue their task of showing the rest of the world the inhumane conditions in which the lives of their compatriots take place. Mostly in restricted conditions, avoiding the authoritarian state power as much as possible, many cinematic events arise out of necessity – like this one.
In nine episodes, Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami take almost 80 minutes to skewer official arbitrariness with a pointed look: The humor background may be bitter, but incredulous shaking of the head is included. Shortly before the end, the sarcastic directing duo throws a wrench into the house when they let a representative of their guild despair in front of the cultural office because there is “nothing wrong” with their planned film project, the only problem would be the script.
If “Earthly Verses” wasn’t set in Iran, it could almost do it anywhere else
Elsewhere, a disfiguring burqa is forced on a little, free-spirited girl in a fashion store (“We also have the matching prayer mat”), a father is not allowed to call his child “David” (better: “Davood”), and a young woman is interviewed increasingly verbally sexualized, a student has to endure an indiscreet interrogation, an applicant is checked for religious suitability at the employment office – without exception, no joke topics.
And if “Earthly Verses” (even the title is an ironic cross-reference) wasn’t set in Iran, it could almost do it anywhere else. The creators’ trick: to statically play through each sequence without cutting with an acting person from the perspective of the respective “desk perpetrator”, who can only be heard acoustically, and to allow the dialogues – which are undoubtedly based on reality – to steadily slide into the absurd.
“Earthly Verses” – a critical and creative, enigmatic episodic film entirely from a single source
In this way, a critical and creative, enigmatic episodic film is created entirely from a single source, as if a set of razor-sharp newspaper cartoons had been translated into moving images. And as is the case with the best of them: it hurts inside, but you still have to laugh.
Info
Earthly verses, satire, R: Ali Asgari, Alireza Khatami, IR 2023, start: April 11th.
2024-04-09 08:24:51
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