FILM: Desert Dancer
DIRECTOR: Richard Raymond
ACTORS: Nazanin Boniadi, Freida Pinto, Tom Cullen
With all the attention the Middle East has garnered over the past 15-odd years, it’s no surprise that a bit of romanticising has occurred. We are wired to want to know more about our “enemy”; and for many of us, there is a desire to convert them — at least in our minds — from foe to fellow human being. At the same time, we seek to justify our controversial actions in the Middle East.
Perhaps that is why a story like Desert Dancer seems like it would appeal to western predilections. But that’s just what knocks this film from a great story to a mediocre one. The movie oozes westernisation, so much that it almost felt like pro-west propaganda.
It was shot completely in English, which already dilutes the authenticity of the story. The main character, Afshin Ghaffarian, spoke Persian and then later French in real life — not English.
To drive the wedge in further, there is only one Iranian actor — or rather actress — Nazanin Boniadi, who gets a speaking role of any significance. Of course this is forgivable considering that there are not many Iranian actors outside Iran. Still, there were far fewer Middle Eastern actors than expected. Our lead, Ritchie Reece, is British, having a South African mother and English father.
As for the actual story, it is interesting. Set in the late noughties, leading up to and after the tumultuous 2009 Iranian elections. The political opposition party known widely as the Green Movement, is prevalent throughout the film. So too is the incumbent regime that carries a big stick.
Amid this volatile landscape, we follow the youth of Afshin, an Iranian whose love of dance leads him to create an underground dance company. The film suggests that little Afshin’s dance fasciation began with a secret box of western films that included Dirty Dancing. From there we see him learn that the arts, and particularly dance, must be enjoyed away from the public eye.
The ever-present morality police who physically beat anyone who partake of anything “forbidden.” These include anything from alcohol to watching YouTube — and of course, dancing. But as with any repressive regime there are ways to circumvent the restrictions.
Fast forward to Afshin’s collegiate years, he attends university in Tehran and befriends some rebellious and western-thinking students. Together they create an underground dance company. Ironically, it is inside behind thick walls where they find freedom. It is both sad and touching, and it ruffled my own US bred sensibilities of “freedom and justice for all.” But that was the point.
Throughout the entire film the political injustices were beaten like a monotonous drum, to the point where it lost its potency. The war between expression and repression felt like it was dictated from a soapbox.
But this was a story about dance, and the struggle to express oneself. In this aspect, the film was evocative and moving. It almost made up for the victimising of the Iranians. The choreography that led up to the climactic performance in the desert stirred the dancer in me. It was mesmerising, beautiful, heart wrenching, and cathartic all at once.
Reece Ritchie, who plays our emotional hero, fully captures the beauty and the struggle of Afshin’s story. His performance was completely engrossing, as was Freida Pinto’s, who played the love interest, Elaheh.
But the whole movie is weighed down by the Middle East soap-opera feel. It was nearly impossible to shake the black-and-white sermon of maligned artist good, Iranian government bad.
In the end the “West” swoops in and “saves” Afshin. France granted him political asylum, and that is where Afshin lives today. But the film never addressed what happened to the rest of his company in Tehran, or the members of the acting troupe he absconded with to Paris. As far as the movie revealed, they had to go back with their dour-faced handlers. And after all the beatings in Iran, we can only surmise life would not be good for them.
As a whole, the film is easy for westerners to swallow, but it will leave a bitter taste afterwards. —East Valley Tribune/TNS
Not maul-worthy, but
also not noteworthy
By Nandini Ramnath
FILM: Grace of Monaco
DIRECTOR: Olivier Dahan
ACTORS: Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth, André Penvern
The first thing to be said about Grace of Monaco is that it is not as maul-worthy as it has been made out to be. The next thing to be said about Olivier Dahan’s movie is that it isn’t exactly noteworthy. The best thing that can be said about the 103-minute biopic is that it is always lovely looking, dressed to the hilt and bathed in the kind of lambent light dear to films about movie and actual royalty.
There is none of the tackiness that marred another recent movie about a similarly embattled royal, Diana. Rather, glamour is present in the truckloads in the tale of how Grace Kelly (Nicole Kidman) transforms herself from Hollywood heart-throb into the people’s princess of Monaco proceeds via a political crisis that threatens the principality’s sovereignty. Arash Amel’s screenplay intertwines Kelly’s struggle to leave behind a glittering acting career and adjust to the responsibilities that come with being the wife of Monegasque monarch Prince Rainier the III (Tim Roth) with Rainier’s battle to save his kingdom from French premier Charles De Gaulle’s annexation plans. There are early tensions as Kelly considers accepting an offer from Alfred Hitchcock (Roger Ashton-Griffiths) to headline his upcoming movie Marnie, and seeks advice from the prince’s priestly advisor tuck (Frank Langella) on a possible divorce. These worries vanish in the same way Kidman’s wrinkles have been abracadabraed — she rises to the occasion when France starts flexing its muscle and proves that Rainier’s faith in her is misplaced.
The repeated close-ups of Kidman’s miraculously smooth face provide inadvertent visual cues for the movie’s surface interest in the psychological motivations of its characters. There is no hint of tragedy in Kelly’s compromise despite advice to the contrary from soprano Maria Callas (Paz Vega), and certainly no confirmation of reports that the prince married her because he wanted a trophy wife who could bear him an heir. Kidman is coldly efficient despite little resemblance in look and age to the real person, while Roth is fabulous as the cool and distant husband who gets exactly what he wants in the end. Whatever cracks there are in this fairy-tale relationship can be glimpsed only by staring very hard at the screen, past its luxe trappings, impeccable decor and crease-proof costumes and into Kidman’s brittle eyes, which are at odds with the functional dialogue and the assuring parade of predictable victories. She suggests a woman on the verge of an explosion, and her melancholic air manages to faintly hint at the immense sadness that comes with having to give up a career for a life in a gilt-edged zoo. —The Mint/TNS
Worth seeing for
jaw-dropping
cinematography
By Colin Covert
FILM: The Assassin
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
ACTORS: Qi Shu, Chen Chang, Satoshi Tsumabuki
Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-Hsien (best director of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival) makes breathtakingly beautiful contemporary and period films, but never has he made an action thriller as lyrical as The Assassin, a personal/political drama in ninth century China. Nobody has. Set in a chaotic period of regional struggle between rival clans, it turns kung fu and swordplay into gorgeous still life canvases featuring brief, balletic eruptions of violence.
Nie Yinniang (the radiant Shu Qi) is a martial arts master and unstoppable secret executioner returning to her homeland after spending a generation in exile, tasked with assassinating her former betrothed. To be frank, I found the Kabuki-style reserve of the acting, the understated dialogue and the provincial conflicts of the plot line confusing. Nevertheless, the attention to the complex look of the film, from the smallest details of fabric to the jaw-dropping long shots of landscapes filmed in Inner Mongolia, is utterly amazing. Worth seeing for the cinematography alone. —Star Tribune/TNS
DVDs courtesy:
Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha
KRISHNAN
