Tehran Has No More Pomegranates

Iranian filmmaker Massoud Bakhshi draws inspiration from Jean-Luc Godard for this postmodern portrait of Tehran, which combines wry narration with rapid-fire editing. An opening inter-title aptly describes Tehran Has No More Pomegranates as “a musical, historical, comedy, docudrama, love story, experimental film.” Adopting a collage-like approach, Bakhshi raids the vaults for archival music and images, showing what the city used to look like and comparing that with how the bustling metropolis is viewed today. To the director, Tehran is “one of the largest, most modern, most ordered, and strangest capitals of the world”; it's also “polluted, noisy, dirty, and crowded.” Bakhshi explores these contradictions through Tehran's turbulent historical relationships with England, Russia, and America: the regime resisted some political, culinary, and sartorial influences, while embracing others—such as British produce and Russian trousers. The filmmaker also recalls earlier times when opium addiction ran rampant and women were routinely married between the ages of 9 and 11. Now, problems including overpopulation and pollution have come to the forefront. Although Bakhshi interviews several people—from brick-makers to engineers—he keeps coming back to Mr. Jafar, a new arrival who serves as a one-man Greek chorus, agreeing with Bakhshi that Tehran is both wonderful and terrible (Jafar is particularly concerned about police brutality, the high cost of living, and the number of homeless individuals sleeping in parks). Like Spike Jonze's Adaptation, Bakhshi's film also concerns the making—and unmaking—of the work itself: although he spent five years just writing the script, he still considers this documentary unfinished. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)