The Mirror of the Soul: The Forough Farrokhzad Trilogy

Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967), an Iranian poetess and short story writer who also acted and made films, is the subject of this imaginative three-part biography by Nasser Saffarian, which incorporates personal testimony from relatives, colleagues, friends and commentators, recitations from her poems, still photographs, archival footage, and excerpts from her films to build an evocative and appreciative portrait of her life and creative work. The first (and longest) piece, “The Green Cold,” is the most fully biographical; the second, “The Mirror of the Soul,” concentrates on her poetry; and the third (and shortest at half an hour), “Summit of the Wave,” covers her work as a filmmaker, focusing on the 1962 documentary The House Is Black, which is about Iranian lepers. What emerges from Saffarian's labor of love is a portrait of an artist of considerable gifts and strong opinions who strove to express herself in a society dominated by rigid religious views and unaccustomed to independent women. But on the evidence collected here, Farrokhzad also had a troubled personal life—marked by divorce, an affair with a married man, and an acute sense of her own mortality—as well as opinions that attracted the attention of the Iranian regime (the implication suggested here is that she was being followed by agents of the Shah when she died in a car crash). Saffarian's film contains much revealing material, including touching reminiscences from Farrokhzad's mother, sister, and brothers. If the director's approach is sometimes rather arty, and there's a fair amount of repetition over the three films, the pluses outweigh the minuses. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)