An early feature film from the Oscar award-winning and controversial Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, Beautiful City follows teenage thief A’la (Babak Ansari) as he attempts to save his friend, Akbar (Hossein Farzi-Zad), from the death penalty. The characters struggle over money, revenge, and the worth of one young man’s life and soul. This early feature film from the critically acclaimed Farhadi belongs in any international film collection, especially collections that showcase Iranian filmmakers.
Imprisoned in a juvenile detention center with his mischievous friend A’la, the youthful murderer Akbar turns eighteen. After a surprise birthday party ends in tears, Akbar transfers to an adult prison, where he is eligible for execution and the noose - indefinitely but surely - awaits him. A warden empathizes with A’la’s righteous desire to save his friend and releases him early for alleged (mostly fabricated) good behavior. A’la partners with Akbar’s older sister, Firoozeh, a young mother who lives with a drug dealer and actively campaigns for Akbar’s pardon. Despite her concerted efforts, the victim’s father, Abolqasem (Faramarz Gharibian) is a cruel man and set on retaliation for the loss of his daughter.
A'la delivers a letter from Akbar: expressing guilt, asking forgiveness, and suggesting that the murder was meant to be a double suicide. Abolqasem walks out, but A’la follows him to the mosque for prayer and pleads his friend’s case from a religious perspective. “Leave him to God,” he advises. “God knows justice better than you and me.” A’la’s pleas only aggravate the stubborn and mourning Abolqasem, who begins exploring ways to pay Akbar’s blood money and expedite his execution. He can’t afford it, even though the blood money of a Muslim woman is half of a Muslim man’s.
While Abolqasem attempts to procure the blood money, his wife offers to accept payment from A’la and Firoozeh – money for her physically disabled daughter’s surgery - in exchange for her (hopefully) convincing Abolqasem to pardon Akbar. While everyone is mostly preoccupied with scrounging up money, whether for salvation or revenge or just an improved quality of life, the easy camaraderie between A’la and Firoozeh blooms into a flirtation and potentially a future.
In this powerful drama, the characters of Beautiful City may share a culture, but maintain many different attitudes toward justice and forgiveness. Such mindsets are personified early in the film by two wardens at the juvenile detention center. The sympathetic warden (the same one who facilitated A’la’s early release) feels that Akbar “doesn’t deserve to be hanged,” while the other warden reminds him of “an eye for an eye.” Similarly, Abolqasem argues with his local mosque’s imam. The imam stresses that the spiritual gifts for consent are greater than retaliation, but Abolqasem declares that if God wants him to give his consent and save Akbar, “then God is not just.”
It is refreshing to see the positive aspects of Islam’s teachings on film. Plenty of stories devote ample time to the oppressions of state-sanctioned fundamentalism, and rightfully so. But Beautiful City instead shows viewers (and perhaps introduces them to) a different side of the religion when the imam quotes the first verse of the Koran: “In the name of God, the most Compassionate, the most Merciful.” He asks his congregation a rhetorical question: “Why doesn’t it say in the name of the cruel God?”
In high contrast to the spiritual questions asked by Beautiful City, the film shows how we often treat human life as transactional, as multiple parties attempt to collect blood money, for revenge or salvation. On top of these spiritual and ethical aspects, there’s also a love story woven into Beautiful City, a story about how we do irrational, sometimes harmful, things to hold on to the people we love.
Currently unavailable to stream, Asghar Farhadi’s Beautiful City belongs in narrative DVD collections, providing library patrons access to a film they won’t easily find online. A story of forgiveness, revenge, and salvation, Beautiful City thoughtfully peels back the layers of each character’s motivations, only to pierce through to the most honest and irrational motivation of them all: love.
What kind of film collection would Beautiful City be suitable for?
Beautiful City is suitable for any film collection with an international section but especially belongs in collections with a focus on Iranian cinema.
What type of library programming could use Beautiful City?
Screening Beautiful City for a library book or film club after reading Tina Hassannia’s monograph Asghar Farhadi: Life and Cinema would be a thoughtful and interesting choice. Libraries could also use this film in a series of contemporary Iranian films, whether from Farhadi’s own filmography or with selections as varied as the docufiction Jafar Panahi’s Taxi and the horror film Under the Shadow.
What academic subjects would Beautiful City be suitable for?
Beautiful City would be suitable for screening for Ethics courses, as it deals with complex issues like capital punishment, forgiveness versus retaliation, prison systems, and the worth of a life. It would also be interesting for these classes to compare the ethics of the filmmaker’s films with that of his publicized personal life.