D01
The collapse of a dictatorship is treated with a sharply satirical edge in Iranian writer-director Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s 2014 film, in which the aging despot (Misha Gomiashvili) of a fictional country is deposed when a revolution breaks out just as he and his adoring five-year-old grandson (Dachi Orvelashvili) are amusing themselves by turning the electricity on and off in the capital city.
Though his wife and daughters manage to escape into exile, bickering among themselves over their lost fortunes, the dictator is left behind, his sole companion being the grandson, who refused to leave with the others after his parents were killed in the uprising. They flee on foot into the countryside, where the President forces a terrified peasant to cut his hair and provide ragged clothes for himself and the boy, along with a guitar.
Disguised as a street musician and the grandson who dances as he plays, the two attempt to reach the coast, where they might gain passage to safety. The first half-hour of the film is a change of pace for the director, whose style is usually placid and meditative; his depiction of the revolution is frenzied and frightening. And though the “road trip” that follows has some light moments—scenes in which the grandson cavorts in a cardboard box in which holes have been cut for his head and arms have a slapstick quality—for the most part, their experiences have a sorrowful tone, as the fallen ruler witnesses the hatred his cruel regime has engendered and the violence its collapse has unleashed in soldiers inured to brutality. The point is brought home most strikingly in a sequence in which a new bride is raped by an officer while his men and a crowd of civilians, including her husband, look on in stunned silence.
There are moments of tension throughout— as when the two must pose as scarecrows as a military convoy passes, or the boy wanders off after a girl who reminds him of his erstwhile dancing partner in the palace. But the most searing scenes come toward the close, when the fleeing pair joins up with a group of freed political prisoners, and when they are finally captured by a mob, thirsting for blood, which threatens to make the grandfather watch as they hang the boy. The film’s passionate plea is that revolutionaries resist the urge for vengeance that will only perpetuate the violence of the regime they have overthrown, but Makhmalbaf seems poignantly resigned to the reality that such an impulse usually proves irresistible. Extras include a trailer, a “making of” featurette (19 min.) and two deleted scenes (5 min.). Recommended.