Editor’s Observe: This evaluate was initially revealed in the course of the 2024 Cannes Movie Competition. Neon releases “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in theaters on November 27.
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is an anguished cry from the guts of Mohammad Rasoulof, the Iranian filmmaker who simply fled his house nation for Europe after an eight-year jail sentence from the Islamic Republic. This isn’t the primary brush with theocratic regulation for the dissident director, who’s been working steadily out of Iran for twenty years.
So whereas Iran won’t ever, ever submit his deeply unsettling newest masterwork for the Finest Worldwide Characteristic Oscar — usually the one harbinger of anti-establishment Center Japanese movies making their solution to the U.S. — this searing home thriller deserves the widest viewers potential. With the brutal 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini by authorities fingers as his launching level, Rasoulof crafts an awfully gripping allegory concerning the corrupting prices of energy and the suppression of girls underneath a non secular patriarchy that crushes the very folks it claims to guard.
“Sacred Fig” arose out of Rasoulof’s incarceration in 2022 — proper on the cusp of the Lady, Life, Freedom rebellion Amini’s demise impressed — in Evin Jail in Tehran, the place he was jailed for talking out in opposition to the Iranian authorities. Rasoulof, additionally writing the screenplay and having shot this movie solely in secret and vulnerable to the forged’s lives, begins this story with Iman (Misagh Zare, at the moment banned from leaving Iran). He’s a father of three, deeply entrenched in his religion and loyalty to the federal government, as he’s simply been appointed to the very Revolutionary Courtroom that the majority not too long ago sentenced Rasoulof himself. His spouse Najmeh (Soheila Golestani, additionally banned from leaving Iran and herself jailed two years in the past amid Girls, Life, Freedom protests) is subservient to the letter. Iman’s daughters, Rezvan and Sana (Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki, respectively, and each actors Rasoulof intentionally forged as older than their characters for their very own security), are much less sure to custom and home equilibrium.
Whereas “Sacred Fig” by no means explicitly names the younger girl who dies, as proven in newscasts and throughout precise protest footage, she’s a stand-in for Amini. Rezvan and Sana, who share a bunk mattress within the household’s cramped Tehran condominium, take part within the protests in their very own method: by providing protected harbor to a classmate, Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi), who’s been arrested. Najmeh, who’s eager on preserving her presence of their house a secret from Iman on the eve of his promotion, tends to the lady’s wounds after she’s been brutally attacked by police within the chaos.
Rasoulof, working with cinematographer Pooyan Aghababaei to create the movie’s unfussy widescreen look, holds the digicam shut on Sadaf’s mangled face, her left eye bruised and bloodied and swollen. That is Rasoulof displaying us in visceral phrases what possible occurred to Amini herself, whose demise authorities ascribed to a stroke whereas in hospital. The film makes point out of this, too, and it’s a pack of authoritarian-fed lies Najmeh is all too desperate to consider.
Iman, in the meantime, is the goal of protesters of his personal after signing demise indictments of supposed dissidents, as led by his Revolutionary Courtroom employers. However pressures mount when his service gun goes lacking. It’s not within the nightstand, the place Najmeh put it, nor in a pile of laundry, the place Reza stashes it at one level. The gun’s misplacement is punishable with as much as no less than three years in jail, and clearly places Iman’s Courtroom appointment in jeopardy. This Rasoulof’s gun, if you’ll — fired solely as soon as a lot later within the movie — turns into a logo of energy pased from hand handy, and a instrument that lays naked the already long-seated discord beneath the floor of Iman’s household. Its vanishing slowly begins to ship the whole household off its axis. “Sorry I didn’t get up to organize your breakfast,” Najmeh says at one level. However their long-held customs have been already coming free anyway.
The gun’s disappearance sends Iman right into a paranoid panic, first forcing his daughters and spouse right into a harrowingly staged, blindfolded interrogation to suss out the perpetrator. After which worse. As “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” which enthralls you all through its complete near-three-hour working time, unwinds, the film descends deeper into home thriller terrain. Right here, a household is pitted in opposition to their patriarch and one another as he unravels, Iman ultimately taking them to his distant childhood house and going to excessive measures to make anyone, anyone, confess to stealing the gun. En route, their automotive is trailed by two protestors who’re after Iman, and it’s stunning the best way Rasoulof careens as recklessly as that automotive is run off the highway into displaying how far Najmeh is prepared to go to her abet her husband’s rage.
Every of the performances right here, understated and by no means melodramatic, is inherently courageous for the best way the actors risked their lives to take part within the movie in any respect. Various the forged and crew have been threatened by the Iranian authorities to stress the Cannes Movie Competition into dropping the film, or else. There are different acts of bravery, like the best way Rasoulof exhibits girls indoors not carrying their veils, for as soon as. Different, much less politically resistant Iranian movies usually present girls inside in hijab, which is very unrealistic and certain a mode of appeasing censors.
Rasoulof emerged from jail questioning why he ought to make one other film in any respect when the chances are all the time stacked in opposition to him. In 2020, Iran banned him from attending the Berlinale premiere of his Golden Bear-winning “There Is No Evil.” Equally, he was invited to serve on the Cannes jury in 2023 however was additionally banned from taking part. Whereas within the Evin Jail, Rasoulof met a workers member with a pang of conscience over holding political prisoners however who lacked the braveness to defy a job he hates. That signaled to Rasoulof that actions like Girls, Life, Freedom have some likelihood at success in opposition to repression, and that the federal government will in the end give up to their calls for.
Which makes “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” even because it ends in a shattering denouement the place you recognize nothing good awaits anyone right here after the final searing reduce to black, an in the end hopeful allegory regardless of its lack of decision. Iran isn’t going to assist this film. It’s as much as the remainder of the world to take action.
Grade: A-
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” premiered on the 2024 Cannes Movie Competition. Neon will launch the movie stateside starting November 27.