THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG
FOUR AND A HALF STARS An Iranian judge falls into a pit of political paranoia, taking his family with him.
DRAMA IRAN Persian #SEEDOFTHESACREDFIG Starring Missagh Zareh, Sohelia Golestani
This overwhelming film from dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rosoulof is very much greater than the sum of its parts. And those parts - family drama, political thriller, social allegory, action film, horror and western - are each amazing in their own right. In tackling his country’s oppressive regime and religious theocracy head-on, Rosoulof pulls few punches in portraying a nation under siege.
He’s long been a target of Iranian authority and was first arrested in 2010. He was incarcerated again in 2022 and most recently charges against the filmmaker were revised upward to include an eight year sentence and flogging. He fled to Germany earlier this year, just in time to present this film at Cannes.
Clearly Rosoulof is deeply intimate with Iran’s draconian legal system and knows first hand the effect it has on society and its people. This dark and sprawling epic was shot in secret, mostly in the heavy confines of a Tehran apartment (before breaking out in to the harsh light of a remote desert), and its story has those people, from both sides, firmly in its focus.
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG opens when Iman (Misagh Zare), father of two teenage daughters, receives a promotion. The new job, further up the judicial chain of command, offers a more comfortable life and a larger home. His pious wife Najmeh (Shelia Golestani) is pleased, even when her husband comes home with a gun (one he doesn’t know how to use or care for, but one that will be put to good use later in the story). However any reward comes with a price, and Iman is soon required to rubber stamp cases that carry a death penalty. He’s conflicted of course, but the government would never arrest anyone without good cause, would they? It explains why the vacancy arose.
Then there’s the background noise of student demonstrations following the death of a woman who refused to wear a hijab. There are rules for a reason, right? Najmeh agrees, but her daughter’s do not and soon the bloody conflict is brought into their home when a student friend is beaten by police. Surely she deserved it? But who deserves to be shot in the face with buckshot? Even Najmeh, caught between ideology and humanity, succumbs and removes the shrapnel in painstaking close up.
Rosoulof takes the film outside the claustrophobic confines of their home online, through social media and news reports - two very different accounts of the same story. In some ways, SACRED FIG is like a home invasion movie as the family’s sanctity and physical safety, is threatened by outside forces hellbent on tearing them apart. Then Rosoulof starts moving the furniture - where Iman was the family’s protector, scene by scene it becomes clear he’s the threat from within. He begins by helping send unknown people to the gallows, will he do the same to his own family? How many corpses is he willing to walk over to protect the state?
SACRED FIG soon veers deep into genre when Iman’s identity is leaked online and they’re forced to flee from Tehran. The importance of the gun is revived in a high-stakes car chase and eventual arrival at a remote, abandoned home. It’s part horror, part western as the stakes, and tension with it, are sent sky high. Iman locks up his family for protection, and punishment. Fortunately, there's Chekov's gun.
What sounds over the top kind of is, but controlled by a master filmmaker who knows exactly what he’s trying to achieve and how to achieve it. After all, what the Iranian government is doing to its own people, specifically its young women, is hardly subtle. Rasoulof reinforces this reaility with e actuality that informs his film; this is not a mere work of fiction. Iman’s family has become the people, he's now the ugly face of a regime desperate to save itself. Allegory works like that.
What starts as an intricate chamber piece, the kind of film Iranian cinema is well known for, ends as a psychological hellscape; a poignant reminder of how things are for some and how things could become for so many more. Throughout THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG an astonishing work of art.
Comments