The poesy of Iranian films

Iranian films are said to be poetic. There is some truth to that – but oftentimes it isn’t the whole truth. The supposedly metaphoric quality of films like The Iron Island and The Secret Ballot most likely isn’t it at all – the movies are probably neither really poetic nor philosophical in their conception; rather they are infused with that certain vagueness imposed by somewhat lenient censorship on any and all films with possible political relevance.

Note that in The Iron Island, the government – the hero also known as Captain – is shown as tough, dictatorial, controlling, and possibly slightly mad, but also responsible for his people, devoted and well meaning. The Secret Ballot shows what sham the elections are (“these are not our candidates”, “I will cast their ballots for them”) but also how hard the state tries to make them happen (a huge plane sent to collect a ballot box from a remote desert island) and how great the odds against its best efforts (the generally ignorant and indifferent populace). The point is that these films can be interpreted either way – as critical or as supportive of the state.

Critical is how they are interpreted in countless private conversations in Iran, when friends say to other friends in excited whispers: ‘Have you seen The Iron Island? The scene when the Captain leads his people around their newly acquired plot in the desert, telling them how they are going to build a beautiful city there? Oh, the pure nonsense of it! Doesn’t it sound familiar?’ But supportive is how they are interpreted by government activists: ‘If the young rebel is not cruelly publicly punished, there will be anarchy!’ And: ‘We have been pushed into the desert by their enemies!’

Which is why these films have gotten made in the first place – thanks to their ambiguity. Which is how they were designed: ambiguous in order to be made; to pass censorship. Ambiguity is the price of relevance: in Iran, if you are a film-maker, the only way you can say something important is if you say it vaguely and with qualification.

This sort of circumspection is a register of speech common to all art under semi-oppressive regimes – the sort which will allow ambiguity to exist (the more oppressive ones don’t, permitting only unqualified outright worship of themselves). Those raised under such semi-oppressive milieus can decode such art; the technique is transnational: Poles who remember the art of the sixties and seventies can decode modern Chinese and Iranian films without any difficulty.

Westerners – raised in an environment of straightforward speech – generally cannot. I remember discussing Yellow Earth with German and American sinologists after a screening in Berlin in 1989. I explained to them that the setting was the Cultural Revolution – the teacher from the city teaching in a hill-tribe school – and that the strange, wailing-like noises in the dark forest was the sound of political prisoners on forced labor. They thought there was no evidence that my interpretation was right; someone praised the scene in the forest as symbolic of the hero’s subconscious psychological anxieties.

Pure nonsense, clearly (as anyone from the communist block would know); and shows clearly how living in an open society dulls one’s wits. That special brain module used to decode coded speech unused, withers.

Iwanakute mo wakaru, say the Japanese, about that sphere of communications which does not permit plain speaking. To Americans this is a mysterious concept: ‘well, how am I supposed to know if you do not tell me?’ is their usual reaction to these types of communications. To Americans, not being able to speak one’s mind clearly is a sign of muddle-headedness; a complete no-no by Strunk and White, the venerable bible of style. But, by the same token, even the least vagueness stumps them. Their lack of perception in such cases never ceases to astound us, old worlders. It is on account of their weakness with indirect speech that to us – Poles, Chinese, Iranians – Americans often seem naïve and thick-witted.

But back to Yellow Earth and the psychological interpretation of the noises in the forest. It makes an interesting point about art: that ambiguity enriches it. Like Yellow Earth, Heart of Darkness has been read and discussed to death precisely because it lends itself to psychological and poetic interpretations; it would have been long since forgotten had it been a journalistic report naming names, places and dates. (Congo, Leopold, 1880’s). Literature of fact does not survive the facts; the more topical it is, the more impermanent, observed Barbara Tuchman about the longevity of her own works.

What I want to know is – once Iran is free of censorship, will Iranians stop making vague, ambiguous, poetic films? Will they switch to the American – and generally Anglo-Saxon – mode of calling spade a spade? Telling it like it is? Putting it in black and white? They might: this often happens when censorship is lifted; Poles seem to have done it. One could say, well, no; look to the Persian poetic tradition: the preference for speaking in metaphor goes back to Hafiz. Why would such a rich and ancient tradition die merely because newspapers became free to publish what they liked?

But then one could reply: several thousands of years of uninterrupted political oppression have shaped this tradition; the oppression has heretofore always necessitated vagueness of speech, giving birth and sustenance to the metaphoric language. We do not know what will happen to Iranian ways of discourse once that discourse becomes free, but there is no reason to think that Iran will be different from Poland; or that any people no longer compelled to be vague, will consciously choose to remain so.

In some sense, then, free speech is impoverished speech; it is speech shorn of metaphor and allusion. As such, it isn’t great for either poetry or art; but it is good for life because plain speaking leads to more efficient conduct of politics, economics, and even – personal life (“I do not like it when you do x”). The communication needs of life’s most urgent business – economic and political – are found to be in this analysis to be in direct opposition to our poetic and artistic needs. Perhaps a well functioning market and a well functioning government cannot help but produce pedestrian, literal, unambiguous art; lousy and dull; uninspiring; uninteresting.

They seem to do: the proof is all around us.