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WSWS : Arts Review : Film Reviews

An interview with Mohsen Makhmalbaf: Iranian film-maker

Gabbeh and A Moment of Innocence:
two films directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf

By David Walsh
23 September 1996

Mohsen Makhmalbaf was born in 1957 in a poor neighborhood in Tehran. At fifteen he left school to help support his family. At seventeen, under the Shah's regime, he was arrested for his part in an attack on a police station and spent several years in prison. After the Iranian revolution he left politics for cultural work, publishing short stories, plays and a novel. He made his first film in 1982. Makhmalbaf is now one of Iran's leading directors. Last year's Toronto festival screened Time of Love and Salaam Cinema.

This year's festival again presented two of Makhmalbaf's films-- Gabbeh and A Moment of Innocence. The first film began as a documentary on the Gashgai nomadic tribe of southeastern Iran. The women of this tribe weave brilliantly colored carpets known as "gabbehs." On the banks of a river an old woman seems to be conversing with the carpet she is washing. A young woman, named Gabbeh as well, emerges out of the patterns of the carpet to tell her love story.

Gabbeh's family has forbidden her to join the man she loves. As the tribe moves across the steppe, her lover follows them at a distance on horseback. Will the two get together? A parallel story concerns her uncle, a former schoolmaster who has returned to his native tribe after years in the city. He teaches the children how the weavers obtain from nature the colors that help dye the gabbeh's wool.

The film considers the role of women in such societies and the difficulties faced by love, but its primary concern seems to be with "how," in Makhmalbaf's words, "life creates works of art." He has commented: "Both the patterns and the colors of these carpets are inspired by events occurring in the lives of those who weave them. Should they go across a desert, yellow will appear; should somebody die, black will appear...

"Today I'm under the impression that a gabbeh bears some resemblance to any good Iranian film. That is to say, they are both simple, tender, close to nature or to daily reality."

Gabbeh has some extraordinary moments. One can't help feeling, however, that Makhmalbaf's knowledge of this nomadic people, despite a good deal of investigation, remained inadequate to the task. The film remains too often at the level of the merely picturesque and too vague and uncritical in its approach to the subject.

A Moment of Innocence is a brilliant film, one of the festival's finest. Here Makhmalbaf continues his examination of reality and art, documentary and fiction, social and personal life. At seventeen Makhmalbaf attempted to take a policeman's gun away from him. In the struggle he stabbed the policeman and was shot in turn. The director comments: "He was sent to the hospital and I was sent to a torture chamber."

Twenty years later the same policeman showed up for an audition for Makhmalbaf's film, Salaam Cinema! The filmmaker writes: "Among the thousands of candidates there was my policeman. Since I had been disappointed by politics I didn't need his weapon any longer. Now he needed mine--the weapon of the movies!"

Makhmalbaf takes a camera and provides the policeman with one too. They set about independently rehearsing young versions of themselves as part of a dramatic reconstruction of the original event. What emerges is an astonishing consideration of history, memory, regret and possibility. Makhmalbaf says: "We are merely seeking for the secret of 22 years of our lives lost to us."

The opening sequence sets the tone for the film. The policeman receives directions to Makhmalbaf's house. He arrives as the director's young daughter is opening the front door. As soon as he asks for her father the little girl responds, are you an actor? The policeman asks in astonishment, how did you know that? She answers confidently, everyone who comes to our house whom I don't know must be an actor.

At the audition for an actor to play Makhmalbaf as a 17-year-old, one youth says, I want to save mankind. Another says, I don't care about humanity, I want to solve my own problems. The director chooses the former and sends the rest, including the selfish one, away. The former policeman, a backward provincial type, selects a good-looking youth from Tehran to play his younger self. The filmmakers intervene and replace the kid with another from a backwater town. The policeman threatens to quit. In any case, he bears a grudge against Makhmalbaf. "He ruined my life," he says.

The ex-policeman is convinced to return and he begins to train the youth how to stand at attention, how to goose-step, how to guard a general's house and so forth. The cop tells the youth that just prior to the stabbing incident a girl kept approaching him on duty and asking for directions or the time of the day. Because of the incident he never saw her again, but he is sure that she was in love with him and that Makhmalbaf's attack destroyed his possibility for happiness.

The girl in question, we learn from Makhmalbaf's rehearsals with his younger self, was the director's cousin. He had sent her to divert the policeman with the questions and set him up for the eventual attempt to disarm him. When Makhmalbaf goes to his cousin's house to seek her permission to have her teenage daughter play in his film he runs into a stone wall. The cousin asks, why did you get me up mixed up in that business? She is a middle class housewife and refuses permission for her daughter to participate. We hear the girl's explosion as Makhmalbaf drives away: "I'm sick and tired of it! How long must I be locked away in this house?" The young actor remarks to the director about his cousin, "I thought she wanted to save mankind." Makhmalbaf replies, "She did once."

Instead the younger actor picks one of his schoolmates, a girl he admits to being in love with, to play the cousin. The two consider the pros and cons of marriage, taking into account their commitment to humanity. "Can two people who want to save mankind marry?" the youth wonders. When it comes to a rehearsal of the stabbing, the boy finds he can't do it. He breaks down and cries. "Isn't there another way to save mankind?"

The film's themes are revealed elegantly and poetically. At one point the "young policeman" leaves behind a flower in a pot which he intends to give to the mystery girl. There is an astonishing scene in which he rushes back and asks passersby if they have seen the plant. He identifies its location by a sunbeam that was hitting the flower when he put it down. "Have you seen a ray of sunlight?" he demands of one man. The man replies, "The sun doesn't stay in one place."

Makhmalbaf's insistence on the relativity of truth and memory has a quite distinct significance in Iran, one which is obviously not lost on the authorities. In his view the fundamentalist outlook, which insists that one can corner the market on truth, is one of the chief obstacles standing in the way of the cultural and social development of the country. His hostility to the role relegated to women in present-day Iran--and indeed his hostility to all forms of intolerance and oppression--is equally clear. One of the many questions the film poses, which again cannot please those in power in Iran, is this: why is it necessary for anyone to dedicate himself to saving poor people seventeen years after the revolution of 1979?

The state of Iranian and world cinema

An interview with Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, director of Gabbeh and A Moment of Innocence

Why did you begin to make cinema and why do you continue to make it today?

At 17 I was active in a militia group. I was arrested and shot, because I believed in fighting for democracy and social justice. After the revolution I decided to enter into cultural activities because I felt that to achieve democracy, one must prepare the people culturally. Initially I wrote articles and stories. I remember one day I went to the movie theater and watched a very bad Iranian film. Some people suggested that I criticize this film, and I said, well, it's better if one makes a good film and shows what a good film is. So, in fact, one bad film caused me to become a filmmaker.

But in answer to your question as to why I now continue to make films: it's because film-making is a method of dialogue between myself and people everywhere. If I didn't make films, probably I would become lonelier. There is a quote from one filmmaker that I really like: "I love people and I make films so that they will love me too."

Now you're not simply speaking to Iranian people, but people all over the world. Does that make a difference?

No, as a matter of fact, I make films to speak with the people of the world.

In what way do you think cinema or art can have an influence on life and society?

I think the influence of art is on individuals and the resulting effect is on society. It influences by changing the viewer's outlook. And when someone's outlook towards life changes, his behavior changes. I think that humanity can still be advanced through cinema. It's still possible through cinema to tell people not to be selfish and to share life with others.

That view is not the dominant view in North American or European cinema.

Of course. As far as I'm concerned we have two kinds of cinema. Cinema as business and cinema as culture. Unfortunately, Hollywood cinema has basically taken over 90 percent of cinemas worldwide. I think that the United States has been more able to conquer and influence the world through films than with weapons.

Hollywood tells us that there is only one possible kind of life, that's American life. But we have had great poets of the cinema as well. Satyajit Ray, [Yasujiro] Ozu, even [Wim] Wenders, and many other film directors from the past and the present. All cinema has an influence. I consider myself to be among those who hope to change something in people's mentality.

Why is it that at this point Iranian cinema seems to reflect life more accurately and more richly than other cinemas?

Two points should always be kept in mind in any discussion about Iranian cinema. The first point is that two years before the revolution the Iranian cinema died because Hollywood came and killed it. When the revolution took place Hollywood cinema was stopped and therefore Iranian cinema had no competition. So we returned to making 70 films a year. But this is like bringing up a flower in a greenhouse. The commercial hurricane represented by Hollywood cinema would pull any independent plant out by the roots. Therefore, we have to have a greenhouse situation so that this wind and storm doesn't kill the flowers.

For example, Egyptian cinema should make 150 films a year, but since the takeover of Hollywood films it doesn't make any more than ten or fifteen. Or take Brazil, which has 150 million people, but makes five films a year. In the whole world there are two to three thousand films made a year. One thousand of those are made in India, without value; seven hundred in Hollywood. The rest of the world makes somewhere between 400 and 800 films a year. There are also Hollywood films, but made in other countries. Independent filmmakers without a support structure can no longer stand on their own feet.

When Hollywood cinema was stopped, people in Iran had no choice but to watch non-Hollywood films. Therefore, eventually their tastes changed. People now show greater enthusiasm for artistic films. For example, take Salaam Cinema. If we had shown this film twenty years ago in Iran, 2,000 people would have seen it and they would have torn up the theater seats. Now one million people in Iran have seen this film. Of the three most successful films of last year, one of them was commercial, the other two were artistic.

Of course Iranian cinema has a few characteristics. One is that it has more focus on reality. Because, more than anything else, it's life that changes, that moves. If one only refers to one's own mentality, especially at the height of intellectualism, one inevitably arrives at pessimism or darkness. Why are three or four decades of the world's artistic films so dark? The Iranian cinema can be compared with Italian neorealism, but without the darkness that existed in that kind of cinema.

Maybe it's because the more life confronts danger, the more it reveals its true character. If someone is sitting in Europe and everything is easy for him, he doesn't focus that much on life. As compared to someone who is living somewhere where his life is in danger as a result of war, or an earthquake, or a flood, or a civil war. That person cherishes life just like when one opens a pomegranate and tries to savor every single seed in it.

Iranian cinema is a very realistic cinema, that praises life and is hopeful. I learned this from the beggars in India. Five years ago I went to Bombay, and in a taxi I passed a wide area where over a million people were living. It was nearly evening and all of them were dancing. They didn't have any proper clothes on, they didn't have any proper shelter. Dog and cat and man lived all together, day and night. I thought that it was because of a religious occasion that everyone was dancing. The next night I noticed the same thing, and a third night. I said to them, at the brink of death, what are you singing and dancing for? They couldn't explain directly or philosophically. One could derive from their answers that they meant life is not having a house, life does not mean having too much food or too many fine clothes. Life is believing in life itself. Sometimes we see people in Europe who are living in utmost luxury, but have forgotten the core essence of life. They consider the tools for life more important than life itself.

If it takes one thousand years for the one billion people in India to reach socialism, what's going to happen to these people meanwhile? Although I consider Indian cinema to be relatively bad, one thing about it shouldn't be underestimated, and that is its cherishing of life and dancing for life. At the end of all Indian films, there is a happy ending, whereas before that there has been a major series of disasters. The beggars go to the cinema for an hour and a half and dream of happiness. If the tragic business on the screen doesn't reach a happy ending than even that is taken away from them. In life they are desperate, and if they go to the cinema and there they are told that life is desperate as well, then nothing is left for them. First they say, give me money for bread, and then when you give them that, they say, give me money for a ticket to the movie theater. Because they need bread and the dream of happiness.

At the same time we hope it doesn't take a thousand years for people's lives to change. If you had a group of American filmmakers or film students here now, what problems would you raise with them?

My first recommendation would be to forget about making films with big budgets. No one gives big money to a filmmaker to endorse culture. They give big money to get big money in return. Therefore it's better for us to look for a small amount of money that can expand culture. The second is to try and stay away from having 40-man crews and go with five or six people to make a film. I made Gabbeh with a crew of eight, including the driver and the cook. So when the investor tries to cheat you, to rip you off your own salary, let him, because you're ripping him off in actual fact, because you've managed to make your film. If I hadn't used this method I wouldn't have made fourteen feature films in fourteen years. Three or four years ago I met Werner Herzog in Iran. He's a very dear person to me. He was looking for money to make his new film. With my method I made three films, but he's still looking for money to make his latest film.

In the notes to your film, you speak about cinema reflecting reality, and of course I agree. But in the relationship between life and cinema, what is the role of artistic intuition or poetic imagination?

You're right. If we look at reality with a simplistic view, this is not an artistic piece of work. Because art begins with individuals. Even though it may have socialistic goals. It's impossible for someone to say that what I'm saying is the absolute truth. It's like when I talk about this glass. In any event this is a glass from my view, and from your view it's something else. Consequently when we speak of realism, at the same time, we're still talking about surrealism. There is no truth that everyone agrees upon as realism. Instead of talking about reality we should be talking about believing in realness. In fact, when I'm speaking of realism it is actually a path exactly halfway between external reality and my mental state. For example, Salaam Cinema documents real events which took place. I sat behind the desk and acted so that I could intertwine my own ideas with that reality. In Gabbeh, I wrote a fictional story which I tried to make look like a documentary. My film-making is somewhere between documentary and narrative fiction, between truth and opinion, between politics and poetry. And all my problems come from this.

And your strength as well. What general criticisms would you make of the Iranian cinema?

The most important issue is the unbearable censorship. Second, is the absurdity of the critics. Not all the critics, but most of them. Third, that Iranian cinema has three movements. There are 300 film groups and three film-making groups. The first group takes money from the government and makes propaganda films. They've just about convinced the government that no one else should make any films. The second group is made up of commercial filmmakers, who are trying to act like Hollywood and get money from private investors. They attack the changed taste that the people have developed. People barely go see the first group's films. If the artistic group basically disappears, then the second group will replace it.

The artistic group, despite all the problems, has brought a lot of honor to the Iranian people. Ten years ago no one was showing Iranian cinema. Now there is no festival that would not show an Iranian film. In ten years we have done a lot of work. Some 2,500 festivals have shown one or more of our films. We have received more than 250 international awards. Out of that ten to fifteen, maybe two or three of us are more famous than the others, but there have been ten to fifteen people who have really worked hard. Now all these people have both producer problems, censorship problems, and if the situation continues, in some years' time you may not see any Iranian films.

Ultimately two or three of the more famous ones will leave Iran and they will make films in other countries. But this is no longer Iranian cinema. Then it becomes: this is my film; this is Kiarostami's film. That is very bad.

Whereas now Iranian cinema shows the Iranian people to the world. The US has tried very hard to make an entire people out to be terrorists. The Iranian cinema tries to say that the Iranian people are very warm and poetic people. I'll give you an example. I was invited to the Telluride festival. They had to put a French film's name on my film to get it into the US. And then the Americans wouldn't give me a visa, because I'm Iranian. On the other hand, Iran won't let me send my film out, because I'm accused of being influenced by the West, and a fan of the West. This is our problem at the moment. If we make a film which offers some criticism of the current situation, the people inside Iran say, you've humiliated us. The government says, don't show the Iranians like this. Even the opposition says that. If you make a film and praise Iran those people would say, there's some trick in this. And the opposition would say, he's under the government's influence. This is our culture. They all want you to think like them, be one of them. Being an Iranian and independent is very difficult. To be a filmmaker and be independent is very difficult. To be alive and living is very difficult. But life goes on.

What problems would you like to make films about in the future?

I have many scripts, it depends on which one I can make. One thing I might make is the film in India, about the beggars. I've been working five years on the script, but I haven't gotten approval from the government. Maybe I will change the script and make it in a different way. Or maybe I will make a film in Turkey or Georgia. I hope they will allow me to make films in Iran. There's a very slim possibility that I will make films in Canada. Maybe I will remake Nanook of the North.