Pari

Mehrjui put Iran on the movie map back in 1969 with his splendid movie Gaav (Cow) about a villager whose sole possession, a cow, dies while he is away in the city. The loss of the cow drives him to insanity.

Many years has past by but Mehrjui still feels most confident when dealing with psychological issues. He has been quite busy in the nineties. Amongst his most notable films there is the trilogy Sara (1993), Pari (1995) and Leila (1996). All these are female names in Persian.

Pari is a student of literature at one of the Tehran universities. She is a confident yet angry person who is projecting her inner struggle by outwards aggression towards her tutor, her fiancé and her brother. She is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. We can only imagine what has been the force behind her mental suicide. Things do clear up as the movie proceeds and all the bits fits nicely in place. Mehrjui gives us the answers we crave for but he will not slam it in our face. There is a certain, subtle level of gratitude for the audience to be felt as he/she entangles the web.

Pari is in a quest. She is burdened by a strange mix of divine heritage and guilt for which she is not fully equipped. Pari is the tool Mehrjui utilises in order to pierce the Persian mystique. A blend of Sufism, religion and literature. All in a holy quest for salvation. We only never know from what!

The visual splendid of the film is a joy. The cinematography is behind any complaints. The editing is at times very pleasing although there is some abrupt and unwarranted cuts and bruises. Mehrjui directs his actors with a clear vision of what he wants to achieve and there is indeed some very fine performances by all the main actors.

To wrap this up. Pari is a film I warmly recommend you to see. This is not a masterpiece as such. This is not the classic people will talk about in 20 years time. But for anyone who has learned to enjoy the enigmatic movies of Iran, this will be nothing short of pure enchantment.

The summary posted above was incomplete. Pari is based on the J.D.Salinger story "Franny and Zooey". Salinger's lawyers went after the director in 1998 blocking it from being screened at a Iranian Film Festival (Film Society at Lincoln Center). The story is the same minus (the non-Islamic approved) drinking, smoking and cursing. The character of Pari is Franny and like Franny she struggles with the concept of Ego and her desire to be an actress but continue to thrive on what her older brother (Semore or in Mehrjui's film it is Asad) had taught her about Eastern philosophy (in particular Buddhism). It is also his death by self immolation that takes on particular weight for both Franny and Zooey. Asad becomes her savior/ martyr and she attempt to imitate his actions (setting fire to herself) in order to find relief. The metaphor of the "light lovers" (fish that jump towards light and kill themselves on the shore) becomes representative of Pari's spiritual turmoil. The review given also fails to mention the importance of self mortification and the belief in the twelve imam or representative of the martyred Ali in Shiite Islam. The centrality of a FEMALE character in Post-revolutionary Iran is extremely important. No matter what, a female protagonist is this environment takes on a certain amount of social connotation and gives the story a second layer of meaning. Lastly it should be noted that the film passed the censorship requirements and was actually shown in the Islamic Republic (unlike many Iranian masterpieces). Therefore Pari's story is somewhat conservative on the surface but relies on innuendo for some meaning.