As per my title for this review, it feels like a film where absolute corruption just consumes everything - the police, local religious and community leaders and even the one man of integrity left.
The film does a fine job from plot to cinematography to casting. IF a man glowers better than Reza Akhlaghirad in any country or any language, I'd like to know. We know shades of him, but his piety (not necessarily denominational) is as prominent a feature on his face as his permanent 5 o'clock shadow.
His partner, the beautiful Soudabeh Beizaee, offers devotion and grace, but introduces the idea of maybe there being some gray space between the ideal and the real.
But make no mistake, this film points out the gigantic gap between the two. So the film does not surprise on that main arc, and we side in prison cells and elsewhere with our stubborn hero.
The film could have been didactic, but the actors certainly embrace their roles. The subplot of the daughter for the local "boss" interacting with the wife/teacher - and Reza (the actor and character share the same name, perhaps casting was not just based on jawline but deeper than skin?) has a journey to Tehran as part of his awakening on how pervasive the corruption is, and what it does to "good people."
Will he fight the power to a bitter end, or will it be a "you can't beat them so join them" - even if you may guess, the film is eminently watchable.
Add in a sort of Soprano's in Iran feel, and a possible homage to Tarkovsky (a house in flames), and definitely the symbolic nature of water. Are there really such underwater hot spring cave confessionals, Reza's body language - and direction - changes on the last shot from there.
All well done.
But to me the minor miracle - this was filmed *in Iran* where the director's films have been banned afaik. While this is well off the screen, it offered me some small solace and hope - perhaps like here in the US, graft and corruption are pervasive, but in Iran may be there are ways for a more complicated and civilized man, farmer or film director to exist.
Not flourish per se, but corruption while dominant may not be as absolute as we fear?
