By Leonard Doyle
Shirin Neshat's movie "Women Without Men," reveals a chapter in Iranian -US relations that most Americans have forgotten, (if they ever knew about it).
Iranians are still living with the consequences of the American led, British backed coup d'état that brought down the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstalled the Shah to power.
Women Without Men - Trailer from IndiePix on Vimeo.
Drawing on magical realism she chronicles the intertwining lives of four Iranian women during the summer of 1953; a cataclysmic moment in Iranian history. Unfortunately the Washington Post seems to have sent a work experience intern to review this important film.
Her snippy review begins: "Iranian filmmaker Shirin Neshat's first feature-length film, "Women Without Men," starts with the main character jumping off the roof of a building. It doesn't get any cheerier."
"The material is so relentlessly dark" opines Rachel Saslow, " -- suicide, rape, eating disorders and repression all have a home here -- that the film will satisfy only Iranian history buffs and devoted Neshat fans."
This is hardly the case, and the film's recognition by the Venice Film festival, Sundance and others tells its own story.
But as the US contemplates bombing Iran's regime of Mullah's to destroy the country's nascent nuclear arms industry, viewing this movie should be a requirement for those who favor 'a little light bombing' as a way of conducting foreign policy.
It was, after all, America and Britain's undemocratic interference in Iran's nationalization of its oil industry that ultimately brought the Shah to power and sent Iran's cultured elite into exile.
This is a movie that everyone interested in foreign policy should see, uncomfortable as it may make them.
Here's part of the New Yorker's Lauren Collins more grown up review of the film.
"Shirin Neshat, I wrote in 2007, was making a full-length feature film. Neshat, who was born in Qazvin, Iran, had told me that she hoped her film would première at Cannes in the spring of 2008, which is what I told you. It took a little longer. But Neshat's movie, her first, is made. It is called "Women Without Men," after the book, by Shahrnush Parsipour, on which it is based. I think the film is fantastic. So do a lot of other people: at the Venice Film Festival, in September, Neshat won for best director. Next month, Rizzoli publishes a monograph by the art critic Arthur Danto celebrating Neshat's work. (Marina Abramović wrote the introduction.) The film, for me, evoked the sense of melancholy and wonder, of immediate nostalgia, that I feel, each year, watching the cherry buds explode into another spring."
Read the full glowing New Yorker review here
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