What does Reza Mirkarimi’s cinema say from “Child and Soldier” to “Night Watchman”? / Very light, a little dark

Theater News Base: It is unlikely that anyone will know Reza Mirkarimi now with the series “Hemmat School Kids” or “Aftab and Azizkhanam”, but in the early 70’s, these two slightly different programs were able to attract the attention of audiences and even critics. The distance between these two series for children and teenagers to his first feature film, Child and Soldier, was five years. The same film and his domestic and foreign awards showed that we are on the side of a director with a vision and style. A filmmaker who recognizes human loneliness and portrays this loneliness in various forms and forms. Boasting of loneliness and even homelessness in Mirkarimi’s films is not going to lead to humiliation, but he wants to remind himself and people that life is like the road or path that is present in most of his films and there is no escape but to go and drive in these paths. And roads. Mirkarimi has been directing and producing in Iranian cinema for twenty years and has been a writer and secretary of the Fajr International Film Festival. Now, at the age of 55, he has sent Night Watch to the 40th edition of the Fajr Film Festival for his tenth work. A film that Mirkarimi has a look at in his previous 9 films and, of course, has pros and cons. From absolute fans of the film to those who believe Mirkarimi has forgotten about filmmaking.

Regardless of the comments made about Mirkarimi’s new film, his presence and films in Iranian cinema cannot be ignored. A filmmaker who came at the same time as Majid Majidi, Mohammad Mehdi Asgarpour, Kamal Tabrizi, and directors of this kind to cultivate religious or semantic cinema, and the works they made were in the same direction. But Mirkarimi looked a little different. We rarely see best-selling films in his repertoire, and “A Cube of Sugar” may be an exception to this list, but in general, his films do not seem to line up in front of the cinema, but from then on, serious cinema audiences can not easily pass by his films. Man, human relationships, loneliness, the road and the wonder of man in his living world are the most important and prominent concepts and elements that are seen in Mirkarimi films. He is the one who knows the society and the classes well and his constructions show that he knows the lower classes of the society better and this knowledge is beyond gender and geography. Although he himself claimed in his conversations that he was not very outspoken in cinema, what we have seen from most of his films is a clear and accurate look at people and the issues around them. No matter what happens to the night watchman at the closing and the box office, Mirkarimi’s cinema cannot be passed over so easily. The idea of ​​Iranian cinema without “too far, too close” and “a sugar cube” is certainly not a complete picture.

Under the light of fame

Before Kamal Tabrizi’s “Lizard” and its margins about the lives of clerics, Mirkarimi had approached this sensitive subject with “Under the Moonlight” and portrayed a student’s hesitations to wear clerical garb through his lens. After the success of Child and Soldier and due to its sensitive subject, cinema audiences were waiting for the new work of a 34-year-old director in 1979. The inevitable presence of a child in his fourth film in the context of cinema and television had become a proven member. The advent of cinema cameras in the lives of students also made watching this film more certain. Under the moonlight, Mirkarimi still won numerous domestic and foreign awards, but there was still no news of long queues at the box office. Mirkarimi had chosen his path; Showing human doubts requires entering his privacy. With all the sensibilities of the subject, but as far as the film and the atmosphere of the time allowed, Mirkarimi enters the privacy of “Seyed Hassan”, the student of the film, and shows the sub-characters of the story in the heart of this doubt. The people under the plan, the “chicken” and the “chicken” sister, played by Shaghayegh Dehghan, who was one of the first taboos of post-revolutionary cinema, were the same ones who existed in society and Mirkarimi saw them correctly and found their way into their privacy. Was. The people of Mirkarimi cinema are not supposed to be shown in black or white; Their amazement, compulsion and loneliness can be seen on the screen. Now this puzzled man either just wants to be a student or a woman on the street or a wanderer under a bed. In the world of Mirkarimi, there are all people and each of them plays their role according to the requirements of time or even place, and Mr. Adalat is watching these roles from the corner of the frame. Under the Moonlight brought great fame to Mirkarimi and to Iranian cinema, a profound director and of course an escape from the complexity of speaking and showing.

A light remained on here

In the early 1980s, romance films, the so-called boy and girl, flourished, and the presence of young and popular stars made a profit in making and showing such films. In such circumstances, Mirkarimi went to Habib Rezaei to make his third work and turned him into a “power” that is backward and lives next to an Imamzadeh in a remote village. Making such a film in those circumstances required both courage and a seal of approval that the director, although not yet 40 years old, would not be captivated by the feeling and atmosphere of the media and the requirements of the market. In Mirkarimi’s third work, the roots and depth of people’s beliefs are shown, and again a human being is the thread of the rosary of these events, and after the soldier and the student, it seems that it is the turn of a mentally retarded person to show the world from his point of view and make them guests. Your heart is slow. “Here is a bright light” Simorgh had the best director and actor for Mirkarimi and Habib Rezaei, but the most important feature of this film was encouraging other directors to make such simple and profound films. This film was not as successful at the box office as the previous two. Repeatedly appearing on television networks, the audience wondered who made the film and when it was released in theaters. The light of making simple and deep films was clear before, of course, but with the production of such films, it remained bright and had its own audience.

Very good, very rewarding

Three years after “A Light is on Here,” Mirkarimi made his most complete film to date. A film that reaped both the Simorghs of the 23rd Fajr Film Festival and won the hearts of the audience. “Too Far, Too Close” can be considered Mirkarimi’s most symbolic work. From playing with shadows to the bold role of the road and the presence of a telescope to take a closer look at the earth and its surroundings and the son of a doctor who has a brain tumor. Getting stuck in the sand and riding a cleric who is still the same type of cleric “under the moonlight” and accompanying the doctor on the road is supposed to convey the main skills of the filmmaker to the viewer. If Mirkarimi had tried to create a concept that was very, very close and deep before, this time, but this time he had also learned to make it attractive and added it to other elements of his composition. This element of charm was not imposed outside the film, but was part of the film as a whole, and Massoud’s clever choice of free and pleasant-sized narratives also contributed to this charm. Man and the desert are compared to each other, and this association of the desert with a man who is a seeker (Dr. Alam is looking for his son) is a two-way relationship. A relationship that, of course, in the sequence of the car getting stuck in the sand, is also drawn to violence and challenges. But hope is what Mirkarimi does not want to include in his films. The hope that is present even in its smallest extent and becomes the course that saves Dr. Alam. Demonstrating the greatness of the world around us and the astonishment and smallness of man in front of this greatness is well shown in this film. Surprise and humiliation that does not want to humiliate human nature and remains in the same flip, and the filmmaker’s advice is to look simple and live simply. We are very far, very close to ourselves. We are all human beings who are sometimes far and sometimes close and sometimes both far and near at the same time.

Easier said than done

Three years after the countless successes of “Too Far, Too Close”, going for “Easy” may be considered a kind of madness or inattention to the relations of Iranian cinema. How attractive is it to narrate the daily life of a housewife and this time to show the doubts of a human being, even if it is accompanied by the brilliant acting of the judges, to become a movie and maintain the position of a director? Carefully choosing the title of the film may be the director’s main goal. This is life at all; simply. This is the simplicity that makes you stay in the end, and the same simplicity is seen in games, screenplays and directing. The simplicity of these does not mean mitigating the important concepts and efforts of its creators. The hardest way to say something is to say it easily and refrain from speaking. The simple narrative of a daily life has its own complexities. Perhaps the jury of the 26th edition of the festival understood this and awarded the title of the best film of that period to Mirkarimi’s fifth film. This was not a welcome for the judges of the festival for the locals, and the foreigners also liked this film.

Loneliness and skepticism were more pronounced in this film, and the twinning with the main character was not specific to women, and the human view of these two concepts made it possible to look at this issue beyond gender disputes.

A world of sugar

The best Mirkarimi film ever? His most complete film? His most popular movie? If the answer to one or all of these questions is no, the importance of a “sugar cube” can still not be easily overlooked. Expressions such as “most Iranian”, “most indigenous” and “most storytelling” were just some of the critics’ definitions at the time of the film’s release. If we had not seen the presence of many characters in Mirkarimi’s films before a cube of sugar, here is the revenge of all of them. The desert seems to be pleasant for Mirkarimi, and after a very long, very close time, the Yazd desert hosted a fascinating story to see people up close. If it simply had a main character, an old garden in the heart of Yazd will host characters who each have the main role for the story and not just “friendly” with the playwright Javaherian has the main focus. “A Cube of Sugar” is sweet and fascinating, both when it was seen in the cinema and later when we saw its shortened version on TV. People saw themselves and their families in this film. Love, loneliness, tragedy, religion, family and being together were the things that Mirkarimi put in front of the audience in his most important film. We will see everything he said before this film and everything he said later in this film. Light, darkness, and color have their own functions, and each is supposed to carry and convey its own semantic burden. Religious beliefs are still present in Mirkarimi films, and children are important in their own right, and the focus on the family remains sacred. The existence of different perspectives in a home is recognized, and it so happens that the same different perspectives come together in moments such as joy and sorrow. The first Iranian 16 mm film was the official representative of Iran for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 85th Academy Awards, and it was a huge success at the box office. Something that had happened a little too far before.

90s and today’s girl

After the remarkable success of “A Cube of Sugar” and of course his political activities, Mirkarimi’s role changed in the 90s of Iranian cinema. He moved into executive work this decade. Of course, in these 10 years, he has been producing and writing films that he did not make himself, but in general, we do not see any significant traces of him in this decade. “Today”, an ordinary and not simple film by this director, was now cooked. There were more traces of political irony, and social and political issues were intertwined. This path took on a different color in “Dokhtar”, but Mirkarimi still had important issues and concerns. “Sweet Palace” in 1997 can be considered the closest film to his cinema. Where the family goes along the road and the traffic police are not spared from the jokes of the political director of the film and all those accessories and concepts that the director is interested in come together. The presence of children, the solitude of people, the destinies of people tied to each other and love different from what is presented as love are other features of Mirkarimi’s ninth film.

Reviewing Mirkarimi’s work as a director shows a clear path; A path whose components are obvious and purposeful. Man is as far as he is in this path. As important as it is, it does not matter at all.