Everything you want to know about the movie “Beiro” / A story about the hard life of Alireza Biranvand

According to the film correspondent of Fars News Agency, these days, on the eve of the World Cup, the movie “Biro” which tells the life story of Alireza Biranvand, the defender of our country’s national football team, is being screened. This film, which was shown for the first time at the 40th Fajr Film Festival, is now widely available in the country’s cinemas to host cinema and football enthusiasts.

Any analysis of a work of art requires the critic to look at the work in question from different angles and dimensions, from the structure of the work to its content. In this report, however, we will try to look at the quality of the movie “Beiro” from the two perspectives of “football” and “regional identities (subcultures)”. To achieve this goal, we need to delve into both the story and narrative of the film as well as the cinematic structure of the work.

Narration of the hard life of Biranund

In the first decades after the Islamic revolution, a handful of sports films were made, in the last decade, however, many films were made in this genre, which the public had a critical view of the current situation in the country’s sports, the film Biro, although in some layers it criticizes the atmosphere that governs football. The country pays, but with all these narratives, there is hope and effort and ability, the desire to succeed after deprivation. A biographical story aimed at representing the life of a footballer who dazzled in the 2018 World Cup.

Alireza Biranvand’s life, from childhood to his first official contract in football, from ups and downs and many hardships to his confrontation with Ronaldo’s penalty. From deprived childhood to love and trying to reach unattainable peaks.

Alireza is a footballer who spent his childhood and adolescence in deprivation and absolute poverty, grew up in football and traveled to Tehran to achieve his goal, and finally made it to the best teams in the country and became the first goalkeeper of Persepolis and the country’s national team for many years. Meanwhile, the turning point of Biranund’s life was undoubtedly the 2018 World Cup in Russia. When he blocked Ronaldo’s penalty kick.

It was after that that many media turned their attention towards Alireza and went more to his childhood and adolescence. The story of Biranvand’s hard life became the subject of prestigious publications in the world during the World Cup, and now his life has become the subject of the movie “Beiro”.

*Director and producer of the movie “Biro”

In his previous experiences, Abbas Mirzaei, the director of the Biro film, has won an award in the Manifestation of National Will section at the 37th Fajr Film Festival. The producer of the film is Majid Barzegar, and 40% of its production was financially supported by the Farabi Foundation.

* “Beiro” a film faithful to the rules of the genre

The story and narrative of the film Biro is based on the life of Alireza Biranvand. Biranvand came from a deprived village and region and continued his way despite all the opposition, in this uphill path he does everything to achieve his goals.

In the difficult path of his life, when he travels from Lorestan to Tehran for the love of football, Biranwad has gone through various experiences. He has swept, worked in a car wash, slept in a restaurant and even spent many nights on the side of the street until morning so that Bell could pursue his goal.

If we want to look at the movie “Biro” from the perspective of genre, the rules of the genre, i.e. epic creation, high use of music and exaggeration, have been observed, however, the result is a bit like comic strips and full of designed and fantasy exaggerations. In general, Biro’s film is aimed at impressing the audience, and although the rules of the genre have been observed, it is not an intellectual work and has not been very successful in its intended direction. In the following, we will discuss two neglected topics in this film.

* Weaknesses of the movie “Biro”/ Forgetting the culture around the hero of the story

Some critics believe that in this film, the audience is on the side of a hasty biography. “Biro’s process from the beginning to the middle is very superficial and childish, and it is closer to children’s and teenagers’ cinema than to the adult audience. The special effects and sound effects are very basic and clumsily made and remind the audience of the football series. These, along with the humorous atmosphere of the film, tells the audience from the very beginning that it is not a serious work. But as the film progresses, its dark and dark side is revealed as its humor fades.

Although the film deals with the hardships of Biranvand’s life, it digs into the ugly, violent and even dirty face of football and the mafias involved in it. From the coaches’ jealousies to the manipulation of the players’ documents to trying to undermine the character of the team’s players to the contemptuous looks at even talented citizens.”

Apart from these criticisms, according to the author, the main weakness of the film can be related to the lack of research in the two fields of “football” and “sociology” of ethnic groups. Today, many works of art have become research-oriented; That is, before doing the work, the artist organizes deep studies on the subjects of his artwork. Rejecting the main signs of the film clearly reveals that Biro’s movie lacked a detailed research section, because if this had happened, it would have been rejected in the field of the film as well. Therefore, it seems that the main problem of Biro’s movieForgetting the culture around the main hero of the story” Is.

Football is a kind of identity theater – family, tribe, city, nation; But the presentation of identity in its constantly twisted, changing, fading and doubled forms. However, Biro’s film has ignored all these assumptions and placed them in parentheses. Therefore, in this film, we are faced with exaggerated characters, without identity and without the slightest trace of the geography and texture of life, and this has caused the film to suffer a fundamental crisis. An artificial subculture, an artificial father, and finally an artificial hope cannot express the lived experience that the hero went through in the real world.

* “Beiro” movie is far from “football essence” and “regional local identity”

Biro’s movie is far from the two main themes that the film follows: far from “The essence of football” And “Regional local identity“; That is, it seems as if the director does not have much knowledge of what football is, nor does he know the local identity of the region where his hero comes from.

Although Biro is in the sports genre, he has reduced football to a highly individual matter and has sacrificed the collective spirit of football to highlight his hero. A hero who is extremely originless.

To know the cultural background of Alireza Biranvand, it is enough to have a short encounter with these players. Biranvand’s interviews in recent years have always been with the appearance and manifestation of Biranvand from a specific cultural situation.

* Weak characterisation

Biranvand tribe, as one of the big clans of Lorestan, like many other parts of this province, is full of rituals, games and the lived world; But Biro’s film has not only ignored them, but has reduced all that rich and ancient culture to the character of the father, who is exaggerated and comically misbehaving and a bully. A father we don’t know anything about except that he is poor and very hot-tempered.

All the other characters in the film are in the same situation. An uncle who cannot be compared to his father by any measure or standard. A mother who has no other choice but to shed tears and be an emotional cliché, and also Biranund’s cousin (wife) who is completely separated from her bio-geography. He doesn’t even have a Lori accent and speaks Persian. Although the father’s language or accent is not related to Lori. Biro’s mother is also anonymous and homeless, and this feature casts a shadow on each character.

* The local game of “Dal Pran” and throwing hands

To clarify the story more precisely, as a familiar example, we will discuss the throwing of strange hands by Biranund. In the film, in the very first game after being in Tehran, this throwing of hands is highlighted, but because the film has ignored the local ethnic context, it does not know the reason for these unique throwing and therefore does not explain it to the audience. This is a small example of the absence of the lived world of the main hero of the film. which we mentioned earlier as “forgetting the culture around the main hero of the story”.

Biranvand’s hand throws that seem to be rooted in his life world

In this movie, the audience suddenly sees a teenager who throws the ball into the opponent’s goal. While Biranvand has pointed out many times that these throws have their roots in some native and local games. Due to the geographical conditions, many games of lers are associated with stones. It seems that these games were ritual rituals (such as praying for rain) that lost their ritual and ritual nature over time, and today they are referred to as local games.

In fact, the local game of “Dal Pran”, which is defined entirely based on hand strength and stone throwing, has made this teenager throw such a powerful force.

A picture of the local game Dal Pran in Lorestan province

This one example is enough for many micro-gross subjects of the film. From the entire nomadic culture of Biranvand’s life, the filmmaker only shows a very wrong and caricature-like dance that is repeated several times in the film.

*Lack of rich Larry/Leki music

Another point that proves the lack of research is not using the rich music of Lorestan. The music of Lorestan is so closely connected with the life of the nomadic people (work music, mourning, sur, etc.) that it is impossible to imagine them without each other; But in Biro’s movie, this capacity is also put in parentheses and ignored.

You can’t claim to make a “portrait” film, but it represents the main figure and the hero without the slightest relation to his social and cultural status.

* Paying attention to the concept of “hope” without a cultural context

It is true that Biro’s film talks about having hope and trying to achieve success, but this hope and this effort are defined without any cultural context; And therefore it cannot be believed. Biro’s film could lead us to a boutique of time, space, identity, drama and all those elements that are defined under “mysterious sensual life”, but due to the lack of proper research in the script, it has remained incomplete.

* Lack of “football culture” in the film

As mentioned, in addition to the surrounding culture of the hero’s life, “football culture” has also been neglected.

Football is about many things. So many complex, contradictory and contradictory things: memory, history, place, social class, family identity, tribal identity, national identity, the nature of groups, fellow players and fellow fans, and the often violent but sometimes peaceful and admirable relationships between our group and other groups; But none of these features were seen in Biro’s movie.

*Football is not individualistic/ the purpose of the film has been forgotten

The fact that football is so important to some of us is precisely because of this collective experience at its core and the clear picture it gives of society. I believe that the way to live and be truly successful is through group effort, so that everyone works together, everyone helps each other, and in the end everyone shares in the rewards obtained. Perhaps this is the most fundamental and profound contradiction of Biro’s film.

The form of football is shaped by the community, collective spirit and group action of players and fans, and at the same time, under its material layers is money. Football has completely become a commodity and has sunk into the financial support of brands. Contrary to what is seen in Biro’s film, football is not individualistic.

There is no doubt that it is dominated by a star-breeding and celebrity-oriented system through which the players want to achieve economic independence as much as possible. But football is not only the story of individual players. No matter how talented they are; In football, it is the team that matters. Football is inherently a group, and in it, the movement of the players who play together and form the fluid space network of the team is important. With these details, each team can rely on really talented individual players, or less talented individuals who act as a cohesive group. In the meantime, the general rules of the common language of football, which are spoken during the game, are important.

This is one of the most famous photos of Alireza. At the very beginning of his presence in Tehran, he put aside the famous gesture Freedom Square records. Hope for the future can be seen in this picture. It is as if he has come to make his own destiny.

It is true that football is a stage where the sometimes obscure mechanisms of destiny are revealed. However, in the final analysis of Biro’s film, he has not been able to approach the core, texture and existential matrix of Alireza Biranvand’s personal experiences in the same way they happened. Therefore, it does not shine a new light on our way of seeing, so that we can look at his adventures from a new angle and a new perspective. The problem is not only that we are faced with a minor deviation, but that the whole purpose of the film has been forgotten.

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