I have been watching a bunch of music related films as is this one but No
One Knows About Persian Cats comes with quite a difference. It is Iranian
and shot without official permission from the government and delves into
the underground music scene in Tehran. It is extraordinarily courageous in
ways we don't fully understand. Rock and rap music are banned in Iran as
are many of the activities that take place in this film. For people to make
this film and to act in it is a risky choice in an authoritarian theocracy
where the distance between freedom and jail or lashes of the whip can disappear
in a moment. In fact, the author of this script and the fiancée of
the director was arrested as a spy and spent two years in jail. The director
is Bahman Ghobadi, another one of the Iranian New Age directors who are always
butting heads with government censorship often having their films shown primarily
in International Film Festivals rather than appearing in Iran. This film
was most definitely banned in Iran. It is a marvelous film.
Shot in guerilla fashion, hand held with abrupt cuts it is constantly on
the move perhaps to give the film a dynamic youthful feeling but also perhaps
because they had no choice but to keep moving to different set-ups. Ashkan
and Negar are a male-female Indie-rock duo who are looking to get out of
Iran to play a concert in London where they have been invited. But they need
visas, passports and a band. They run across Nader, a fast talking hustler
perhaps conman who is into everything and seemingly knows everyone who is
on the fringes of illegality. He knows someone who can get them passports
and visas, he knows someone who can get them a permit to play in Iran, he
knows various musicians who possibly can come with them to London.
The three of them begin a fascinating journey into the underground scene
of music where musicians have to practice in out of the way places where
they will not be heard - a barn, abandoned buildings, on top of a building
under construction, basements and so forth. And in this journey we get to
listen to a lot of music from rock to heavy metal to rap to traditional.
And most of it is really good. These scenes turn into music videos in a sense
- the rap one in particular - but Ghobadi uses his camera to film slices
of life in Tehran to the music - some of it simple everyday scenes, other
times showing abject poverty and misery. These scenes have a purpose. The
cinematography is sharp and quick - often catching just a moment in time
and cutting to something else - but it gives you Tehran, which all the characters
love - the government not so much.
Ghobadi reveals the cracks in this authoritarian society - the cruelty as
in one scene where the couple are pulled over by a cop because they have
an unclean animal in their car - a dog - forbidden and what happens to the
dog offscreen is pretty awful - but also just the way citizens have learned
to navigate this world they live in but are always in fear of the sound of
a siren pulling up to their house. In an American film this would all end
happily but this isn't America.
