Crimson Gold

It had been on the Star's critics' pick for weeks. I wanted to see it, but I was ready to be disappointed. So many Iranian festival-movies had proved to be disappointing. It's amazing how all the critics and western art-house moviegoers love Iranian flicks ... and it used to be cool (and I guess still is) for us to like it too, it shows that we understand art movies, we are deep, philosophical, we get the hidden meaning, the bigger picture ... or do we?

To be honest, I don't think Iranian flicks are half as good as these people think they are ... TOO many looooong sequences, too slow a pace, too little converstation. True, it's minimalism, but not all minimalism is art ... or appealing for that matter.

Anyway, so I saw Crimson Gold tonight; Jafar Panahi's award winning and critically acclaimed film. I wasn't surprised ... it had all the same elements: slow pace, loooooong sequences of nothing happening (if the pizza is to be delivered to the fourth floor, they HAVE to show the guy walk up the stairs all the four floors, and as slowly as humanly possible.)

And that's the thing with Iranian movies. They start with so much of these long boring sequences, with so little conversation or dialogue that you get so bored, and then suddenly there's one scene, usually in an eye-pleasing upper class Tehran mansion, and there's very normal dialogue going on ... nothing special ... with mediocre to relatively good acting ... but the mere fact that there's *something* going on, makes you love that scene ... and since those are usually closer to the end, the impression left on you from the movie is a good one.

Like Kiarostami's "Taste of Cherry". So many shots of the guy driving ... doing nothing ... and then that conversation with the Turkish guy. It was nothing special, just a regular conversation, but since nothing had gone on before that, it became such a wonderful and enjoyable scene in the movie (I loved it anyway).

In any case, Crimson Gold wasn't a bad movie, but all those long sequences seriously made it boring ... like comparing it to Lost in Translation, nothing significant happened in that movie either. But you still never got bored. The soundtrack definitely helped, but it was generally so well-composed that when nothing happened you didn't get bored. But they never do that in Iranian movies ... sometimes it almost seems intentional. "Let's bore the viewers to death", seem to be the motto. So, yeah, had the boring scenes been cut off, it would have been a truly good movie.

By the way there were a few cool scenes as far as the Iranian viewers are concerned. One was of these paasdaars waiting outside this party, waiting for the party goers to come out and arresting them one by one. The way the "haaj agha" or cheif of the paasdars were portrayed was pretty cool (typical grumpy arrogant animal). Also, the main character drinks what seems to be a half-bottle of wine in the movie, and certainly gets drunk, which I think is a first in Iranian movies (well the movie is banned in Iran anyway, so ... wouldn't make much of a difference).