The Seed of the Sacred Fig Mohammed Rasoulof (Iran/Ger; 2024)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig Mohammed Rasoulof (Iran/Ger; 2024) Soheila Golestani, Missagh Zareh
Is that a gun in your pocket
Mohammed Rasoulof’s film is a response to the oppression of women in Iran and the regime’s brutal reaction to civil protest against its core theocratically justified laws. However Rasoulof to some extent models the film satirically on the ‘Hollywood Western’ which genre like theocratic Iran, is often marked out by the non-existence of women, or at least their relegation to shadow status. So ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig Tree’ is characterised by the theme of the ‘gun’ ‘cabin fever’ and the final ‘shoot out.’
‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ (Sacred Fig) is a film made in a spirit of complete defiance of the Iranian Islamic State. Complete in that Rasoulof makes any film at all in that he has been banned by the Revolutionary Courts from film making (hence the film was shot in secret); complete in that his film is not an oblique or indirect attack on the regime. Both in subject matter and script ‘Sacred Fig’ comprises an uncompromising sustained frontal assault on both the values the Islamic State and the hypercritical bureaucratic apparatus that enforces and sustains them both through intimidation and the promiscuous use of the death sentence.
After ‘Sacred Fig’ is discovered by the authorities to have been produced and subsequently entered into Cannes Festival 2024, there’s no way back for Rasoulof. He was sentenced to an eight year stretch, sentenced to being flogged, sentenced to the confiscation of all his property. He has managed to escape Iran and find refuge in Europe (using the sort of underground route that in ‘Hit the Road’ Panah Pahani made a film about). Given the long reach of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard he will always be at risk of assassination by their agents.
This is the film of a brave man, prepared to die for his open hostility and opposition to the regime. Likewise, unthinkably brave everyone involved in the film, in particular its key players Soheila Golestani, Missagh Zareh, Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki and cinematographer Pooyan Aghababael. At risk from the vengeful state judiciary they have put life and limb on the line. As far as is known most of the above are still in Iran.
‘Sacred Fig’ is in two parts which comprise a ravelling of the plot and an unravelling, an intensification and a climax. In the opening pretitle sequence we see a series of shots: a close shot of bullets rattling down onto a table leading through to Iman (antogonist) driving to a remote shrine where he recites a prayer of thanksgiving. This section introduces the change in Iman’s work situation from which point the script plays out the forces unleashed by widespread women’s protests consequent on the killing of Mahsa Amini whilst in police custody.
Iman (sic) has been promoted and he now a judge/investigator for the Revolutionary Courts. Part of his work will involve signing off the death penalty for ‘politicals’ hence his identity and work are kept secret. Just in case, he is issued with a gun for self protection. Cue the vectors of intensification as through their smart phones Iman’s two daughters Razvan and Sana watch the eruption of protest caused by Amini’s death. These protests also cause a rapid increase in Iman’s workload as he is called on not to investigate incidents arising out of the protests, but rather to rubber stamp the increasing number of death sentences passed by the courts.
To go with his new corporate theocratic status Iman has been given a new spacious apartment in a block reserved for special servants. Like any employee of a large company or indeed a monolithic dictatorship, those who do the dirty work get well looked after. But Iman’s new dwelling, which he shares with Najmeh his devout wife and his two daughters, becomes a strange incubator of all the contradictions and oppositions that riddle contemporary Iran. As the pressure at work ramps up, the increasing issuance of death warrants starts to exert a toll on Iman, and then something disconcerting happens: HIS GUN DISAPPEARS.
This is Rasoulof’s strategic plot device. It’s a sort of Hollywood antithesis. As Raymond Chandler famously quipped when you want to ramp up the action in a movie, get a man with a gun to enter the room: everything changes. Here the opposite occurs: suddenly a man is without a gun: everything changes. From becoming a de facto symbol of male authority the gun becomes a defacto symbol of male weakness. A strange equalisation is premised as Iman supported tacitly by his boss tries to find out what’s going on, which of his family (if any) has the gun. Although the apartment is searched high and low the gun is not found.
Events become more violent. One of Iman’s daughters Razvan, is with her friend who is seriously injured by police buckshot when they are out on the streets of Tehran. Likewise Iman’s boss increasingly concerned by Iman’s inability to regain possession of his gun, organises a ‘discrete’ interrogation of the women by one of the department’s specialists. But despite this intimidation and being subjected to the tricks of the interrogation trade, the gun continues to elude the men.
The ravelling up section engenders a growing the feeling of claustrophobic paranoia characterising relations between the members of this small family. (a claustrophobic paranoia that perhaps replicates the underlying mood in Iran) Hermetically sealed in the apartment with only a small uncurtained section of a window out of which to peer at an increasingly unpredictable world, they are trapped between the violence of the male validation of ‘God’s Law’ and the women’s passive resistance. The tension evolves out of this power disequilibrium: Iman’s ranting opposed by the tacit silence of the women whose communicative response is mainly mediated through their body language and their eyes. Iman’s wife plays a pivotal schizo role in this situation. Although pious and supportive of her husband, she’s torn between her sense of wifely duty and her instinctive desire not just to protect her daughters but to see that the violence they are all experiencing directed against women, can’t always be justified.
For his climactic end section Rasoulof transposes the action. Iman removes his family from Tehran, drives them to a ruined abandoned city. At this point the actors are set down in a mythic primal landscape and arriving here the gun ‘issue’ is stripped back to its essence without subterfuge. It is the male pitted against the women. Iman finally convinced that one or perhaps all of the women is lying to him and has the gun, drops the mask of polite circumspection and subterfuge, resorting to the unalloyed male capacity for violence. He assaults his wife and daughters locking them up without food or water. By this stage we have seen that Sana the youngest daughter has the gun, and that perhaps the two girls have been complicit both in taking the gun and successful in their protestations of bemused but affected innocence. Perhaps even Najmeh at some point knew or realised the truth, but kept ‘mum’.
As Iman’s violent rampage of frustration escalates, Sana escapes and frees her sister and mother. Following a chase through the ruins, there is finally a ‘high noon’ moment, an absurdist replaying in mock tribute to all such movie tropes, where Sana and Iman (who has been given another gun by his boss) face off against each other with their guns: the final gun fight. Slowly approaching her, Iman in classic mode challenges Sana to shoot him. Her guns barks out its defiance but as Sana fires the ground beneath Iman’s feet collapses and he vanishes into the ruins down below.
So at the last Rasoulof signs off with Marxist-type philisophical observation:
What begins as tragedy ends as farce.
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk