Dir: Nima Javidi | Cast: Cast: Navid Mohammadzadeh, Parinaz Izadyar, Setareh Pessyani, Habib Rezai, Atila Pessvani, Mani Haghighi, Ismaeel Pourreza, Amir Keyvan Masoumi, Ali Mardaneh | Drama, Iran 100′
Nima Javidi follows his award-winning first film Melbourne with this rather surreal drama that explores the fallout when an inmate goes missing during a prison re-location.
Navid Mohammadzadeh is the laconically draconian prison governor in this bleak but rather poetic 1960s set slow-burner that keeps you wondering if it there’s a mystical message to be gleaned from the strange goings on in this decidedly sinister story made rather enjoyable by Javidi’s dark sense of humour and quirky characterisations not to mention Mohommadzadeh’s charismatic lead performance.
As the chief warden he has been feverishly preening himself for promotion and reacts with a Victor Meldrum-like sigh of resignation when he sees his career progression thwarted by the unfortunate escape of an important prisoner on death row, all under his careful watch during the critical move to another facility, to allow for airport expansion. He orders his guards to keep searching in vain. And while they do so he is visited by a motley crew of characters. The most significant is a stylish social worker, Miss Karimi (Parinaz Izadyar.) who has come to share her belief that the escapee is a framed man. While she delivers her story, the warden is actually sizing her sexually, admiring her feminine attributes – it’s enjoyable to behold this liberal stuff in a contemporary Iranian drama. He follows her visit by wistfully playing seductive music over the tannoy. But there’s a conflict of interests: she is working on the prisoner’s possible release while he’s hellbent on re-capturing him.
While Melbourne(2014), was set with the claustrophobic confines of a cramped appartment where a young married couple about to leave find themselves in charge of a dead baby. In The Warden, is no less tense and enervating despite its vast wide screen images of this remote and decidedly bleak-looking corner of Iran. As the minutes go ticking by a palpable tension arises from the futile search (all ramped up by Ramin Kousha’s saturnine score) and the sinuous plot line presents us with various red herrings that grow weirder by the minute: a message attached to a toad is found by the guard dog in a tumble dryer; a histrionic local woman begs them not to move to another location; and a soothsayer type rants and raves. But none provides a clue as gradually the warden loses his grip and his authority in the rather poignant final scene.
The Shah Pahlavi was still in power at the time that makes the whole endeavour feel decidedly more modern that today’s regime would allow, but The Warden also feels distinctly elegaic as the guards march across the desolate landscape in Hooman Behmanesh’s shimmering widescreen images. MT
LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 2 -13 OCTOBER 2019