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Versione 3
Rating: A family man is promoted to examining judge in Tehran, Iran. His wife is happy, but she knows this will require some sacrifices, including a more moderate lifestyle and more careful attention to relations with non-regime aligned people. As a judge, he has no real role; he essentially has to sign what the higher-ups tell him to and sentence what the regime imposes on him. At home, the two daughters, through the Internet, see the revolts of young (and female) Iranians tired of a centuries-old theocratic power. The father, as an examining judge, is given a gun, you never know. At some point, it goes missing.
The director, Mohammad Rasoulof, already the author of interesting works like "Il male non esiste" (2020), multiple times sentenced by Iranian courts (which have never distributed his films in Iran) and have always restricted his work activities, has shot a very beautiful film (even if not perfect, but political pressures and some production subterfuges have certainly clipped its potential) in a state of semi-clandestinity. Without the genius of Jafar Panahi (himself incarcerated) of "Taxi Tehran" (2015) or the sharp, dry eye of Asghar Farhadi of "A Separation" (2011), the director knows how to tell a piece of Iran that becomes, to quote Visconti, a "group of family on an interior."
Not being able to shoot outdoors (the few exterior scenes are not filmed in Iran), he does his best using interiors and a claustrophobic mise-en-scène that, at times, becomes disturbing. The family's story at the core of the work (whose members are known only by their first names, not their surname) is analyzed in every aspect. The father, an examining judge who initially seems to have doubts about the tribunal's way of acting and gradually slides into extreme paranoia until the end, trying to "domesticate" his family by locking them up in a sort of large house bunker. His wife is split between religious fanaticism and the desire to encourage the rebellious spirit of her daughters. While the first part of the film focuses on the portrayal of Iranian revolts (all shot from the web and shown to the audience via smartphone), the second part literally takes flight, with some sequences of strong emotional impact, the most striking of which is a sadistic interrogation where an alleged psychology expert tries to figure out who in the family stole the father's gun (which, having lost it, risks 6 months to 3 years in prison).
Aided by a rhythm that's not very Iranian and much more Western (the almost three-hour runtime doesn’t feel long), the director transports us to a dark world dominated by censorship and violence, where the web seems to be the only escape route (and indeed the father, before confining the family, confiscates the cell phones) and where no one seems to escape divine law, which enslaves and oppresses human beings in a blind game of mirrors where everyone is victim and perpetrator (it is difficult to discern who are the "good" or "bad" guys; even the daughters, despite their desire to rebel, make unwise choices), and the paranoid tunnel the father descends into mirrors the tunnel into which Iran seems increasingly to be sinking. And Rasoulof, defying the ancient Iranian laws that see all possible evil in the West, uses a very Western modus operandi: the first part is almost a chamber play; the car chase sequence looks like it came out of a 1970s American film, and the tense, icy finale is essentially a Western.
Presented at Cannes, the director took a huge risk. As soon as the Iranian authorities learned that the film was completed and available for viewing, they sentenced Rasoulof to eight years in prison, flogging, a fine, confiscation of assets, and revocation of his passport. He managed to escape clandestinely from Iran just in time, avoiding the sentence (on the condition, of course, never to return to his country) and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival.
A film that seeks to give a voice to the voiceless, and if in the first part it seems too undecided about which path to take, in the second part it hits the target's heart and never misses a beat.
The title refers to the sacred fig trees whose seeds fall on the branches of other trees through bird droppings. The seeds germinate, and the roots grow toward the ground. Once the roots are firmly planted in the soil, the sacred fig stands on its own legs, and its branches strangle the host tree. Just like the father in the film, who risks "crushing" his own family without (almost) realizing it.
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