BEFORE: Here's another one that's been on the list for a LONG time - the film came out in 2014 and played at the Toronto International Film Festival (funny how I seem to hit those films the same week that THIS year's festival is taking place...) and I probably put it on my list about four years ago, and recorded it off cable two years ago, and it's been taking up space on my DVR ever since. So, it's just got to go, I need space for about 20 more movies running on cable now, and if I don't make some space, I'm going to start missing out on movies. I've place an arbitrary cap of 225 movies on DVR and DVD, with another 300 to choose from off from streaming services. That's still way too many films to keep track of, but it's usually enough to give me enough choices to keep my chain going. Sure, I could keep constantly letting the list grow, but where would that get me? No, it's better to try to keep it contained somehow, and I only add to both lists after watching a couple movies and freeing up some slots.
Claire Foy carries over one more time from "The Lady in the Van".
THE PLOT: Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari is detained by Iranian forces who brutally interrogate him under suspicion that he is a spy.
AFTER: No, this is not my film chosen to represent the 9/11 anniversary, that's still coming up tomorrow. This is a film about the Iran election of 2009, which many people suspected was rigged by the Iranian government - I know, what a shocker, right? - because the incumbent President, who was unliked by many Iranian citizens, won in a landslide. The challenger didn't even carry his home district, which probably should have been a tip-off - basically, if you're rigging an election, you've got to make it look at least believable. This was kind of a fore-runner of the 2020 U.S. election, only kind of in reverse - the difference being that the Iranian party that was in power rigged the election, which makes sense, that's sort of what you'd expect a dictator to do if they were trying to create the ILLUSION of a free election, hold what looks like an election and tamper with the numbers. The 2020 election in the U.S. was very different, because the Republican party, which was in power, didn't really do a thing to rig the election, not until AFTER the votes were cast - then they accused the Democrats, who were NOT in power, of rigging the election. Umm, and how, exactly did they do that? Oh, right, Jewish space lasers that could somehow flip the cast votes with a magic beam or something. Then the incumbent President broke a bunch of laws by making phone calls to swing states like Georgia and asking the election boards to "find" 11,000 more votes for Trump, which, umm, happens to be illegal, and the courts are working this all out right now, which could be interesting.
I'm sorry if me pointing out that Trump lost the 2020 election and then lied about it and tried to reverse it after the fact comes as news to you, but that only means that you haven't been paying attention. If you don't believe me, let's just put a pin in that for now and keep watching the trial unfolding in Georgia, because with 19 defendants being tried under the RICO statutes, it's a fair bet that one or more of Trump's associates are going to flip and tell all to avoid prosecution. We'll see. Oh, right, the 2009 election in Iran.
Once Maziar Bahari reported on violence being perpetrated against the protestors of the election, the government chose to deal with this problem, not by allowing the protestors to protest, not by prosecuting the officials who beat them up, and not by investigating the election itself, but of course by apprehending the reporters who informed the world about the aggression against the protestors. Because when a story gets out that points out a problem, the quickest way to deal with that, of course, is to silence the reporters - that seems like a good way to handle things in a free and open society, right? Unfortunately Bahari had recently been interviewed for the American comedy news program "The Daily Show", which airs on Comedy Central, and during the interview Bahari had denied being a spy, and then the interviewer jokingly pointed out that's exactly what a real spy would do, to deny being a spy. Bahari then had a tough road ahead of him, because he had to explain to his Irani interrogators what "comedy" was, and they didn't quite understand. Yes, a real spy would deny being a spy, but so would someone who is NOT A SPY, and they chose not to see the situation as such.
Of course, Bahari was not a spy, and the non-spy organization he was reporting for was Newsweek, but in defense of his Irani interrogators, they live in a country where the government also controls the media, so naturally they didn't understand that a news organization could be independent and in a position to report on a story in a fashion that a government might not like. Or perhaps just anyone who didn't agree with the government could be called a spy and thrown in jail, that's another likely explanation for what happened. So Bahari spent 118 days in prison, and then even when he went on TV to discredit his own reporting, and read an obviously scripted message, suggested by the government stating that the election was fair and legal, they still kept him in prison after that and gave him a few more beatings for good measure, because that's what dictatorships do, they control not just the elections but the narratives about the elections, which is why Putin won the last election in Russia with an overwhelming 110% of the votes cast. Sounds about right, what could be wrong with that?
Not only did it take me much too long to get around to watching this movie, it also took me much too long to figure out that Bahari was imagining his father speaking to him in his jail cell. I guess I assumed this character was really there, and was his attorney giving him legal advice on how to resist the torture or how to go along with his interrogators to get released sooner. It didn't even occur to me that this character wasn't really there, but that would have made much more sense, because what is the likelihood that the Iranian government would allow a suspected spy to have a visitor, or to have his lawyer present in his cell? So I really should have picked up on this sooner, I'm embarrassed that I didn't.
But the bottom line is that this may be a very important movie, in terms of global politics, but I just didn't find it to be a very entertaining one, and that's what I base my scores on. So I'll cut it some slack, and ultimately I'm glad the truth came to light, but is this a film I'd plan to watch again? No, not really. Just clearing it off the books tonight, which is long overdue. Just 12 more films now until the horror chain starts, and then 57 until Christmas.
Also starring Gael Garcia Bernal (last seen in "The Mother"), Kim Bodnia, Haluk Bilginer (last seen in "W.E."), Shohreh Aghdashloo (last seen in "The Promise"), Numan Acar (ditto), Dimitri Leonidas (last seen in "The Monuments Men"), Golshifteh Farahani (last seen in "Extraction"), Arian Moayed (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Amir El-Masry (last seen in "Lost in London"), Jason Jones (last seen in "All About Steve"), Nasser Faris (last seen in "House of Sand and Fog"), Kambiz Hosseini, Ayman Sharaiha, Zeid Kattan, Alex Klaus (last seen in "King of Thieves"), Amir Rahimzadeh, Mohammad Abdel Raheem, Miles Jupp (last seen in "The Man Who Invented Christmas"), Andrew Gower, Ed Ward, Jonathan Hopper, Bassam Hanna, Nafisa Ghazi, Ahmad Massad, Hamza Al-Muhaisen, with archive footage of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hillary Clinton (last seen in "Respect"), Leonard Cohen, Ayatollah Khomeini (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Rachel Maddow (last seen in "Running with Beto"), Bob Simon,
RATING: 5 out of 10 satellite dishes
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