In Terrestrial Verses, the sole Iranian entry in the 2023 Cannes official selection, writer-directors Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami have constructed a relevant omnibus of single-take vignettes about the “hellish” everyday life in their tyrannical country.
Grade: B
Each of the interlocking segments depicts a resident of Tehran as they try to reason with a government bureaucrat or another authority figure.
A woman with a lost dog, a small girl performing a TikTok dance in a chador, and a worn-out filmmaker trying to get his movie project off the ground are just three of the characters populating this anthology.
The nine stories give off a powerful cumulative effect as we see the petty bureaucracies and paper-pushing quotidian blocks to working-class life, crushed by a tyrannical regime.
For instance, a new father (Bahram Ark) is told that the name he and his wife has chosen for their infant child, David, is too Western, and unseen lawmen says the government won’t approve their choice.
In most of the vignettes, the interviewers (police or government officials) are behind the camera and never seen.
An eight-year-old girl (Arghavan Sabani) bristles against the traditional garments that are pushed on her by an off-camera saleswoman, wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt under her religious garb while dancing to pop music on headphones.
Another vignette resonates with recent controversies surrounding Iranian filmmakers like Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof,
A frustrated filmmaker Ali (Farzin Mohades) tries to establish a shooting contract with a producing partner after a widespread investor dropout over decades. But he’s told that his script is too critical of the Iranian-Islamic patriarchy and more representative of Western culture, forced to include more stories from the Quran and present a more positive depiction of Islamic rule.
Another harrowing sequence includes a school girl called into the principal’s office after being spotted on a motorcycle with a boy.
The most powerful centerpiece depicts Farbod (Hossein Soleimani), a man trying to get a driver’s license, but he’s investigated about the tattoos on his body, the self-inked scrawls of what he claims is a Rumi poem that turns out to be about binge-drinking.
Near the film’s closing, an elderly woman in hijab implores a policeman to release her missing dog. Who would want to use a Chihuahua as a police dog, she asks, only to be sent away empty-handed.
Iranian actor Ardeshir Kazemi has a silent cameo in the final shot as a “100-year-old man,” as the city outside darkens.
Cultural, religious, and institutional constraints wear down, literally and figuratively, ordinary citizens. The situations faced by the protagonists are specific to Iran, but their implications are universal.
About Iranian directors Alireza Khatami and Ali Asgari
Iranian directors Alireza Khatami and Ali Asgari collaborate after having their first features, Oblivion Verses and Disappearance respectively, selected for the 2017 Venice Film Fest.
They described the process of getting their films off the ground as being like characters in Beckett’s famous play, “Waiting for Godot.” The citizens they sketch in their movie are similarly caught in a perpetual state of waiting under totalitarian rule.
Terrestrial Verses, which premiered in the Un Certain Regard of the 2023 Cannes Fest, is seeking U.S. distribution.
