'Rosewater,' Directed by Jon Stewart
Among its virtues, 'Rosewater,' the directorial debut of Jon Stewart, is an argument for filmmakers to start their trade after they've looked beyond the limits of their own horizons. This fictional movie tells the story of the real Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-born journalist living in London who was arrested in Iran while covering the 2009 elections for Newsweek. Accused of being an agent for foreign intelligence organizations, he was thrown into the Evin Prison, where he was interrogated and beaten, partly for the surreal reason that he had appeared on 'The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.' Mr. Stewart's interest in the material is obviously personal, but his movie transcends mere self-interest.
Mr. Stewart adapted the movie from Mr. Bahari's 2011 memoir, which was written with Aimee Molloy and published as 'Then They Came for Me' but has been promotionally repackaged as 'Rosewater.' The book's original title echoes the oft-quoted line from the German pastor Martin Niemöller, 'Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.' As a famous call to speaking out (originally against Nazism), it underscores the universal tug of Mr. Bahari's ordeal even as it carries the complicating weight of the Holocaust. 'Rosewater' is the better title, partly because, as Mr. Stewart makes clear, it's the specifics of Mr. Bahari's story - his voice, memories, fantasies, ghosts and abiding love of Leonard Cohen - that distinguishes it.
In interviews, Mr. Bahari has described his ordeal as Kafkaesque. That's a familiar modern shorthand for bizarre, impenetrable nightmares and fitting here given that Mr. Bahari was accused of phantom crimes, like being a Zionist. That's getting ahead of the story, however, which begins in 2009 or maybe, really, in 1979, the year of the Iranian Revolution. Or perhaps it begins in 1953, when the United States and Britain backed a coup d'état that led to the ouster of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran, cementing the shah's power and contributing to the anti-Americanism that - in all its absurd and deadly serious iterations - is spectacularly on display in 'Rosewater.'
Maziar (the Mexican actor Gael García Bernal) is arrested soon after the movie opens, when his mother, Moloojoon (Shohreh Aghdashloo), shakes him awake. Having returned to Iran, he is back in his old bed, surrounded by mementos and memories that will haunt him throughout his time in prison. As he's being driven away, the story flashes back to around the time when Maziar first arrives in Iran intending to cover the coming elections. Mr. Stewart packs a lot into these initial scenes, filling in details about Maziar's life - including the pregnancy of his girlfriend back in London and the dead father and dead sister who remain poignantly alive for him - and setting his personal liberation story within the larger political context of the liberating aspirations of the Green Movement.
This restless telescopic movement - with its back and forth between the long view and the close, the political and the personal - continues as Maziar reports on the election, cruises the streets, conducts interviews and takes the pulse of the people. Working with the cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, Mr. Stewart gives the movie a run-and-gun tremble that's familiar from documentaries and war movies. This visual approach, along with the dusty, churning streets (with Jordan standing in for Iran), swirling crowds and looming images of Iranian leaders, contributes to the you-are-there authenticity that, at first, fights with some of Mr. Stewart's other choices, including casting a well-known Mexican actor as his lead and having the Iranian characters speak in accented English.
Once Maziar is in prison, and the world and its distractions fall away (and Mr. Bernal's over-bright, over-deployed smile dims), so do any qualms about the star. Whatever the reason Mr. Bernal was hired, whether it was a question of getting the movie financed or simply a matter of directorial taste, his intensely sympathetic screen presence suddenly makes sense. And it's in Evin Prison that Mr. Stewart does his best work, specifically in the scenes between Maziar and the man who gives the movie's title its nauseating, sickly meaning, the guard (an excellent Kim Bodnia) whose rosewater perfume can't obscure the stench that wafts off his body and announces his presence to his blindfolded prisoner. 'I could smell him,' Mr. Bahari writes, 'before I saw him.'
Even in prison, Maziar is engaged in political dialogue about Iran, though now also with the dead and not just the living. As days turn into weeks and then months, and the beatings and maddeningly circular, sometimes surrealistically comic interrogations blur, Maziar learns to escape through fantasies and memories. He conjures up his father (a very good Haluk Bilginer), a gracefully stern and ghostly presence who offers advice and gently harangues him. Maziar's sister (Golshifteh Farahani) also appears, offering comfort and guidance. There is insanity inside these walls, but Maziar, having opened himself to the world - to Chekhov, Pasolini and Leonard Cohen - had already freed his mind long ago. The trick, as you learn, was getting the rest of him out, too.
'Rosewater' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Gun violence and beatings.
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