Well, the first movie I had watched of Tahmineh Milani was "Two Women". As far as i remember, that was also the first Iranian movie i had ever watched. I liked Two Women, for its take on the issue of women rights and their patriarchy in the deeply entrenched Iranian society.
Later when I watched movies by Mohsen and Samira Makhmalbaf, those by Majidi, Bahman Ghobadi, Panahi and of course Abbas Kiarastomi, I found a different genre of Iranian cinema. Milani's movies then seemed to be lacklustre, with high strung melodrama and loud one-sided issues.Also the craftsmanship i could find in the cinema of the others, i found that absent in Milani. Much later I watched and had even read Persepolis which is also about the problems of a young girl with a mind of her own and from a liberal family, in pre and post revolution Iran. Persepolis does not present the issues faced by Iranian women post Islamic revolution as chokingly repressive. Also all the males to be mean, scheming against the liberated, women with a mind of her own and trying to oppress them was also absent. In fact Persepolis presented the Guradian angels as some sole keepers of rules, whereas the men Marjanne knew were much more liberal and had their ways around those rules. Patriarchy was not a pronounced issue in Persepolis. Rather Persepolis points out at the "quixotic" rules prevalent to create the righteous Islamic society. As opposed to this, Milani's movies are somewhat melodramatic and appears to be cliched. The men are usually all wicked and against women's emancipation. All that they think of is subjecting women to continous oppression. Milani however seems to present patriarchy as a jingoistic sentiment in the men and hence steals the credibility out of her movies. The extremist point of view, often one-sided just makes her movies a stimulating high-strung drama of repression on women in Iran, lacking in appeal and subtlity. Hence, often though the issues she highlights are real and may be existing, the essence gets lost due to the broad highlighted demarcation of evil and good, where the men usually always belong to the evil side and women are all prey to the situation and repressed society.
Whereas we have seen in the movies by Majidi, Panahi that people are not only black or white, good or bad and are rather trapped in different situations, social conditionings and their own problems which frame their actions. hence in Baran, Memar cannot be despised for exploiting the Afghan laborers, rather he is also their sole savior giving them work in a geography they are denied entry. In Panahi's Circle, which is an exemplary saga of condition of women in the Iranian society, fleeing the claustrophobic repression, no men appear as evil monster. Rather all the women are seem to be struggling with this invisible yet strong opponent viz. "oppressive rules meant to create a righteous society."
In this respect Milani's movies are less intellectual and hence becomes problematic to beleive.
In 5th Reaction, Milani brings alive a law prevalent in Iran against the widows, Once losing the husband, the women loses control of her children who lawfully belong to their patriarchal side like uncle or grandfather, whereas the mother remains only a custodian and not a legal guardian. The way to claim legal rights to the children can be won only when the woman gets married to her husband's brother or someone from the same family. Apparently, the law is curbed out to enable young widows to remarry, lest be burdened by the responsibility of bringing up children. However the real reason is to wipe them off the husband's property rights. The children can be one way of claiming the rights back and hence their legal rights to the mother is denied. Well, in case she gets married to her husband's brother, things are fine, since the property then remains within the same patriarchial household. And if the woman chooses to remain unmarried and bring up her children on her own, the social denial of her as a single women, makes it almost impossible for her to curb a life for her and her children. And anyways, if the single mother's socio-economic conditions are worse than that of the grandfather, the latter can claim the children back citing denial to the impoverished upbringing of his grandchildren.
This Machiavellian law against the women was questioned in 5th Reaction. Fereshteh (played by Niki Karimi who is almost Milani's alter ego) is suffering a threta of losing her children to her powerful and prosperous father in law after her husband's death. Feresteh works as a contractual tecaher in a private school and also does not earn enough like her father in law. Feresteh's husband had married her against his father's wishes and was the sole source of love and support for her, now dead. Haji, Fereshteh's father in law had alreday planned to take the kids from her unless she marries her brother in law, which she refuses to do. In her struggle, Fereshteh is supported by a group of 5 colleagues-5 women who also seem to suffer from similar oppression from the males in their lives, be it husband or brother or society.
They plead that the reason why they go out of their way to help Fresheteh is that it helps them 'forget' the hardships coloring their lives and through womanly chatter the picture becomes clearer.
One is married to a man she never loved, the other to a captive of the Iran/Iraq war who comes back after 12 years as a celebrated ‘hero’ but he is psychotic. Another is married to a drug addict and the last, and closest to Fresheteh, is married to a man she once saw in a restaurant with his rather youthful secretary yet his only retort was to humiliate her for having spent time away from her home in a restaurant with silly friends!
With the help of her friends Fereshteh tries to flee the country with her children. The movie now becomes a chase game where each one, Fereshteh as well as Haji keep on counting who is one up on the move, the game ending at supposedly the 5th move.
The movie ends with Fereshteh in jail and Haji, apparently subdued come to her for final reconciliation, but with a "condition." It seems that unconditional freedom of mind is denied to women.
The problem areas i find in the movie is all the women unhappy with their men. All her 5 colleagues are suffering from this claustrophobic patriarchy. There was not a single woman who was happy with the men around. This portrayal of men being scheming, egoistic patriarchs screaming at their wives at the cafe in front of others, trying to buy loyalty through affluence and gifts, their constant efforts of confining the women within the 4 walls, depriving them of their own freedom and self esteem all seem to be presented in a high dose and the film takes a preachy tone crying for emancipation. All these women were affluent, educated women and still succumbing to the oppressions hurled at them. The explanation cited was often the societal pressures and their catch-22 situation. However the men never seem to act because of societal rule or situations. It seems that they define the society (by the continuous utterance by haji-I am the law). This lop-sided view makes her argument weak.
In Kambozia Partovi's Cafe Transit, we see the same issue of widow re-marriage. Naseer, Raihan's brother-in-law definitely attempts to put an end to Raihan's independent living. However here the deep entrenched patriarchy the society is conditioned to, seems to play the fundamental role. Naseer has never been brought up to face the idea of being deprived of his patriarchial duties. A woman refusing his help, almost threatens his existence. Hence this issue, re-marriage becomes more real in this movie by showing the real motive of "controlling the lives of women". The moment the baton is lost, the men get enraged by a sense of bereavement. Re-marriage and custody of children is not just then an important issue which needs redressal, rather the focus grows over the larger impending issue of denial to women to take charge. And from a repressed geography this issue then expands everywhere and becomes all pervasive.
As a feminist film-maker as Milani is, we do expect expansion of issues, rather than short-sighted drama which do make block-busters, but never become intellectually stimulating. Adding subtlety to films, i beleive will mke Milani a sensitive and better film-maker and not a pacifist.
Two Women (which i would discuss briefly and is also the movie which established her as a film-maker) is a better movie, but also suffers from the same loop-holes. Two women is the story of two friends, Roya, an affluent Tehran girl hailing from a liberal family and Fereshteh (again played by Niki Karemi) from small town Isfahan, a multitalented ambitious young girl with humble backgrounds and a traditional family. Both are architectural students at Tehran university, during the days of Cultural revolutiom in Iran. We see Fereshteh with her talents and hard work almost sure to curb out a successful carrer for herself. However destiny had something else in mind for her. A stalker changes her life. The stalker smittned by Fereshteh chases her and even throws acid on her cousin suspecting him to be her boy-friend. This enrages Fereshteh's family who thinks her solely responsible for such mishap in the family. This guy chases Fereshteh to her village and there a frightened Fereshteh, trying to flee from this stalker meets with an accident, injuring a kid. Fereshteh's father is furious for such disgrace and once again curses her for bringing this apparent apocalypse to his honorable family. To save the family honor and to escape jail, Fereshteh is married off to Ahmad, who pays for the compensation the court has ordered. Fereshteh finds herself betrothed to a man who is nominally a good husband, and later father, but who absolutely cannot comprehend the fact that she has some needs and desires of her own. Instead, suspicious of her ‘liberated’ ways (he arrives at this conclusion after he finds out that Fereshteh used to speak to male students while at university), he confines her to the four walls of their house. Confined to the duties of a wife and a mother, Fereshteh gradually loses all sense of herself and becomes a cipher, though she never stops fighting against her predicament.
In the film's last scene, Feresteh reunited with Roya, now successful and settled in a career with a loving husband, seems to have lost control of her wits. As her husband lay dying in the hospital, Fereshteh voices out that her love for her husband is like the one a captive has for the jailor. Later on hearing the news of the death of her husband, we find that Fereshteh, the once confident, intellegent girl, who wanted to have a successful life and career is now shattered and harrased and vulnerable to start a life afresh, though she gropes for it. Roya before her stands almost as the culmination of the dream which Fereshteh could not fulfill due to social mores.
Undoubtedly Two Women touches a cord and is more acceptible than 5th Reaction. However the movie still lacks in the portrayal of the stalker, the father and the husband. Once agian society seems to be an embodiment of only such males, who deprive Fereshteh of all that she wants.
Two women's core lies in the portrayal of the plight of intelligent and educated women trapped in the highly restrictive traditional Muslim position of obedient wife to all-powerful husbands. However this powerful thesis is set weak by the film's narrative.The significant male characters - Fereshteh's father, husband, and a stalker who harasses her - are never fleshed-out. They are used to illustrate the power positions of men over women in Iranian society, but we get no sense of them as real people with complicated or conflicted feelings - the humanity gets buried under the symbols.And the solution to arguments for Iranian men is repeatedly depicted as drawing a knife in a threatening manner, as if force and fear is their way of dominance. Hence like in 5th reaction this movie too suffers from this one-sided biased portryal.
Just one last sentence before I end- Milani's work undoubtedly have passion but lacks finesse and style.
However do watch the above movies.
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