The eponymous protagonist of Mohammad Rasoulof’s “A Man of Integrity” is a good-looking 35-year-old farmer in northern Iran who gazes on the world with a glare that might reduce by means of metal. From the movie’s first scenes onward, it’s clear that Reza (Reza Aklaghirad) has loads of causes for his enraged visage. Having left Tehran years earlier than after getting in bothered at college, he entered what should have appeared like a lifetime of peaceable isolation elevating goldfish on a farm together with his spouse and younger son. But it surely seems that his rural group is rife with corruption at each degree, leaving him dealing with battles wherever he turns.
A political movie seething with white-hot anger, “A Man of Integrity” has a premise that may work dramatically in quite a few different contexts. You’ll be able to think about it in a traditional Western, with a younger soil-tiller (performed by Jimmy Stewart, little question) dealing with off in opposition to ruthless cattle barons and their bought-and-paid-for constabulary. Or informing a Dashiell Hammett novel a couple of Melancholy-era union organizers battling the corporate goons and employed politicians of a strong mining magnate. Extra just lately, and from a world perspective, the premise has clearly similarities to that of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Leviathan” (2014), a scathing, allegorical indictment of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Like its Russian counterpart, the Iranian movie places its maker at odds with an authoritarian regime that doesn’t take kindly to critiques of its energy. However the official opposition Rasoulof has confronted in recent times and continues to face, solely underscores the daring and significance of his work, because it does that of his considerably better-known compatriot Jafar Panahi. Concerned about the protests in opposition to the so-called “stolen” presidential election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to energy in 2009, Panahi and Rasoulof have been arrested, imprisoned, placed on trial, and given draconian sentences that included not making movies for prolonged durations of time. But, in a means that illustrates the paradoxes and absurdities of life in inventive Iran, the filmmakers have merely gone on training their craft, making movies without official sanctions that invariably are banned in Iran but smuggled out to appreciative audiences at worldwide festivals and arthouses.
Whereas Panahi’s 4 options since 2010, which star the director himself, are sometimes comedian in tone, Rasoulof’s 4—“A Man of Integrity” (2017) is the third, although its U.S. launch follows that of “There Is No Evil” (2020)—are lethal severe dramas that concentrate on notably troubling points of Iranian society. One outstanding high quality they share is that, for movies considered “underground” because of the low-budget, off-the-grid means they’re made, they arrive throughout as polished, typically fairly expansive productions. “A Man of Integrity” actually matches this description. Although evidently filmed removed from the eyes of Tehran’s cinema police, within the part of northern Iran the place the story is about, it incorporates a big solid of characters and ranges throughout a big selection of rural and concrete settings, that are handsomely rendered because of Ashkan Ashkani’s cinematography and Saeed Asadi’s manufacturing and costume design.
Rasoulof’s story proceeds with the deliberate tempo and simmering rigidity of a ‘70s political thriller. Intelligent and determined, Reza faces problems from the outset. With the bank demanding repayment for a loan that has kept his farm afloat, he sells his wife’s automobile however nonetheless can’t fend off the monetary squeeze. In the meantime, recognizing a number of lifeless goldfish within the giant ponds that face his home, he determines {that a} threatening neighbor has interfered together with his water provider. When Reza goes after the person, he ultimately learns that his adversary is a part of a non-public outfit referred to as the Firm that has its tentacles all through the native authorities and is methodically shifting to take management of the land and rights of small-fry farmers like Reza.
All over the place, Reza turns, he’s given the identical recommendation: bribe somebody. Most of the folks providing this counsel are pals or suppose they’re doing him a favor, and Reza’s cussed resistance to the frequent knowledge more and more isolates him from the group. Within the story’s second half, the exterior strain even impacts his household. The principal at an area high school, his spouse Hadis (Soudabeh Beizaee) tries to assist by sending an implicit risk to Reza’s adversary by way of one in every of her college students, however, the plan backfires. And the couple’s son will get right into combat leaves some questioning if the daddy’s combative temperament is being handed on to his male progeny—a theme in Iran’s historic literature that has many echoes in its fashionable cinema.
Whereas many of the stories depict Reza’s interactions together with his household (together with a go-to to a sister in Tehran), his neighbors, opponents, and different members of his group, Rasoulof additionally exhibits him in a variety of non-public moments, together with making and consuming watermelon moonshine and languishing in an underground swimming pool. Reasonably than revealing his ideas, these passages recommend how a lot he needs to flee into desires and cleanse himself of the societal rot that surrounds him.
Although stuffed with dramatic and thematic fascinations, “A Man of Integrity” will not be without its flaws. Some necessary actions occur off-screen, obliging viewers to puzzle out issues that might have been extra clearly offered. Additionally, particularly for non-Iranian viewers, the massive variety of characters and the complexity of their relationships can typically be onerous to parse.
However, the movie’s significance is indicated by the official outrage it provoked. In 2019, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Courtroom sentenced Rasoulof to 1 12 months in jail and a two-year ban on leaving the nation on account of “A Man of Integrity.” Eventually, report, he had not turned himself in, however his troubles doubtless foreshadow others for Iranian filmmakers. That group typically sees its fortunes depending on shifts in authorities, and the comparatively liberal regime of President Rouhani ended the final 12 months with the election of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi. A few weeks in the past, Raisi’s authorities shut down the annual Fajr Worldwide Movie Pageant (a companion to the nationwide Fajr Movie Pageant), as soon as a welcoming beacon to the worldwide movie group. The transfer hardly bodes nicely for Mohammad Rasoulof and the Iranian cinema’s different males (and ladies) of integrity.