The personal is political in director Mohammad Rasoulof's The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, which brings authoritarianism home.
Director Mohammad Rasoulof has long criticized the Iranian government, to the point of being exiled from the country, often depicting the ways his theocratic rulers ensnare ordinary people in ethically compromised and isolated lives. His latest film,, shows how those compromises bear out in the home.
The first half of the film’s 168 minutes plays like a domestic drama baked inside a political thriller. With revolution outside their doors, Najmeh burrows the family deeper into the apartment, reinforcing the reality that state TV depicts. But when Iman’s pistol goes missing, a microcosm of the uprising explodes in the apartment. Suddenly, the government’s crosshairs turn on Iman. Losing a weapon is a jailable offense, and his mania reveals the depths of his paranoia.
Rasoulof mirrors the feminist revolution in the home, showing the progressive needs of society and the mundane ones of its citizens. As we see blurry smartphone footage of women around Tehran removing the hijab in protest, the girls push against restrictions of their own, asking the tailor to make a burka that’s a little more form-fitting. As they make concessions, the limits around them become more repressive.
Eschewing the formal flare of his previous work, Rasoulof finds something more immediate here, a drama that burns like a political thriller and sears like a documentary. As the film speeds into its Hitchcockian finale and we wait for Chekov’s gun to fire, it finds a new unstable ground on the outskirts of society.
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