by WAHID AZAL
With each passing year, Iranian film and cinema appears to be going from strength to strength, with producers, directors and screenwriters alike offering better and better content to their audiences and in so doing delving deeper and deeper into germane topics once deemed verboten for open consumption on the screen. This industry has also fine tuned over the past thirty-seven years a uniquely Iranian form of film noir that is capable of tackling a wide range of topics simultaneously while offering multifaceted commentary (whether by symbolism and metaphor or even openly without such devices) on a range of issues and questions, such as the class conflict endemic during the Pahlavi era’s modernization efforts where modernism and europeanity were synonymous together with a toxic and abusive elitism; while, in contrast, traditionalism and cultural authenticity stood at the opposite pole. This specific question was also one of the main themes covered in the late Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s (d. 1969) momentous essay entitled Westoxication/Occidentosis (gharbzadegi): an essay that literally set the tone for a whole generation of post-1953 activists leading up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
With that said, I have lately been watching the ongoing Iranian series ‘Shahrzad’ which so far has me spellbound because it resonates with so much that Al-e Ahmad was talking about. First, though, note the name connected to the title of the story here which is a direct reference to the chief female protagonist of the 1001 Arabian Nights which this series — in veiled terms as well as openly — often refers to. Our own main character in this story (played by Taraneh Alidousti) is also named Shahrzad, through whose eyes and experience an entire tumultuous narrative of love and betrayal, marriage and divorce, birth and death, crime and punishment, justice and injustice, and especially ‘class struggle’ unfold. The setting is 1950s Iran during the immediate period of the consolidation of the Pahlavi dictatorship following the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh and his democratic nationalist government. The series is directed by Hasan Fathi with its screenplay written by both Hasan Fathi and Naghmeh Samini. Other stars include Shahab Hosseini (playing the character “Qobad”), Ali Nassirian (“Bozorg Agha”), Mostafa Zamani (“Farhad”) and Parinaz Izadyar (“Shirin”). Twenty-six episodes have aired as of the week ending on 22 April 2016 and more are on the way.
The Plot
The plot follows the storyline of Shahrzad who is a medical student at the University of Tehran. Her fiancé is Farhad who is a student of Persian literature as well as being a leftwing nationalist journalist and activist who works for a newspaper with openly pro-Mossadegh sympathies. Together they frequent Tehran’s famous Cafe Naderi, which during the 1950s served as a meeting hub for nationalist and leftwing intellectuals and university students opposed to the Pahlavi regime. The families of Shahrzad and Farhad are close, with the fathers of the two being best friends. Both fathers of Shahrzad and Farhad are also intimate cronies (i.e. Iranian goodfellas) to a leading Tehran mafia figure known as Bozorg Agha (Mister Big), the chief patriarchal figure of the Divan-Salar (crime) family, to whom they owe their livelihoods.
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