Collaborating on a screenplay with Marjorie David, Israeli director Eran Riklis tells a story of academic oppression in Iran, basing his movie on a best-selling memoir by Azar Nafisi.
In 1979, Nafisi (Golshifteh Farahani) and her husband (Arash Marandi) returned to Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini had just come to power, and Nafisi -- along with many other returnees -- leaned toward the notion that a newly liberated Iran offered opportunities for renewal. Nafisi wanted to teach Iranian university students and live in the country she loved, which she left as a teenager to continue her studies.
Hopeful about contributing, Nafisi met with disappointment. What followed her return was anything but a loosening of the tight jaws of oppression. Nafisi faced pushback about refusing to wear a head scarf and her attempts to teach openly and critically met with failure.
After being forced to leave her university job, Nafisi began teaching classes privately to a small group of women who wanted to continue their studies. Eventually, the group got around to Nabokov's Lolita, a book which the hard-core religious rulers of Iran might deem as a perverse endorsement of pedophilia.
The women share their views on books — Henry James' Daisy Miller, for example — but the story also deals with the problems Nafisi's students face as the regime continues to pervade daily life. One student (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) is arrested and subjected to a forced virginity test after an arrest. She was also given a 25-lash sentence.
The movie serves as a guide to the difficulties faced by educated women in Tehran, and a reminder of how oppressive regimes make their presence felt in education.
Farahani captures Nafisi’s the increasing frustration that curdles the optimism and enthusiasm with which she had approached her return to Iran.
The main theme about the way oppression stifles artistic expression are clear, but the movie proceeds in programmatic fashion that seldom catches fire, and we’re left with a useful adaptation of a memoir that chronicles broken dreams and crushed hopes.
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