A Moment of Innocence (1996)

 

Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Screenplay: Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Cast: Mirhadi Tayebi as The Policeman; Mohsen Makhmalbaf as The Director; Ammar Tafti as The Young Director; Ali Bakhsi as The Young Policeman; Maryam Mohamadamini as The Young Woman

An Abstract List Candidate

 

Everyone knows best how to direct one's young self.

One anecdote I have heard of Iranian cinema, which had always stuck with me though I can no longer remember the source, held that it had entirely skipped Modernism and went straight to post-modernism. Humility however is also a factor I would include, as Iranian cinema in spite of the many factors to consider, how since the 1979 Iranian Revolution the country lived under a government of sever fundamentalism and cinema being continually censored, it is empathetic. Even if A Moment of Innocence itself was banned, and he himself eventually had to make films outside his own country, Mohsen Makhmalbaf does not show any anger here. Even when dealing with a semi-autobiographical work here, about a moment in his youth during the Revolution, stabbing a young police officer as a seventeen year old fundamentalist guerrilla, he goes about it with his most well regarded film in a self reflective way that is a mending of his past.

This film origins from when, during the direction of Salaam Cinema (1995), the now former-policeman approached a drastically changed Makhmalbaf again, that meeting leading to the creation of this work. The opening belies the sense of what I had originally thought of the film, a fictional narrative around the recreation of the real incident, from the first images of a clapperboard with a female voice speaking the credits written on them, by showing that this is actually going to be a fictional tale of the production in recreating this tale, beginning with the policeman as a man in his forties trying to find the house with a green door where Makhmalbaf lives. A daughter of his answers it, saying he is not there, and I immediately wonder whether if it is Samira or Hana Makhmalbaf; tragically, whilst they never made as many films as the father has, everyone in the Makhmalbaf family has directed a film, his wife Marzieh Meshkini a couple of times, Samira sadly a rewarding director who abruptly stopped after Two-Legged Horse (2008), and Hana with three, the first a behind the scenes documentary of her older sister's film she made when she was only fourteen.

The premise is to recreate the incident, where Makhmalbaf's cousin distracted the officer for Makhmalbaf to stab him. The meta-textual game, in lieu to greater emotion empathy, is already established with a light sense of humour in the casting of the young officer and the young Makhmalbaf. Whether merely acted out, there is a charming humour, when wishing to cast a really "photogenic" version of himself who looked like a heartthrob, the officer is paired with a more realistic and awkward figure Young Officer instead, someone who he will eventually bond with as the film progresses. Helping considerably with the film is that Iranian cinema too is assisted by how unique Iran is as a country visually, here with the surprise of seeing a Middle Eastern environment snow covered, including a mosque covered in white, an evocative if subtle look for the film to have for a large portion of its small length.

And said film is charming. There will be a serious side as the narrative progresses, but you even have a digression into cinema itself, a trip to an elder male tailor, initially hostile when he is asked for a police officer uniform from the pre-Revolution era, softened immediately when the youngest Officer says it is for a film. Love for The Vikings (1958), Spartacus (1960) and Kirk Douglas in general is involved, rumours that Anthony Quinn got a face lift to marry Sophie Loren is evoked, and even love for John Wayne playing Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956) transpires. If there was ever any incentive for me now to see that notorious film, Mohsen Makhmalbaf is as esteemed (alongside the tailor) as you can get to recommend it.

The structure makes sense in the idea that, wishing to depict a moment in his past he regrets with a moment of innocence (i.e. recreating the moment here), Makhmalbaf may have realised the double edged sword of interpreting the past with all the issues of bias and forged memory that can be involved, with too much danger too of indulgence and/or tricking the viewer with a version of events which are even subtly distorted by the cinematic gaze even if this film has such a low key and admirable sense of honesty to it. Deconstructing the act of recreating this event, just to film what is merely one sequence in the end, leads to more reconsideration and greater depth being put on what transpired from multiple sides.

With one of the most sympathetic characters, in a film where everyone is shown kindness, being cameraman Mr. Zeinal, who has to deal with wanting to cast a more realistic young policeman at first and also having to continually get the original officer back after he keeps walking off the production, you are getting more than just a role play to exorcise the events, but a contemplation which forces the raw emotion out with said role-play and to a greater truth. This is, in truth, abstract cinematic techniques used in the most gentlest of form for the most moral reason, as nothing in the film requires reading or endurance to decode. The deconstruction is instead abstraction of a generic and complacent form of cinema. You could imagine a much less sincere form of this film is Makhmalbaf tried to recreate his past and (God forbid) he failed to capture any of the empathy I have seen in the works of his I have seen. Instead, this is clever and even playful forms of structural manipulation for a greater good.  

Some of this is time being chromatically out of order, such as an event of the young office being passed by a young woman, the young student chosen to play the cousin, being a repeated scene now from her perspective. The casting of the cousin herself is a distortion, in the dramatised form that is already a layer, of reality and fiction as Makhmalbaf cannot convince his cousin, who was involved and is never onscreen fully, to cast her own daughter as her younger self. Whilst of a friend of the actor playing the young Makhmalbaf plays the cousin, the daughter does briefly play her mother, suddenly during the visit to her mother's house, role-playing with the young Makhmalbaf some time before their plan came into action it is startling. It is abstract.

Makhmalbaf's goal in reality is not to recreate the event, as he deliberately undercuts it, such as (in this narrative where the fictional crew are filming) an actress playing a beggar with a child speaks in French rather than the language requested for the realism, part of the film's fabricated layers to show how difficult it is to even create the film. He clearly wants to reinterpret the event for a greater goal. He has the attempt breakdown on purpose twice. The young Makhmalbaf abruptly bursts into tears in the midst of the recreation, unclear on purpose if as himself the young actor or as Makhmalbaf, wishing not to have to stab an officer as if being forced to by strings, wishing now to help people with bread, used to hide his knife originally. Both Makhmalbafs have taken the route the route between them of idealism of a better world. The original police officer angry at the fact, attracted to the cousin only to be tricked and betrayed, tries to train his younger self to recreate the scene with shooting the young woman, the direction taken wishing to violently destroy the past.

The final shot grew in a new meaning for me when I considered it is not cutting the moment that is meant to be the stabbing. [Major Spoiler] The final shot is the young woman, the young officer off the left of the screen offering her a potted white flower, the young Makhmalbaf on off the right side of the screen offering out bread. [Major Spoiler Ends]. In hindsight, this is meant, at least from my perception, Makhmalbaf ending this scene from his past by turning it into one of peace, even if just cutting and pausing the film, with the end credits appearing on the image, before any violence can transpire.   

 Abstract Spectrum: Calm/Deconstructive/Empathetic/Thoughtful

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low