Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Kim Bodnia, and Claire Foy
Distributor: Transmission Films
Runtime: 103 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2015
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This American drama is based on the 2011 Memoir, “Then They Came for Me” by Maziar Bahari, written with the help of Aimee Molloy. It tells the story of the imprisonment in Iran of Iran-Canadian journalist, Maziar Bahari, on charges of espionage, and his eventual release.
Jon Stewart, the first-time director of this film, was a stand-up comedian, who later headed the satirical television program, “The Daily Show” which is featured in Bahari’s memoir and mentioned in the film. Elements of the story have coincidental similarity with the plight of Australian journalist, Peter Geste, who was imprisoned by the Egyptian Government, and has recently been released.
In 2009, Bahari (Gael Garcia Bernai) was detained in Iran in solitary confinement for 118 days because of his activities as a journalist covering events associated with Iran’s presidential election. He spent the four months in Evrin Prison, Tehran, where he was interrogated and treated cruelly. During the course of his imprisonment, live footage was shown on television of Bahari confessing to being a foreign spy.
The evidence Bahari gave to the Western media while he was in Iran interviewing people about the challenge to the incumbent President, was the immediate reason for his arrest and imprisonment. Bahari was sent to Tehran by “Newsweek” to cover the election, but the tape of the interview of Bahari for “The Daily Show” was claimed by the Iranian Authorities to be proof that Bahari was also a CIA spy.
The film gets its title from Bahari’s report that his prison interrogator in Iran was someone who smelled of rosewater, and “rosewater” became the name Bahari gave to his perfumed persecutor (Kim Bodnia). Most of the time Bahari was interrogated, he was blindfolded, and hardly ever saw his captor.
The film makes use of flashbacks, documentary footage of Iranian demonstrations, and comment made about the political events. However, it is in its prison scenes that the film develops a special force. The interaction between Rosewater and Bahari in prison is tense and dramatic. Rosewater hangs over his prisoner, almost intimately, smiling as his blindfolded prisoner sweats and cringes. Physical torture is threatened by Rosewater and it is used. The film develops into a compelling story of the prison ordeal of a journalist, who is subjected repeatedly to physical and psychological abuse.
In prison, the film keeps its focus on the relationship between the journalist and his accuser, and in the close interaction between the two of them, the drama of the movie is intense. “Tortured for the crime of bearing witness”, Bahari admits to accusations in order to save his life. As the film develops it becomes obvious also that Rosewater is a person, who has been pushed to accuse and is conflicted personally about the tactics he is using.
Jon Stewart, the Director of the movie shows the physical violence to Bahari, but the movie accentuates more the psychosocial and psychological elements of the interaction between Bahari and Rosewater. Bahari is taunted, for example, by Rosewater that everyone has abandoned him, even his wife, Paola (Claire Foy), who is expecting his child.
Mexican actor, Gael Garcia Bernal is outstanding as Bahari, and he looks completely authentic in the role. Bernal did that very well in the brilliant “No” (2012)) which gave us a searching analysis of the plebiscite forced on the military Chilean Dictator, Augusto Pinochet in 1988. Here, Bernal captures precisely the role of a mild-mannered, terrified journalist trying to find the courage to get through his ordeal. One extraordinary and very moving scene shows Bahari dancing alone in his cell to a Leonard Cohen song that he remembers as a child, simply to celebrate the fact that he is still alive.
Bahari was eventually released when media pressure, and external political support, convinced Bahari’s captors that his continued detention was no longer going to achieve their aims.
This is a movie that makes a strong emotional and intellectual plea for journalistic freedom. Stewart, himself, hosted “The Daily Show” and it was this show that became the centre of Iran’s spy claims, and thus he has special involvement as the film’s Director. Unfortunately, the film contains some scenes of personal conflicts that are offered up for comic effect, but overall the film is well told, and is a survival story that has special contemporary relevance.
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