This is an ingenious, scathingly ironic, highly critical allegory about conditions today in Iran, written by the director, Mohammad Rasoulof. Nearly the entire drama takes place on an old, disabled oil tanker that is very slowly sinking into the sea. The ship is crammed with people of all ages and varying life stations, though there does not appear to be anyone on board who's rich.
There are also animals, people tending vegetable gardens, a cleverly rigged cell phone service. Everyone is put to work, has a role to play. A wheelchair bound young man with cerebral palsy manages the rickety lift that transports people and goods up and down to the water line. A youngster ("Baby Fish") picks up small fish trapped below decks and returns them to the sea.
The enterprise is run better, micromanaged - with an iron hand by Captain Nemat (Ali Nassirian). He's everywhere: checking out every worker on the job, greeting newcomers and settling them in, brokering marriage contracts, tending to the needs of the ill and impoverished, ordering tools and goods from the mainland on his cell (he's the only one aboard with a personal phone), dickering with the ship's owners, who want to evacuate everyone and sell the old hulk to a scrapper.
Unbeknownst to them, a major source of income for this floating colony is torching away pieces of the vessel and selling them to a scrapper. The costs of goods like purchased food and medicines is deducted from people's pay, like a company store operates.
There is a school aboard ship, run by an enlightened, middle aged teacher who is keenly resourceful. For example, he makes his own blackboard chalk sticks using old bullet casings for molds, a marvelous spin of the traditional image of turning swords into ploughshares. This school is no madrasa: he teaches natural science and the 3 R's to a coed lot of kids of all ages (a family arrives with three teen daughters, none of whom has ever been to school, the teacher quickly learns).
Capt. Nemat is not happy about this school or its teacher's ways. He bickers with the teacher about the latter's measurements that demonstrate how rapidly the ship is sinking: at the rate he estimates, it will only stay afloat for a few more years. Nemat dismisses this as a spurious finding. He finds any pretext to interrupt classes. One day it's a ship-wide celebration. Another day it's a need for the kids to aid in a special work project. Still later Nemat insists that two donkeys must be housed in the classroom.
Nemat also insists that women wear burkas, and have traditionally arranged marriages. He metes out harsh punishment to those who transgress the rules, like young Ahmad, who keeps hitting on a girl Nemat deems too good for him, and who later tries to escape the ship. In an act of obvious defiance, the teacher, displaced by the donkeys, draws a chalk face: a woman without a burka.
A major breakthrough occurs: workers are finally able to tap into the oil reserves tanked below decks. Oil in partly filled drums is floated to land and sold. But even with that development, Capt. Nemat cannot fend off the evacuation demands of the ship's owners. So he forces everyone to grant him their powers of attorney in order to wheel and deal on their behalf as he chooses. His choice is to have everyone leave the ship, but not in order to end their isolation.
Quite to the contrary, Nemat directs his people to establish a new home, far removed from civilization, on a bleak patch of desert. They will start over, from scratch. The metaphor for a logical conclusion to radical Muslim fundamentalism could not be more clear.
Subject to the usual caveat that everybody shouts at the top their lungs, even when standing nose to nose, a style that is common and annoying in Iranian film dialogue, this is a sensational film, and one can only marvel that it was made in the first place, let alone exported to the West. My grade: B+ 8/10.
There are also animals, people tending vegetable gardens, a cleverly rigged cell phone service. Everyone is put to work, has a role to play. A wheelchair bound young man with cerebral palsy manages the rickety lift that transports people and goods up and down to the water line. A youngster ("Baby Fish") picks up small fish trapped below decks and returns them to the sea.
The enterprise is run better, micromanaged - with an iron hand by Captain Nemat (Ali Nassirian). He's everywhere: checking out every worker on the job, greeting newcomers and settling them in, brokering marriage contracts, tending to the needs of the ill and impoverished, ordering tools and goods from the mainland on his cell (he's the only one aboard with a personal phone), dickering with the ship's owners, who want to evacuate everyone and sell the old hulk to a scrapper.
Unbeknownst to them, a major source of income for this floating colony is torching away pieces of the vessel and selling them to a scrapper. The costs of goods like purchased food and medicines is deducted from people's pay, like a company store operates.
There is a school aboard ship, run by an enlightened, middle aged teacher who is keenly resourceful. For example, he makes his own blackboard chalk sticks using old bullet casings for molds, a marvelous spin of the traditional image of turning swords into ploughshares. This school is no madrasa: he teaches natural science and the 3 R's to a coed lot of kids of all ages (a family arrives with three teen daughters, none of whom has ever been to school, the teacher quickly learns).
Capt. Nemat is not happy about this school or its teacher's ways. He bickers with the teacher about the latter's measurements that demonstrate how rapidly the ship is sinking: at the rate he estimates, it will only stay afloat for a few more years. Nemat dismisses this as a spurious finding. He finds any pretext to interrupt classes. One day it's a ship-wide celebration. Another day it's a need for the kids to aid in a special work project. Still later Nemat insists that two donkeys must be housed in the classroom.
Nemat also insists that women wear burkas, and have traditionally arranged marriages. He metes out harsh punishment to those who transgress the rules, like young Ahmad, who keeps hitting on a girl Nemat deems too good for him, and who later tries to escape the ship. In an act of obvious defiance, the teacher, displaced by the donkeys, draws a chalk face: a woman without a burka.
A major breakthrough occurs: workers are finally able to tap into the oil reserves tanked below decks. Oil in partly filled drums is floated to land and sold. But even with that development, Capt. Nemat cannot fend off the evacuation demands of the ship's owners. So he forces everyone to grant him their powers of attorney in order to wheel and deal on their behalf as he chooses. His choice is to have everyone leave the ship, but not in order to end their isolation.
Quite to the contrary, Nemat directs his people to establish a new home, far removed from civilization, on a bleak patch of desert. They will start over, from scratch. The metaphor for a logical conclusion to radical Muslim fundamentalism could not be more clear.
Subject to the usual caveat that everybody shouts at the top their lungs, even when standing nose to nose, a style that is common and annoying in Iranian film dialogue, this is a sensational film, and one can only marvel that it was made in the first place, let alone exported to the West. My grade: B+ 8/10.