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IRON ISLAND
Directed & Written by: Mohammad Rasoulof.
Produced by: Abolhasan Davoodi & Mohammad Rasoulof.
Director of Photography: Reza Jalai.
Edited by: Bahram Dehghan.
Music: Mohammad-Reza Aligholi.
Released by: Kino.
Language: Farsi with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Iran. 90 min. Not Rated.
With: Ali Nasirian, Hossein Farzi-Zadeh & Neda Pakdaman.

Colorful and fluid, Iron Island follows the plight of a self-reliant community inhabiting an abandoned and decrepit oil tanker in the waters of the Persian Gulf, governed by the authoritarian Captain Nemat (Iranian film veteran Ali Nasirian). One of his charges, a teenaged Ahmad (Hossein Farzi-Zadeh), has been caught passing a note to a young woman already engaged to another. Forbidden to come near her again, Ahmad has thoughts of fleeing the slowly sinking ship. He attempts to do so in the middle on the night, stealing a motor boat for the mainland – an affront to the captain’s absolute rule. The captain’s cruel punishment of the apprehended Ahmad, a son-figure for the elder man, complicates the role of the otherwise revered Nemat.

Apart from the ending, the rest of the highly metaphorical drama is pretty much straightforward. A ship stranded in the midst of the Persian Gulf speaks loudly of Iran’s struggle as a country of people in transition who linger in a vast space, waiting. Evacuators who come to force the inhabitants off the ship and on to land might be likened to the West, an outside force attempting to help the Iranians by uprooting their self-reliant society.

Little Fish, a young dark-skinned boy who has been a side-bar character throughout the entire film, suddenly emerges to the forefront at the end, running away from Captain Nemat on the beach and escaping ecstatically into the sunset-lit sea. The average viewer, for the most part untouched by the weight of Persian literary tradition, won’t know this ending refers to the mystical concept of blissful self-annihilation expressed through the poetry of Rumi. In this way, director Mohammad Rasoulof’s film is impressively esoteric.

Can the film be regarded as a substantive, complex piece of art by a western audience who know little of the rich and teeming literary history whence it emerged? If the viewer does not know about the plight of Rostam and Sohrab in Ferdowsi’s The Shahnameh, (Iran’s national epic which forms the basis of literary curriculum in any Iranian school), what will the strange father-son dynamic between Captain Nemat and Ahmad signify, if anything?

In spite of such obscurities, Rasoulof’s daring choice not to follow his character in their new, on-land community was a wise one. He would have made a huge calculation and imposition otherwise. Instead, he chose the route of self-annihilation. Better to merge with the sea in death than to unwillingly define and explain yourself for the sake of others. Parisa Vaziri
March 31, 2006