A Moment of Innocence

A Moment of Innocence, M2K Productions, 1996, directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Starring Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Mirhadi Tayebi, Ali Bakhsi.

Watch the film here: 

As you probably gathered, I graduated with a 2:1 MA in Film and TV Studies last week from Glasgow (pause for applause). Apart from the mountains of debt, amazing people I met and just general awesome experience of doing an arts degree in a place like Glasgow, I picked up a few decent films over the four years of studying them, and I’m going to spend the next few posts talking about my favourite ones, starting with one from my Iranian Cinema course, A Moment of Innocence.  

Iranian Cinema has most in common with high European art film, and if you’ve stayed awake during that last sentence, you’ve done better than me. It’s a difficult world to go into, because although Iranian filmmakers are respected worldwide, censorship laws in Iran (which, simply put, are mental) means that exposure to Western cinema in Iran is severely limited, meaning Iranian cinema evolved into its own style. Another thing to keep in mind is that cinema is a huge deal in Iran; not movies, but proper grown up cinema which would listen to Italian opera and casually refer to Wittgenstein. Everyone in Iran knows who Mohsen Makhmalbaf is and his life story, bringing us round to A Moment of Innocence.

  It may not look it, but this shot will make you cry.

Like, sob for minutes in the most ungainly manner possible.

When he was seventeen, Makhmalbaf and his cousin stabbed a Shah policeman to steal his gun and rob a bank to help fund the revolution. He was released from prison by revolutionaries and became one of Iran’s most successful directors, when one day the policeman finds him, telling Makhmalbaf that the director owes him a job as an actor as payment for the stabbing. The story follows Makhmalbaf, the policeman and the two young actors who play them in the reconstruction of the stabbing as they discover more about each other, the recent history of Iran and what the future holds for the country.

But oooh, it’s so much more than that. Makhmalbaf actually stabbed a man, and the man actually came to see him years later for a job. This basis in reality means that you're constantly looking for truth in the narrative, where real events and people intertwine with fiction and filmmaking. Makhmalbaf plays himself, acting as a voice of God behind the camera and in front of it, giving more weight to the documentary reconstruction interpretation of the film. But Makhmalbaf is not so clumsy as to use mere flashback and narrative constructs to depict the past, no no no. A gentle rush of wind is heard in the periphery and suddenly the young actor is no longer himself, but a seventeen year old Makhmalbaf plotting with his cousin to bring down the Shah, one policeman at a time. It’s an incredible moment, because just for those brief five minutes, it feels like you’re not watching film, but a piece of history.

It’s a complex film, with each scene deconstructing the previous one until it seems that the film falls under its own weight and snaps, the final scene played so intensely straight and for real it’s a chokingly powerful moment. The policeman’s gun is real, Makhmalbaf’s knife is real, the emotions and relationships between the characters are so real that though it’s supposed to be a reconstruction of the stabbing, when the films turns another way, it’s as though history has been rewritten.

This was Makhmalbaf’s intention all along. He has since moved away from his radical ideology and is now friends with the policeman, who is shown to be sympathetic, noble and most of all human. A Moment of Innocence takes an intensely violent period of Iran’s history, but rather than dwell on it and stir up the violent emotions again, the film shows the potential future of Iran as one of peace and friendship. It’s an important message, compounded all the more by the fact the film is still banned in Iran for being anti-revolutionary.

Bloody censorship, eh?