By Ali Moosavi.
To me this is human nature…. It’s knowing the roots of things, knowing the history of things. It doesn’t erase the pain but that’s how to face the world: with empathy.”
—Alireza Khatami
Next year’s Oscars mark a unique achievement for Iranian directors. No less than four films, submitted by four countries, for the Best International Film Oscars have been made by Iranian directors. These are entries by France (It Was Just an Accident by Jafar Panahi), Canada (The Things You Kill by Alireza Khatami), Tajikistan (Black Rabbit, White Rabbit by Shahram Mokri) and of course Iran (Cause of Death, Unknown by Ali Zarnegar). Apart from Mokri’s film, I have watched the other three and loved all of them. Knowing Mokri, I’m sure that his film will also be a serious contender.
For me, the one which challenged me most is Alireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill. It really pushes and disorients its audience in a way that I have seldom seen in recent times. The film, which was made in Türkiye with a Turkish cast, starts as a family drama. However, it suddenly and totally shifts gear and becomes a dark, psychological thriller with lies, deceit, politics, patriarchy, violence, murder and, most startlingly, changes and merges of identity, both psychological and physical. This change and shift in tone is so sudden that it hits the audience like a punch to the temple! It also allows us to see two different characteristics of the same person, one gentle, doubtful and forgiving while the other is ruthless, determined and vengeful, in a way that is both challenging and rewarding. The main protagonists are Ali (Ekin Koç) and his wife Hazar (Hazar Ergüçlü) who are hoping to have a child but without success so far, Ali’s father Hamit (Ercan Kesal), with whom Ali is not on good terms, to put it mildly, and Reza (Erkan Kolfçaöstendil), a stranger who appears out of nowhere in Ali’s farm to offer a helping hand in return for a meagre pay. The interaction between Ali and Reza is at the core of the film.
I started my interview with Alireza Khatami by recalling my reaction after watching his debut, Oblivion Verses, back in 2017.
I want to go back from back to 2017 when I watched Oblivion Verses which really impressed me and I was shocked to see it was made by an Iranian writer-director, his debut no less, set in Chile and in Spanish language. I’ll just read the first sentence of what I wrote at the time: Up to now, I was not familiar with the name Alireza Khatami, but after watching Oblivion Verses I will remember that name. This is a truly memorable, poetic film. How did it all start for you?
Thank you for your kind words. I’m an indigenous member of the Khamsa tribe from southwest of Iran. As a young man, to get a bit of attention, I was writing a lot of poems and sending them here and there and attending poetry nights. Then by chance I borrowed two books, the first was The Mute Who Had a Dream / Gong-e khaab deede. I thought it was a collection of poems, but it turned out to be a collection of scripts by (the famed Iranian director) Mohsen Makhmakbaf. The other one was a book on the cinema of Miklόs Jancsό. I was eighteen years old, living in a small town and had been to cinema four times in my life. I was bored and thought I’ll read these books anyway. I realized that Makhmalbaf’s book is very close to poetry. Then I started reading the book on Miklόs Jancsό, having no idea who this guy is. I had no idea what is slow cinema and I had zero idea what a track is or how to set up a dolly. Out of curiosity I read it and felt that here were two people, one was writing poetry, and one was making films with a camera in a poetic way. There was a spark immediately and it took flame in my heart this and since then these two fronts have always been with me. On one side there is poetry in the writing and on the other poetry in how you look at the world through a camera. I have carried these two sides with me ever since. I went to exile from Iran at a young age, when I was twenty-four. And I have lived in 15 cities in nine countries since then. Now I’m in Canada. I have been here for six years, which is the longest time that I have been in one country since leaving Iran.
How did Oblivion Versus come about and how did you end up making it in Spanish language in Chile?
I first wrote the script in Farsi. It was after the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan in the streets of Tehran (in June 2009, during the presidential election protests). Then it was impossible to make that film in Iran. And I didn’t want to censor or curb the script. I’m not a political person with a lower P. So, I don’t make that kind of movie. I went to a lot of countries looking for a cultural context that can relate to the film. Historically and culturally Chile is very close to what Iran went through in the recent years and then with the help of writers, painters, documentary filmmakers I set to change the context of the story to Chile. And then we translated it to Spanish and I worked with the actors to get the nuances right and we made the film wholeheartedly together. But I was very happy to see that the references were very familiar to the Iranian audience as well. They could see from where things are coming from and could relate to that. The movie didn’t become more limited; in my view it became a bit more open to the world by changing the countries.
After that, it took a few years and you changed direction and made Terrestrial Verses in Farsi with Ali Asgari.
I went to Iran to shoot The Things You Kill. The censorship office insisted taking out all the things that are about killing the father. They could not bear killing the father, it’s a taboo in Abrahamic religion and it’s always the son that dies, not the father. For them this was a taboo and I decided again not to accept censorship and two weeks before I was due to leave the country, me and Ali decided to shoot a quick film about the experience of what I went through. We wrote a few episodes together and quickly shot the film in six days. As they are called, it was a quickie and was not meant to exist! It was thanks to Ali Asgari who has this spirit of let’s shoot, let’s shoot. I’m much more slow than him.
Watching The Things You Kill, I felt that it could have easily been an Iranian film, made in Iran. I didn’t think that the father’s fate would be a problem with censors but there were certainly a few other scenes that may not have passed the censors. How did you manage to make it in Türkiye?
First of all, I have to say that I’m very sad, and it remains a sorrow in my heart, that I did not make this film in Farsi. We went through a lot to make it happen. Payman Maadi (A Separation) made a lot of effort to make this happen. Niki Karimi also put in a lot of effort into making it happen. At the end it didn’t happen because of censorship. When that fell apart, I thought about Türkiye. I’m from an Iranian Turkish tribe and I understand a little of the Turkish language, say about 30% when someone speaks. So I thought Türkiye is the right place because the questions raised by the film concerning patriarchy are very apparent in Türkiye as well. I started talking to friends in Türkiye and seeing if the story works there. Everyone who read the script said yes, it connects to the hearts there. So we decided to move the film to Türkiye and rewrite the entire script. The script went through a lot of changes for Türkiye but the core elements remained. I was very lucky to have this amazing cast who accepted to work with me and almost for free, we didn’t have much money. The people were extremely generous, especially my main cast: Hazar Ergüçlü, Ekin Koç, Erkan Kolçak Köostendil and also Ercan Kesal, who is a huge figure in Turkish cinema and helped a lot with finding the right translation for the dialogues to make sure that all the nuances are there.
I have to say that I’m very sad, and it remains a sorrow in my heart, that I did not make this film in Farsi…. At the end it didn’t happen because of censorship.”
The film takes many twists and turns when Reza comes to the farm to give a helping hand to Ali and then initially there is role and personality reversal, which made me think of Joseph Losey’s The Servant (1963) and Bergman’s Persona (1966) but when this change goes from mental and psychological to physical, the change is sudden and shocking. Such a physical change I had seen in Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire, but in a totally different context. Can you explain the process you went through in writing the script?
Nobody in cinema had done this change to go from the metaphorical to literal. The main idea when we were writing came from Payman Maadi. He said what if you make them change physically, and I was like we would immediately lose everybody and then one day at seven am he knocked at my door and said we should do the change! and the credit goes to his genius, and by afternoon I was like OK maybe we can do it. By sunset I was in love with the idea! Then I had to convince everybody; kill the baby and start shooting and it’s going to work, don’t worry! I even had to write notes next to the scene in the script that hey you didn’t read it wrong, this is correct, it’s not a spelling mistake, this is shift! Everybody thought it was a spelling mistake and it’s Ali, not Reza, who appears in that scene! The reason I loved it is because it’s like a Brechtian distancing. Halfway through we pull the rug from under the audience, and they become completely disoriented. They look at each other like: did I see it correctly? Is this what happened? That was a moment of distancing and isolation which is what the main protagonist is going through after such a horrific act of violence. I thought here is a very interesting way of using the opportunity to disorient the audience with regards to the crisis happening. And I love to play it very grounded, so grounded that it becomes so confused. If it was like a Buñuel joke, people would accept it much faster, but if it’s very grounded, people would really question their perception: did I see it correctly? That’s why when Reza comes to take Ali’s place, first I put him in the shadows and the audience is not sure what’s taking place but when he comes close, then the audience says, hey, what the fuck happened?! At my heart I’m a cinephile, I love to push cinema to the edge: is this possible? can we fail here? risk taking is something I love to do. Not every time it works, but I love pushing things to their edge.
That’s exactly what happens, you pull the rug from under our feet and initially we are confused; what the hell happened just now? I think of all the ones up for the Oscar that I’ve seen, this is the most challenging. It really pushes the audience, and I like that.
That is a very nice thing to say, and I would use that quote that: this is the most challenging of the Oscar films!
So, you had the script written completely and then Payman Maadi came and said change that and then I guess you had to do a lot of rewriting.
Of course, the script went through four years of development. For four years I was rewriting and changing things.
The other thing is that we are initially in total sympathy with Ali/Reza for killing the father because all we hear about the father is what a nasty piece of work he was, punching his invalid wife and all that. But then you keep putting doubts in our minds. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy. Afterall, he did look after an invalid person and he was with her all the time while the sons were away and even his mistress comes much more sympathetic character than what we initially see. So again, you are playing with the mind of the audience.
To me this is human nature. Like my own father, it’s very easy to hate him and it’s very easy to love him. It took me a long time to come to terms with knowing how to love a human being. It’s knowing the roots of things, knowing the history of things. It doesn’t erase the pain but that’s how to face the world: with empathy. Empathy is difficult, empathy is hard, but it’s the only path we have. My father was a twenty-one year old man when I was born. What do we expect? Suddenly he becomes a perfect father who treats me according to the latest early childhood development theories? So “history sizing” is the only way forward to create empathy. This process of gathering doubts was a process of adulthood for me, of coming of age very late in my life. But that is a true coming of age. The other is knowing that humans come in all sizes and shapes, it’s not a simple black and white.
I also want to talk about the visual aspect of the film. You make great use of the location and the different aspects of the houses and the farm in framing your shots. I was wondering whether these were all written in the scripts or when you went to the location and looked around, you decided that you will frame one shot in the mirror or have action taking place outside the house but shoot it from inside the house, using the large window?
The mirror was written into the script. I knew that I want the entire second act to happen inside the mirror. When things start cracking down, I wanted to go into the mirror and when he’s ready to face the world I wanted to come out of the mirror. Somehow I wanted the entire middle part inside the mirror like a sales negotiation. Most locations are written when I am writing. Locations for me are a character in the film. For example, I knew exactly the kind of walls and doors the house needs to have. When Ali arrives at the door and looks through the cracks, all this was written into the script because I wanted it to be exactly that way. My location managers hate me because I go through a lot of locations to find something that helps in telling the story of the film!
Your film has become Canada’s entry for the International Film Oscars. What are your hopes for the film? Is it going to be shown in cinemas or be streamed on TV?
We have a great distributor in the US, so we have a release in the US coming, we have released in a few countries already: France, Turkey, Canada and other territories also following. I’m extremely humbled for how much the film is being well received by the audiences everywhere, but it is a challenging film and to me that is proof that audiences appreciate being challenged. In that sense I’m very grateful and my hope is that the film slowly becomes a platform to talk about these ideas, to talk about masculinity, to become an excuse for looking at our own image in the mirror and I’m very humbled by the selection from other colleagues in Canada to select the film. A film not in English or French, Canada’s official languages, and that speaks for what Canada is becoming, a true multi-culture melting pot for the arts, with space for stories from the newcomers.
You talked about your love of poetry and literature. In addition to writing scripts, have you been writing any poetry or stories?
No, I no longer embarrass myself! And I think it’s a wise decision! At least for now. But I read a lot of poetry and literature.
Who are the filmmakers that you follow and look up to?
Lee Chang-dong from South Korea is an amazing thinker and I’m always ready to be challenged by him. Roy Andersson from Sweden is another figure who every time I see one of his films, I go wow, cinema can be this unique. Another filmmaker who talks to my heart is Nuri Bilge Ceylan. He talks about the misery of being a lonely man on this planet. He is one of the sharpest directors the way he directs actors, the way he directs his camera, the way he chooses his locations, he is an exceptional director. The other one is the director of Tony Erdman, Maren Ade and I’m really looking forward to seeing her new film. I think she’s a master filmmaker. These are the filmmakers that I look forward to seeing their work.
Ali Moosavi has worked in documentary television and has written for Film Magazine (Iran), Cine-Eye (London), and Film International (Sweden).