The three central characters of Bahman Ghobadi's new film No One Knows About Persian Cats -- a Mates of State-type musical duo and their would-be manager, Nader -- spend a great deal of the film's 101 minutes crammed on the seat of Nader's motorbike, attempting to assemble the proper documents, equipment, and people to play a gig in London and, later on, a smaller show for 400 local fans. Nader, rather than the musicians, is often seen singing with a big grin as he rides through often daunting clusters of Tehran traffic. This simple, joyous image returns a little over half-a-dozen times and serves as the film's clarion call: A cry for freedom between endless hours spent in the labyrinthine corridors that house Iran's underground music scene.
This isn't to say that enormous joy isn't found in those stuffy practice rooms and covert recording studios that Ghobadi's handheld camera investigates with such relentless diligence. Bopping from rooftops to abandoned warehouses to (most amusingly) a cow farm, the film offers a generous sampling of Iran's repressed sonic landscape, which ranges from an onslaught of heavy metal crunch to a hushed folk performance by two women. Some performances are accompanied by slick, quickly edited "videos"; emulations of MTV serving as a rebuke to a government that bans music displaying any "Western" influence.
Nader is played by the talented Hamed Behdad but the performers are all played by actual Iranian musicians -- the central duo (Negar Shaghaghi and Ashkan Koshanejad) perform, in reality, under the name Take It Easy Hospital. This blurring of the lines between documentary and fiction is hardly a new venture. Ghobadi, like the Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke, has made a career of flagrantly ignoring the boundaries between forms of cinematic expression. He explored similar themes of female and musical repression in far more metaphysical terms in his last film, Half Moon.
Though it is a far more likable affair and easily the most accessible film he's ever made, No One Knows, which Ghobadi co-wrote with Hossein Mortezaeiyan and journalist Roxana Saberi, lacks the spiritual heft and the desperation of the director's past work. Before the film's overblown ending, there is more talk than actual instances of the despondency and scrutiny that Iranian musicians face; the most affecting scene, in fact, concerns the enforcing of a different repression altogether -- that of a law banning pets in public. A scene in which Nader pleads his way out of lashings and a fine for dealing in bootleg films and CDs may have made for a powerful dramatic centerpiece, but is rather played successfully for laughs.
Of course, music is scarcely the only art form discouraged in Iran. Ghobadi, who recently expatriated along with Shaghaghi and Koshanejad, appears near the start of the film as himself, biding time in a recording studio until he can film again. In the wake of the March 1st detaining of the great filmmaker Jafar Panahi (Offside, Crimson Gold), No One Knows could hardly feel more relevant, but its examination of the current police state not only could be but should be sharper. For what it is, however, it's a wild ride: A bristling document of artists who, to paraphrase a prominent lyric, can only dream in their reality.
Aka Kasi az gorbehaye irani khabar nadareh.
This isn't to say that enormous joy isn't found in those stuffy practice rooms and covert recording studios that Ghobadi's handheld camera investigates with such relentless diligence. Bopping from rooftops to abandoned warehouses to (most amusingly) a cow farm, the film offers a generous sampling of Iran's repressed sonic landscape, which ranges from an onslaught of heavy metal crunch to a hushed folk performance by two women. Some performances are accompanied by slick, quickly edited "videos"; emulations of MTV serving as a rebuke to a government that bans music displaying any "Western" influence.
Nader is played by the talented Hamed Behdad but the performers are all played by actual Iranian musicians -- the central duo (Negar Shaghaghi and Ashkan Koshanejad) perform, in reality, under the name Take It Easy Hospital. This blurring of the lines between documentary and fiction is hardly a new venture. Ghobadi, like the Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke, has made a career of flagrantly ignoring the boundaries between forms of cinematic expression. He explored similar themes of female and musical repression in far more metaphysical terms in his last film, Half Moon.
Though it is a far more likable affair and easily the most accessible film he's ever made, No One Knows, which Ghobadi co-wrote with Hossein Mortezaeiyan and journalist Roxana Saberi, lacks the spiritual heft and the desperation of the director's past work. Before the film's overblown ending, there is more talk than actual instances of the despondency and scrutiny that Iranian musicians face; the most affecting scene, in fact, concerns the enforcing of a different repression altogether -- that of a law banning pets in public. A scene in which Nader pleads his way out of lashings and a fine for dealing in bootleg films and CDs may have made for a powerful dramatic centerpiece, but is rather played successfully for laughs.
Of course, music is scarcely the only art form discouraged in Iran. Ghobadi, who recently expatriated along with Shaghaghi and Koshanejad, appears near the start of the film as himself, biding time in a recording studio until he can film again. In the wake of the March 1st detaining of the great filmmaker Jafar Panahi (Offside, Crimson Gold), No One Knows could hardly feel more relevant, but its examination of the current police state not only could be but should be sharper. For what it is, however, it's a wild ride: A bristling document of artists who, to paraphrase a prominent lyric, can only dream in their reality.
Aka Kasi az gorbehaye irani khabar nadareh.
