Iron Island (2005) User Reviews

Review from 2005 TIFF

[riid · 7/10 · 15 September 2005]

I saw this film at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival.

Iron Island is the second feature film from Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, who also wrote the screenplay. Iron Island refers to an old, abandoned oil tanker floating in the Persian Gulf, populated with all sorts of people and presided over by Captain Nemat (Ali Nasirian). The ship is a miniature city, with its own school and barter economy, and Nemat is constantly running about, seeing to the needs of the people under his protection, while at the same time overseeing the gradual disassembly of the ship for scrap metal.

The ship contains a whole coterie of characters, including the young man Nemat adopted who is in love with a girl betrothed to another man; the old man who is constantly looking out into the distance for who-knows-what; the young boy who is trying to rescue fish from the hold and return them to the ocean; the teacher who insists the boat is slowly sinking. Under threat from the authorities to abandon the ship, Nemat must decide what to do to keep his little city together.

The film was enjoyable, and it was fascinating to watch the society that Nemat had built up on his own little floating island. The characters were absorbing to watch, especially Nemat, who seemed to be partially motivated out of love for his charges, and partly because he wouldn't know what to do with himself if he wasn't leading the people.

Director Mohammad Rasoulof attended the screening and did a Q&A: - The film is about the isolation and loneliness of a society, but one that still has a beautiful life.

• The story is purely fictional.

• Nemat disconnects the people from the outside world from the moment they arrive, resulting in the people willing to follow or do whatever the captain wants. When a society is completely cut off from the outside, whatever is left rules you.

• The film has not yet screened in Iran; they are currently waiting permission that has been promised to them.

• Every film, poetic or not, goes back to the filmmaker and what they want to say; and this film is what Rasoulof wants to say.

• Any artistic work has many different layers, with the plot/story being the one on top. The same thing happens in different places, not just one society. The film is not a metaphor for Iran in particular.

• The script was originally written as a theatre piece 10 years ago. Rasoulof rewrote it two years ago, and put the ship as a character in it.

• The cast and crew of about 350 had to commute 10 km a day to the ship.

• The people in the area where filming took place are very religious and were uncomfortable with the idea of being in a film, so Rasoulof had to go to an area about 60 km away, where many of the people had emigrated from elsewhere, for his cast.

• Ali Nasirian, who plays Captain Nemat, is a renowned actor in Iran, and did a lot for the film.

• Each one of the characters in the film is based on someone Rasoulof knows. The little fish boy is based on his own childhood and that of his brother. The man watching the horizon is someone Rasoulof remembers from growing up. The teacher is someone he knows well.

• The idea for the ship just came to Rasoulof, and he wasn't sure how. He just said there are times one is inspired by such ideas.

• There is one scene when the older boys are watching satellite TV. The TV was originally supposed to be playing Titanic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, but they couldn't get the copyright to do so.

• On the issue of censorship, Rasoulof said he basically made the movie he wanted to, and let the censors excise what they wanted.

An allegory about present day conditions in Iran??

[roland-104 · 8/10 · 1 June 2006]

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.

Rough parable of innocents and a crafty leader

[Chris Knipp · 7/10 · 1 April 2006]

Iron Island (Jezireh ahani 2005), the second film written and directed by Iranian Mohammad Rasoulof, is a loosely constructed parable. Rasoulof conceived his tale originally as a theater piece, then turned it into a film by adopting a derelict oil tanker in the Persian Gulf as the setting and populating it with non-actors, sunni ethnic Arab Bandaris, a marginal group in Iran. The resulting style is a cross between Makhmalbaf and post-war Italian neorealism. One might think of the rusty ship with its squatters as like the shantytown in De Sica and Zavattini's Miracle in Milan, but things here are grimmer and more elemental.

Everything revolves around a kind of benevolent dictator, a "Captain" (well-known actor Ali Nasirian), who cuts deals, settles disputes, and gives out orders. The Captain's full of friendly greetings for everybody but up close is an exploiter and not to be trusted. How all these people wound up here is a mystery but it provides Rasoulof with a ready-made microcosm. The meanings are up to you.

There's crude oil on the ship and a gang of boys the Captain keeps working for him carry it and carved off scrap iron and sell both to buyers on land. Later the boys find a TV and get it working but the Captain grabs it and throws it overboard in anger. There's a teacher who teaches his charges to read using old newspapers and explains that the ship is in the sea and the sea is beautiful and is part of the world. Later when things get complicated because the Captain is going to give up the ship he removes the students and leaves the teacher to make chalk and give lessons to an empty classroom, and donkeys are stabled there instead.

There's a special boy named Ahmad (Hossein Farzi-Zadeh) whom the Captain has adopted as his protégé but rather looks down on. The boy's in love with a girl on board, but she's to marry an older man the captain has arranged and he forbids Ahmad to go near her. But he cannot obey. Things are bartered and in one brief but highly charged scene Ahmad and the betrothed girl he fancies without seeing each other exchange clothing -- his T-shirt; her veil -- back and forth on a rope, as if they're undressing for each other and also trading love tokens. When the wedding takes place, in his frustration Ahmad steals the Captain's motorboat and escapes from the ship, but he's caught and subjected to cruel water torture with the entire community watching on deck: now we know this dictator isn't really so benevolent after all.

The Bandari women wear veils that look like Venetian carnival masks. There's a dark, bright-eyed little boy people call Fish who rescues aquatic creatures who've slipped into the hold and takes them up and frees them. There's an old man in shades who stands outside looking at the sun all day, awaiting a sign. There's a handicapped boy whose daily assignment is to operate the mechanized lift that's used to bring people up and down from the ship. He also gets to carry out the water torture -- because Ahmad, bound hand and foot, is lowered into the sea on the lift -- and he revels in it.

The teacher has been conducting a test that shows the ship is sinking. The captain rejects this assertion at first, but bowing to the inevitable in time gets everybody on board to sign over power of attorney to him, takes them on a "pilgrimage" to the desert, and sells the ship to businessmen for scrap. He promises the people will have a town that will be beautiful, but we don't believe him. The last images are of Fish trying to save fishes along the shore – he has run away, but his project seems more futile than ever, though just as sweet.

Rasoulof's narrative is rather haphazard. At times it seemed to me the relationships might have had more depth if the people were presented in an ordinary community, the boy's longing for the betrothed girl, for instance, and the schoolteacher whose classroom is at the whim of a local mayor. What would have become of the boy freeing fishes and the old man staring at the sun in normal conditions I don't know. The rusty ship may have struck the director as a wonderful idea but it turns out to be a bit of an albatross, a weighty but empty metaphor distracting us from more interesting human detail. But since this captain and his arbitrary world sticks in the mind, perhaps the whole thing wasn't such a bad idea after all. The cinematography makes good use of the authentic faces and the natural, often very low light – contrasting with dazzling moments of sun. There are really three films here: one composed of of lovely images, another of rough parables, a third of social anecdotes.

J.Hoberman wondered in his review how this film was shown at home and what it would mean there. It was shown in the New Directors/New Films series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (March 2006) and then at Cinema Village, also in New York, but the film hasn't been shown in Iran yet, so those questions can't yet be answered. ©Chris Knipp 2006

A great one

[urkus · 7/10 · 27 October 2022]

One of the best movies ever made from Iran, it carries you into the world of destruction, by an enormous old ship that is slowly shinking, by a population that lives homeless in this Iron Island and with the rules of it.

A must see to realise about a world that brings us there, outside our living room. Maybe you think that this movie is because of the women revolution happening now, in that country, but no! It brings you much more. Much intensity, diverse characters and displays a reallity that is there in front of you, but we deny to watch it, cause we think it comes from another world, but is not, it comes from a world we are living and all of it is happening right now.

Trusts the viewer to make up his own mind.

[paterfam001 · 9/10 · 26 October 2005]

I was most impressed by this movie, especially since I was going to it (with my wife) out of a sense of duty: it wasn't one of my choices at Toronto Film Festival. Frankly, I expected to be baffled and bored, as I have been by terribly earnest subtitled movies in the past. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it held my interest from the first scene. The unusual setting had a great deal to do with this -- the ship's crumbling superstructure, its dank and scary innards, the small domestic comforts of its tenants, the vast watery landscape outside -- all beautifully filmed. You are dumped right into the middle of all this, as if you were one of the tenants newly arrived, and watch a newbie get the full treatment from the Captain -- the leader and self-styled benefactor of this band of poor outcasts. You find your way around and get to know the people and their ways, but this is not a documentary, nor does it pretend to be. Our interest is not sociological, but just human. The Captain is at the centre of all this, and his character is at issue throughout. Is he really a saviour and benefactor, or is he just using the young men on board as a source of cheap (free, actually) labour so he can steal the remaining crude oil and valuable parts from the ship, before its owners send it to be cut up for scrap? By the time you have absorbed enough of the narrative to wonder about this, you have grown acquainted enough with the tenants' problems and aspirations to care deeply about this, and to follow his actions with keen attention. In the end, the viewer has to make up his own mind about the character of the man, the rightness of his actions. There is no foregone conclusion.

Vivid Imaging of an Isolated Society

[noralee · 10/10 · 11 April 2006]

"Iron Island (Jazireh ahani)" vividly works on at least three levels. Opening with a prayer, the premise itself is visually arresting and the story is simple but imaginative.

Settled on an abandoned oil freighter off the coast of an unnamed Middle East peninsula, a rag tag community of squatters is ruled by a wheeling-dealing landlord, a benevolent, Messianic dictator of a captain, like out of a Werner Herzog film, controlling a limited barter economy with the outside world. The huge hulking ship in the bright blue sea is eye-popping, but it even feels like writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof is just pointing his camera at at a documentary of how traditional families adapt to such a physical and economic environment while retaining their social structure with its rigid gender and age stratification.

I equally believed, on the one hand, this could be a post-apocalyptic society as in the "Mad Max" movies or "Waterworld", the new "Battlestar Galactica" or even "Land of the Dead" or, on the other, that it could even have been based on a true story, as much as "Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai)" was based on a real incident in Japan of abandoned children.

But it works equally well visually, emotionally and intellectually as a brilliant allegory, not necessarily of Iran but of any traditional, isolated society with a rotting infrastructure, selling off its resources and émigrés to global capitalism and living off the promises and lies of its paternalistic leaders.

Working under the captain's watchful eye, the frustrated school teacher, a Cassandra-like scientist, uses the Islamic madrassas style of repetitive memorization. But with only old newspapers about a mysterious war and enemy as texts, the students are required to repeat truisms about the glories of living on the sea. Unfortunately, the English subtitles do not translate what is on the black board so some subtleties are doubtless lost.

Just as any society has channeled restless adolescent boys into armies, the "Captain" (a marvelously oily and charismatic Ali Nassirian) organizes the boys on board into teams of coordinated manual labor to salvage resources on the ship that have the breathtaking look of "Nanook of the North" teams ritualistically pulling together for a common goal and their choreography is a wonder. Even so, they still keep trying to get snatches of contact to the outside world with satellite TV and radio.

But we get caught up on in the story of one of these adolescents, his assistant, a lovelorn orphan (played by Hossein Farzi-Zadeh who also movingly played a similar young man in "Beautiful City (Shah-re ziba)"), who stands up to him, recalling "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner", or a more cerebral "Star Wars", with an even more dramatically wrenching rebellion. How young love finds an outlet even through elaborate burhkas is a touching tribute to the universality of the human spirit. The audience held their breaths as to who would win the battle of wits and endurance.

Women are especially ground under in this patriarchal society, with physical and labor restrictions and barely puberty arranged marriages around issues of honor. A lack of health care particularly affects the constantly pregnant, child-caring women.

The premise doesn't make 100% practical sense and the ending is so ambiguous that the guy next to me optimistically thought it was happy for all, while I was cynically dismayed. But the images are unforgettable.

Ship Ahoy! This one's sails big time

[AfroPixFlix · 10/10 · 21 May 2011]

You will not find a better metaphorical study of Post-revolution Iran than this film, one so threatening that the Iranian authorities tossed famed director Rasoulof into the brig. A self-absorbed captain of a stalled and sinking ship runs his vessel like a clueless despot, ripping off hard-working but naïve passengers. Exploited onboard youth get meaningless education, and a lovelorn adolescent who bolts for a better life gets tortured, mostly to deter other kids. The lying captain inefficiently uses the scant ship resources, like steel and oil, and misapplies the proceeds to strand his impoverished subjects in an arid land. There is a bud of hope at the end, but like reality, if you blink you will miss it. AfroPixFlix drops a 10-forked anchor.

One of the most fascinating iranian movies released recently!!

[anikgol · 9/10 · 8 May 2006]

While the works of maestro Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf are part of a more philosophical, sometimes Godardian/Haneke avant garde film school, Iron Island represents another side of iranian cinema, one that is closer to the classic "greek" Hollywood style. The plot driven film. But this is a plot driven film that also uses the plot to present a satire of the society. Not only the iranian but a more general comment on the modern society. The director is very precise and throughoughly chooses simple but strong symbols on presenting his work. A miniatyre society (on a rusty old oil tanker in the persian gulf that is constantly sinking) lead by captain Nemat. There is a fully (dis)functional society on this boat. Nemat is a strong totalitarian leader but a balanced person thats very hard to judge. Nemats complex character is one of the most well crafted and vital parts of this film. There is also a love story off course. A forbidden love between two of the youths on this boat. Nemat, these two youths a teacher/scientist and dozen of other characters each represent a person and a way of thinking that in addition to being autonome characters also are used to show Nemat. These persons are also used to show Nemat, by showing Nemats reaction to these people.

Also the imagery is fantastic. The old rusty tanker a great contrast to the blue sea. Brown and yellow against the blue sea and the sky. Nemats (Nassirian is one of the most important theatre and film actors in Iran) face expressions alone, are just incredible (one can see parallels in the use of face expression to Eisensteins "Potemkin").

In short, Iron Island is one of the most interesting Iranian films in a long time.

Fascinating look at people living in a rusting, abandoned ship

[rasecz · 9/10 · 31 March 2006]

A fascinating film about a couple of hundred people living on a rusty, abandoned cargo ship stranded on a shoal off the coast of Iran. A fictional story that also works as a revealing documentary about how a community can organize life in such an unlikely place. Captain Nemat rules unchallenged over the residents: divvying responsibilities, dispensing medicines, organizing marriages, etc. He is the primary character, but the star of the film is the ship. The remaining oil in the tanks is drilled and pumped out to be sold onshore. The barrels scene that explains it is mesmerizing. In an ironic touch, the innards and unessential structures are being cut to be sold as scrap metal. Oil and metal thus form the two main sources of income. Those of course are finite. Moreover the ship is slowing sinking into the shoal. The days of the community on board are numbered. Nemat is well aware of this though he tries to hide the fact from the residents so as not to alarm them. But Nemat has a plan whose execution propels the story to an unsettling conclusion.

There is a Romeo and Juliet subplot with a forced marriage that makes us suspect Nemat. When Nemat makes a deal to sell the ship for scrap and claims that the money will be used to relocate the community to a site on land, our suspicions increase. Is he going to run away with the money? The ending, especially the final scene with the "Fish" boy, is not immediately apparent, but upon reflection it is a pointed commentary on the future of the community as it relocates from its iron island to an arid stretch of blanched earth. A fish stranded in a small and shallow tidal pool is freed by "Fish", but he quickly realizes that several feet away, a line of unmanned fishing nets planted a short distance from the shore await. Well done!

A brave second feature from a filmmaker who made 9 critical feature films of life in Iran and is now imprisoned there

[JuguAbraham · 8/10 · 30 March 2023]

This is the second feature film of the brave young director Mohammad Rasoulof, who after winning so many international awards for 9 feature films he directed and wrote, depicting veiled criticism of life in Iran, is currently imprisoned in the notorious Evin prison in Iran. "Iron Island" won the Golden Peacock for the best film at the Indian International Film Festival. His subsequent 8 films have won major awards at Cannes (twice), Berlin (Golden Bear for Best film), Chicago (Best Screenplay), Denver (Best Film), Dubai (Best Film), Durban (Best Feature Film), Hamburg (Political Film Award), Milwaukee (Best Director), Sydney (Sydney Film Prize), and Telluride (Silver Medallion Award).

"Iron Island" is a contemporary Noah's ark, where a disused oil tanker, awaiting shipbreaking, provides refuge for homeless poor Iranians, young and old, under a seemingly benevolent "Captain" who is able to provide food and medicines for the refugees by selling metal parts and oil in the ship. The Captain is a veiled representation of the Iranian Government, which is dictatorial and brutal to those who step out of line while appearing to be benevolent. The motley refugee group represents the innocent who accept their fate without being able to question their benefactor. This film may not be as sophisticated as Rasoulof's later films but it makes you think beyond the obvious tale. Rasoulof is definitely one of the finest filmmakers in Iran, now languishing in prison. His crime--he made movies critical of life in Iran in the recent decades--films that won so many major awards and acclaim that few other filmmakers worlwide can equal.

IRANIAN ( A+ Movie) My Ratings 10/10

[THE-BEACON-OF-MOVIES-RAFA · 10/10 · 10 December 2022]

RECOMMEND FOR EVERYONE

( Netflix KIDS WONT UNDERSTAND THESE )

'Island' floats in a sea of humanism.

Like the great Iranian filmmakers, Rasoulof has no use for the artificiality of heightened drama. He opts, instead, for a more universal humanism, which is a better teaching tool. The captain, of course, is no less than a professor of cockeyed optimism. Even if the ship sinks, as far as he's concerned, hope still floats.

The most fascinating thing about life is our unique experiences as people, which includes our loves, our sacrifices, our joys, our successes and failures . ABOVE ALL how much time and feelings & care for other ? That you have !!! Feelings of mystery.