At the age of seventeen, Mohsen Makhmalbaf stabbed a police officer in an act of misguided political defiance. He spent the next few years in prison for this crime before beginning a successful career as a film director in the 1980s. According to this film, which may or may not be based on fact, the policeman he had stabbed showed up at a casting call some twenty years after their violent encounter with hopes of becoming an actor and impressing a girl that he had failed to woo due to his injury.
Makhmalbaf sees the policeman's appearance as a unique chance to recreate his past and shed light on his own motivations so he decides to create a film about the incident with the policeman training an actor to understand how the event affected him while Makhmalbaf himself trains an actor to understand his motivations. The film is de-politicized, an unfortunate necessity in a country which still imprisons its artists at the slightest sign of anti-establishment leanings. Still, Makhmalbaf neatly sidesteps this by casting an idealist who wants to save the world as his teenage self.
While the young Makhmalbaf was completely focused on changing society to be better for everyone, the young policeman was interested only in his own personal life, particularly in beginning a relationship with a girl he thought was flirting with him. There's a subtle point being made here about the banality of evil as the policeman, a representative of a group activists such as young Makhmalbaf found oppressive, never expresses any interest in the ideological aspect of his job. Thus the knife attack, which can hardly be seen as an effective means of protest even if the policeman had been a hardcore fascist, becomes an absurdly meaningless act. This is illustrated in the recreation of the attack in that the actor is hiding the knife under a piece of bread—he's using a symbol of nourishment only as a means of concealing a symbol of hatred. At the same time, the policeman in the recreation is holding a flower he has bought to express his attraction to the girl. In order to protect his gun, he has to drop the flower. Thus, the act of violence is not only hurting him physically, it's also causing him to lose his chance for happiness with the girl.
A Moment of Innocence is a thought provoking film which uses Iranian cinema's usual focus on meta-narratives in an unusual way. It's also a well made film which strikes just the right tone for the subject matter. Mohsen Makmalbaf is a director I plan to become much more familiar with.
Makhmalbaf sees the policeman's appearance as a unique chance to recreate his past and shed light on his own motivations so he decides to create a film about the incident with the policeman training an actor to understand how the event affected him while Makhmalbaf himself trains an actor to understand his motivations. The film is de-politicized, an unfortunate necessity in a country which still imprisons its artists at the slightest sign of anti-establishment leanings. Still, Makhmalbaf neatly sidesteps this by casting an idealist who wants to save the world as his teenage self.
While the young Makhmalbaf was completely focused on changing society to be better for everyone, the young policeman was interested only in his own personal life, particularly in beginning a relationship with a girl he thought was flirting with him. There's a subtle point being made here about the banality of evil as the policeman, a representative of a group activists such as young Makhmalbaf found oppressive, never expresses any interest in the ideological aspect of his job. Thus the knife attack, which can hardly be seen as an effective means of protest even if the policeman had been a hardcore fascist, becomes an absurdly meaningless act. This is illustrated in the recreation of the attack in that the actor is hiding the knife under a piece of bread—he's using a symbol of nourishment only as a means of concealing a symbol of hatred. At the same time, the policeman in the recreation is holding a flower he has bought to express his attraction to the girl. In order to protect his gun, he has to drop the flower. Thus, the act of violence is not only hurting him physically, it's also causing him to lose his chance for happiness with the girl.
A Moment of Innocence is a thought provoking film which uses Iranian cinema's usual focus on meta-narratives in an unusual way. It's also a well made film which strikes just the right tone for the subject matter. Mohsen Makmalbaf is a director I plan to become much more familiar with.