"Brick and Mirror"; Iran, the Abandoned Child, Photo of Ayatollah Khomeini

The screening of a restored and high-quality version of "Brick and Mirror" by Ebrahim Golestan at the Rotterdam International Film Festival provides a new opportunity to revisit one of the most important and controversial films in the history of Iranian cinema; a film that faced a barrage of criticism upon its release (including harsh critiques from Shamim Bahar and Parviz Davayi; two of the most acclaimed critics of the 1960s in Iran). Now, fifty-one years later, it may be possible to take a distanced look at the film. The truth is that "Brick and Mirror" is a very heavy and different film - and I believe it was ahead of its time and very distant from the films that preceded it in Iranian cinema - which, of course, may not suit every taste. However, the film, contrary to its seemingly simple appearance and story, has many complexities, one of the results of which is the audience's confusion in choosing how to view the film. This means that, firstly, the film is not for the general audience and quickly bores them, driving them out of the cinema (something that Davayi mentioned as a flaw of the film; he may still hold this belief), and secondly, a serious audience familiar with the language of cinema may encounter the film as a realistic work and consequently evaluate it as exaggerated with superficial symbolic dialogues. However, with a fresh look at the film - with qualities that perhaps can only be evaluated in a high-quality version and on the cinema screen; including the astonishing cinematography by Minasian - I believe "Brick and Mirror" is not only not a realistic film, but it is also extremely surreal. Although the film's linear narrative and setting seem realistic - and discussing society and its problems initially makes the film appear even more realistic - "Brick and Mirror" possesses strange capabilities that allow for various interpretations and readings by its viewer, which significantly distances it from the linear story and realistic atmosphere of the work. For example, the opening sequence of the film - leaving the child in the taxi and continuing in the ruins - although its apparently simple narrative progresses it, is actually a surreal sequence that brings the future time to the present. This sequence, which could also be a dream of Hashim, is actually part of his future life: Taj, his girlfriend, has a child from him, and Hashim does not know this, and his behavior indicates that he does not want the child. Consequently, the chador-clad woman who gets into Hashim's taxi at the beginning of the film and leaves her child behind is indeed Taj, his girlfriend. This interpretation becomes more equivalent with the final sequence of the film; where Taj, in a long sequence, observes the orphaned children in an orphanage, and Hashim sees another chador-clad woman with a child in her arms who, like at the beginning of the film, is taking a taxi. In fact, the film - in images that are strongly reminiscent of Antonioni's films - narrates a very complex, timeless, and placeless cycle in which everything returns to its original place in a tight closed circle. In this context, it is not unreasonable to interpret that the film also glances at the future: Golestan has always been praised for his astonishing prophecy of the Shah's fall in the story/film "Secrets of the Treasure in the Genie Valley" - which was written and made a few years before the revolution at the height of the Shah's power and authority - but it has not been mentioned that there is another strange prophecy in "Brick and Mirror": a photo of Ruhollah Khomeini. When Hashim and Taj are walking and talking in the neighborhoods of South Tehran, they pass by a small copper workshop, where a photo of Khomeini is hanging by the entrance in one of the chambers (the film was made shortly after Khordad 42). In this shot, there is a teenage boy inside the chamber next to a glowing fire. The path that Hashim and Taj take in this neighborhood, based on the surreal interpretation I mentioned, is actually a kind of walking in time towards a future that the film, with its main theme - the child and Iran - speaks about, and in a now perhaps fascinating interpretation, Khomeini's photo seems to have crossed the time tunnel and appears there; next to a glowing fire with two different interpretations: the fire that the founder of the Islamic Republic ignited against the Shah's regime or against the people of Iran? (The working boy is apparently waiting for a savior to free him from poverty, but he seems to be playing with fire). The film leaves the door open for various interpretations and readings; because Golestan is fundamentally interested in this symbolic language and he himself shows a great interest in interpreting "Brick and Mirror" and discussing the symbols and metaphors of the film in his usual conversations with the writer or in our hours of unpublished dialogue. It is from this interest that all the dialogues of the film are written in this manner, and each has an additional and specific meaning that distances them from the reality of everyday life. Critics of that era were right; no one speaks in this tone and with this type of words in South Tehran in the 1960s, but now - after more than five decades - it can be said that this type of symbol and metaphor - from the type of speaking to the very essence of the film's main theme: the abandoned child as Iran and discussing darkness and light, the two sides of a coin that are frequently referenced in the film and are clearly a choice made by the two main characters for their lives; a life in darkness or light - is part of the language of the film that Golestan deliberately chose to speak about all the social and political issues he is interested in; from the endless poverty and misery of a neglected society and a country whose future generation becomes mute, incomplete, and ownerless, to referencing the 28th of Mordad as the most important historical point in contemporary Iran, which is humorously depicted in a poster hanging in the police station, revealing the lost dreams of a nation.