Iranian Filmmaker and 'London Has Fallen'

Babak Najafi, after Nima Nourizadeh, is the second young Iranian filmmaker from the generation raised in Europe who has penetrated the heart of Hollywood and shares a fully Hollywood film with his audience: 'London Has Fallen', which is currently showing in cinemas in various countries. Najafi fled war-torn Iran with his family when he was 11 years old and sought asylum in Sweden. His first feature film was titled 'Seb' (Sebastian), an intellectual film that won awards at the Gothenburg and Berlin festivals (including a €50,000 award for Best First Film). Najafi, who studied at the Swedish Film School, depicts the loneliness and destruction of a fifteen-year-old boy in a cold environment in 'Seb', creating a distinctly Swedish atmosphere, while attempting to present an image of contemporary Sweden alongside the mother/child relationship, discussing poverty that ultimately leads to terrorism without falling into the trap of slogans. However, the $60 million film 'London Has Fallen' bears no resemblance to 'Seb' and presents Najafi in a completely different mood after the second part of 'Easy Money'. Filmmaking in Hollywood is a double-edged sword that can initially seem very tempting: filmmaking with professional actors and crews with a budget that allows for anything, and a film that, unlike art films, is screened in thousands of cinemas worldwide and will have millions of viewers. However, the other side of the coin is the closing of the filmmaker's wings and their sacrifice before the power of studios; the sacrifice of an independent filmmaker who has had to bow to Hollywood and create a film that is highly desirable to the system and entirely distant from the desires and artistic vision of a filmmaker who, with their compact and small initial film, at least promised a significant filmmaker. Yet 'London Has Fallen' has no trace of its director: it is a studio action film where many scenes were created on a computer screen, and the film is a playground for special effects from beginning to end for scenes meant to astonish the general audience. Of course, the film is not completely unsuccessful in this regard: it features scenes of the destruction of famous London buildings that are at least very strange and even frightening for viewers living in the city. However, the screenplay follows predetermined patterns in a very superficial and clichéd manner: a terrorist whose daughter’s wedding night in Pakistan was targeted by American forces plans to kidnap the President of the United States in London two years later and execute him on camera, but the President's special guard single-handedly confronts all the terrorists who have turned London into a bloodbath. The film follows a pattern that appeals to the average American viewer: the British are portrayed as very weak and feeble, and terrorists have easily infiltrated among their police and secret police, rendering them ineffective. In contrast, it is the American Vice President who gives them orders from afar, and it is this American agent that everyone must obey and clear the way for to rescue the President alone; the same special Hollywood formula for American hero-making that is highly favored by the average American viewer. But what does this type of American hero-making, this type of extremely Hollywood action, have to do with our Iranian/Swedish filmmaker? It seems that the temptation of filmmaking in Hollywood has led Babak Najafi to this point, but I hope that now, after watching the film from a distance, Najafi realizes that 'London Has Fallen' has no connection to his world and that any other name could have appeared as the director of this film without any noticeable change in the film's qualities; because fundamentally, the film lacks the director's signature, and unlike good Hollywood examples (for instance, look at 'Heat' by Michael Mann), Najafi appears to be a complete loser against the studio and its predetermined rules.