Rosebud/UK Premiere
Babak Jalali / Iran, UK, Italy / 2009 / 95 mins
With a majority of films that centre on Iran being documentaries or bleak in their portrayal of life, our view of Middle Eastern existence is one of elegant and tortured men sipping mint tea by epic lakes in tattered clothes surrounded by dusty landscapes. Suffering at the hands of gross orientalism, it’s very rare to find a film that acknowledges the pitfalls of such clichéd images but presenting his first feature length film, the Iranian born and London raised Babak Jalali offers a glimpse into the world of his native hometown: a rural village brimming with ritual and history and offers a direct address of the material world and the tragedy of the growing technology that advances around them but lies beyond their grasp.
Taking inspiration from Werner Herzog’s kind of slow meditation on the human condition, Jalali uses the chicken scene at the end of Stroszek to highlight his main theme: the ceaseless quest for the ideal, or material success. Stuck in border towns the sense of voyage is strong but consequently the ability to settle and discover a sense of the Self is hard. Jalali focuses on the male role in all this and how this fractured understanding of their position either socially or geographically leads to the overwhelming sense of lethargy and confusion. More of a stylish portrait than a plot driven narrative, Frontier Blues provides a complex social commentary and is a promising debut from Jalali.
Showing @ Cineworld 22nd June 13:55 book tix here
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