WELLSPRING
COMING ON THE heels of his surging feminist parable The Circle, Iranian director Jafar Panahi's latest effort, Crimson Gold, is a journey into the deepest recesses of Tehran after dark. As with any such tour, the services of a tour guide are a necessity, and here our escort is Hussein, a mentally unstable Iraq-war vet who makes a living delivering pizzas. As we follow Hussein in his nocturnal rambles, serving the hungry and sleepless, a disheartening picture of contemporary Iran emerges, one in which the interests of the rich and influential supersede those of everyday Iranians. Like the Italian neorealists to whom he owes such an obvious debt, Panahi is an artist with an overpowering sensitivity to the indignities and injustices of daily life. Using the untrained actor Hossain Emadeddin as his protagonist, Panahi demands howls of outrage from his audience, in their service as stand-ins for the relative passivity of his leading man.
Hussein and his buddy and future brother-in-law Ali (Kamyar Sheisi) are offended when they are barred entry to an upscale jewelry store, where Hussein hopes to purchase something for his bride to be. Incensed by the impudence of the jewelers and surrounded by a world of luxuries he cannot afford, from expensive sneakers to penthouse apartments, Hussein plans to rob the store. Along his pizza-delivery route, Hussein encounters a wide range of Tehran life, from his former army commander, who snubs him when he makes a delivery, to the innocent-seeming couples party being busted up by the morals police.
Where his mentor Abbas Kiarostami (who wrote Crimson Gold) uses the everyday as a wedge to pry into the metaphysical truths of eternity, Panahi is focused, laser-like, on the quotidian. Kiarostami based his script on a newspaper clipping, and Panahi's film burrows into the bare outlines provided to establish context and motivation. Crimson Gold is a subjective cityscape, a vision of Tehran whose palette runs toward the dark end of the spectrum. Hussein may travel the city bringing sustenance to the hungry and thirsty, but the city offers him little in the way of pleasure; the film's Tehran is a playground for the powerful who wield their authority any way they see fit. With so much arbitrary, everyday brutality on display, Hussein is inspired to see the violent taking of what belongs to others as his only means of procuring a small piece of the pie. The powerless have always been Panahi's primary artistic concern, whether children, women, or the working poor, and his anger at injustice, no matter who the victim, glows here as brightly as ever.
