Tehran Taboo, written and directed by Ali Soozandeh - Nine out of 10

Tehran Taboo, written and directed by Ali Soozandeh

Nine out of 10

The Iranian cineastes are among the best in the world – we could mention here Asghar Farhadi and his brilliant About Elly, A Separation, The Past and the most recent Salesman, or the glorious Children of Heaven by Majid Majidi

Samira Makhmalbaf is another Iranian cinematic genius, with her Blackboards or At Five in the Afternoon.

We could mention Through the Olive Trees, by another master from the same oppressed country, Abbas Kiarostami - http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/through-olive-trees-written-and.html.

Another fabulous animated work, perhaps at about the same level as Tehran Taboo, would be Persepolis - http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/11/persepolis-written-and-directed-by.html

Tehran Taboo gives the audience a glimpse at a theological tyranny, the Iranian Theocracy is a repellent regime, albeit Trump is wrong, as always, in not respecting the accord signed over the nuclear technology.

From the first few scenes, the ordeal, tragedy of life in an oppressive regime is clear, when a prostitute has to drive with a judge and offer him sex, while her boy sits in the back seat.

The boy may be only about eight and at school, they refuse his admission without the preposterous papers demanded by the vicious, corrupt, Kafkaesque bureaucracy of a vile system.

Like in other theocracies – Saudi Arabia for instance – women are abused and they have to show everywhere that a male guardian – who can be much younger than them, has authorized almost anything they do.

The Revolutionary Guards – that is one example of a name that is supposed to mean something positive, when in fact it represents the exact opposite, a reactionary, fundamentalist, primitive force – have power over everyone.

They stop couples that walk in the park, one of the protagonists as he travels with his car and when they find a magazine with nudes, they take it away, jail him temporarily and release him after a bribe is paid.

The judge in the feature is as loathsome as almost all the officials that keep the mullahs in power – there may be a few exceptions of people that try to help and save men and women.

Indeed, executions are public and as characters drive around, we can see corpses hanging from cranes, many paying with their life for the opposition to a system that is as despicable as one can be.

The prostitute is trying to get the papers demanded by the school to admit her son and maybe the main reason why she has sex with the judge – apart from getting money to survive – is to use his influence.

Women must have coitus only within the established frame of matrimony – they are chased and tortured by the Revolutionary Guards – their rights are limited and they are in a class inferior to men.

When one personage loses her virginity, it is paramount for her to restore it – indeed, at a later stage, her partner would confront and send her packing upon suspicion that something could have happened.

A gynecologist needs papers to perform an operation and that would mean a statement from the family that confirms their agreement and this refers to accidents and a rape – otherwise the religious Taliban would not have it.

All this costs money, for false documents could be procured – even for the bank loans actually – and many people are desperate to get passports to get away from this hell, which is described as heaven.

There is much we recognize in this narrative, those of us who have lived in dictatorships – be they communist as in the case of this viewer – for they all tell their subjects that they experience paradise, when they know it is Hades in reality.

The system is so absurd as to make it hard to believe that such retrograde, barbaric rules and laws still exist in the 21^st century, but for those who have experienced these surrealist tyrannies it is all so real.

There is no difference though between the dictatorship in Iran and that in North Korea, although an idiot like Trump decides to talk about a love affair with Kim, while accusing the ayatollah.

A sane mind would condemn both, for the starvation in North Korea is worse than what happens in Venezuela – if we come to comparing devastation, murder and the oppression of one or another people.

Tehran Taboo, as the other marvel, Persepolis, before it, is not just a great motion picture, it serves an educational purpose as well, for those who have no idea how lucky they are to live free, can see what it means to have to look over the shoulder for the murderous Guards of the Iranian or another regime.