When "Big World" was released at the beginning of this year, many people were confused, such a realistic film, and there is no vampire, turtle qigong and triple dream back and forth, what is the significance of making an animation?
In fact, this is also a clear proof that reality is more magical than the movie.
Because there are some things that can't be blindly photographed.
No, a "coming-of-age animation" from Iran is a similar situation.
Taboo in Tehran
Tehran Taboo
Director: Ali Suzand
Type: Animation
It even has similarities in the way the plot structure is structured to Big World:
Several people who had no relationship, because of an incident, fates were intertwined.
Most of them are marginal people struggling at the bottom of society, prostitutes, poor musicians, young girls who are ready to sell themselves to Dubai, at best, housewives who are used as reproductive tools...
Some of them are for money, some are for freedom, they want to escape the shackles of fate, and they want to try to find something. In the process, however, they all inevitably lead to a tragic situation.
Money, freedom, these things may indeed exist, but they are obviously not for them. In the eyes of those in power, their efforts may be nothing more than clowns jumping off the beam.
In the film, a minor supporting character smashes a cat to death by the trash can, then throws it in, muttering, "If only I were you."
Maybe death was lucky for him.
This film is the debut of Iranian director Ali Suzand, the first work is so strong, it can be seen that all kinds of injustices to society, he has been holding back for too long, suppressed by the so-called "taboo" to the brink of eruption.
What exactly is the "taboo in Tehran"?
Remember Ben Affleck's "Escape from Tehran," which won the 2012 Oscar for Best Picture?
The film is set in the true history of 1979, when the Islamic Revolution broke out in Iran, overthrowing the pro-American king, driving the old Americans out of the country, and restoring Islamic prohibitions.
Later, the social environment in Iran has always been very strict, under the social form of Islamic theocratic integration, many things have become taboo, many words cannot be said, many things cannot be done, the whole society is silent, and all kinds of problems are surging in secret...
These are not difficult to see in the films of Iranian directors such as Asha Farhati.
The tragic female figure in A Parting
One of the most prominent aspects of Islamic teachings is the requirement for absolute purity.
The first thing is sex, it's women.
In an on-board radio at the beginning of the anime, a man preaches this:
"Almighty God created a woman's nose in a special way, making it perfectly match the wearing of the headscarf."
In Iran, women grow noses in order to wear a headscarf to cover their faces.
Women's chastity is their only foothold.
In public, men and women who openly hold hands will be arrested by the police; unmarried girls may be beaten to death if they are found not to be virgins; and if a woman is raped on the road, the court will give her two choices: marry the rapist or imprison her for life.
A woman has little to live for, except to marry a husband and then bow down to him. You also have to pray that you are married to a good husband.
No, the heroine of the film is a woman who can't see well. Married a man, had a son, and as a result the man went in.
Without financial resources, without social status, she did not even have a name in the whole movie, because her husband in prison refused to sign the divorce agreement, so she did not have the opportunity to turn over.
In order to survive, she had to become a prostitute and take her son out to pick up customers.
Of all the taboos in Tehran, this is probably the worst one. Later plots tell us that women just call men to talk to each other, and her house will be set on fire by the "moral police".
The director found such a most impure woman, and from her sight, under the surface purity, there were all the dirtiest and clearly marked prices.
Her husband, who was clearly a death row inmate, spent twenty million and became a life sentence. According to him, as long as his wife gets him another ten million, he can be acquitted.
Thirty million, arguably the most expensive purity—the life of a death row inmate.
If the currency in the animation world is the Iranian rial, then the conversion is only 6,000 yuan.
Unable to bear this fate, the heroine went to the court for an unknown number of times and wanted the judge to sign a divorce agreement. But without the husband's permission, this is simply not possible.
Unless, unless, the judge is in a good mood.
So she became the mistress of the fat, bearded judge.
How much is the purity of this judge worth?
The answer is, an apartment, plus a monthly allowance for mother and son, and a divorce agreement that cannot be signed for a long time...
The second line of the story is that of a music student who is still studying, Babak.
Like many uninvolved Wenqing, Babak only wants to do the avant-garde music he likes, and disdains the vulgar swing music of the cabaret.
Therefore, he was poor and jingle-dong.
Poor is poor, after all, he is engaged in music, and when it is time to wave, he still has to wave, so he gives a girl in the nightclub.
The next day, the girl called to tell him that she was getting married.
The girl asks Babak to find a way to get her hymen back, otherwise when her fiancé finds out that she is not a virgin, they will both have to finish playing.
After several tosses, Babak finally found a black doctor who could perform this operation in a dirty underground clinic without the signature of his parents, and the price was 3 million.
Maiden's chastity, 3 million.
The last person in the film is Sarah, a recently diagnosed pregnant housewife who graduated from a literature department and aspires to be a teacher. Her husband is a bank clerk and a decent profession.
Because she moved into the judge's apartment, our heroine was able to live in the same neighborhood as the bank clerk's family.
She told them that she was an emergency room nurse, so she often went out to work the night shift and asked Sarah to take care of her son.
The two women sometimes talk about their hearts, and the heroine says that she envies Sarah and has a stable and happy family, and Sarah listens only to saying: "It's too boring to stay at home, boring you can't imagine".
Her husband wouldn't let her go out to work, and no company would want her without his approval.
She also had her misfortune and had miscarried twice so far, so the family was nervous.
There are several images in the film, such as flocks of birds flying and kites trapped on telephone poles, but in fact, it is not only Sarah, the girl who wants to repair the virgin touch, the prostitute who tries to divorce, everyone is the same.
It's not easy to even survive, so what freedom is there to talk about?
The three women and a man in the anime face their own painful and inexplicable fates, slowly intertwined, and then cause more painful and more inexplicable results.
The events that happened in the middle, leading to a tragic ending, were simply insignificant to the point of being boring and ridiculous.
But it is such a small thing that makes everything collectively collapse. As if to tell the world that it doesn't matter what happens, as long as you are in it, sooner or later it will become like this.
Because behind these stories of theirs is the continual absurdity of the whole society.
Once Sarah asked the heroine, do you know about drugs? How do you identify what drugs a man is using?
After so many years of being a prostitute, can you not understand? So she said:
"Slap your husband, if he doesn't respond he's smoking opium, if he laughs it's marijuana, if he jumps three feet is Hashish, if he sucks on methamphetamine, he'll die soon, cocaine will kiss you and suffocate, if he scolds you, it's just drunk, but if he beats you until his teeth fall out, it means he's all right." 」
That's right, if he hits you until your teeth fall out, it means everything is normal.
The image of the animation is more special in processing, first let the real person perform, and then the image material taken is post-processed into an animation effect.
Therefore, the texture is much smoother than the general animation, the color is also richer, and the process of watching will forget that you are watching the animation from time to time. This effect seems to be somewhat ironic.
A black cat was thrown to death, and the prostitute's son picked up a newborn white cat in a crack in the roadside wall, took it home, and put it on the couch.
The appearance of a small white cat can easily be interpreted as a seed of hope.
In another place, white appears, in the excited words of the heroine when she first moves into the large house given by the judge:
"I'm going to buy a white bed, I want everything to be white, bedding or whatever, I'm going to put in white curtains, white and beautiful kind..."
Although she was already a skilled prostitute, living in a large house of grace and charity, she longed for purity.
Text/mr.pink