A locked-off camera can convey many things — watchfulness, stealthiness, clinical remove or elegant restraint — but seldom is it as evocatively accusatory as in Alireza Khatami and Ali Asgari’s “Terrestrial Verses.” Here, its use over a series of stationary vignettes, bookended by dramatic images of urban collapse, becomes an increasingly inspired choice even as the themes start to repeat and the resonances with the ongoing Women Life Freedom movement in Iran become more apparent. Putting the viewer in the uncomfortable position of interviewer/interrogator in nine encounters between everyday Iranians and some manner of authority figure, this is punchy first-person filmmaking, from the point of view of the last person you want to be.
Some of the stories are mildly comedic in tone, especially early on. In the first of cinematographer Adib Sobhani’s crisp, boxed-in 4:3 compositions, we are introduced to a father (Bahram Ark) being chastised for not...
Some of the stories are mildly comedic in tone, especially early on. In the first of cinematographer Adib Sobhani’s crisp, boxed-in 4:3 compositions, we are introduced to a father (Bahram Ark) being chastised for not...
- 6/8/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
A woman with a lost dog, a small girl performing a TikTok dance in a chador, and a worn-out filmmaker trying to get his movie project off the ground are just three of the characters populating the omnibus of single-take vignettes in writer-directors Alireza Khatami and Ali Asgari’s “Terrestrial Verses.” Combined, these nine stories give off a powerful cumulative effect as we see the petty bureaucracies and paper-pushing quotidian blocks to working-class life unfold and whittle these people down. Cultural, religious, and institutional constraints wear down everyday citizens in Tehran in stories that may lack a beginning, middle, or end but still arrive at a well-drawn if eerie and ambiguous conclusion that would feel dystopic if the events weren’t so ordinary.
The sole Iranian entry in the 2023 Cannes Official Selection, “Terrestrial Verses” opens with a panoramic, widescreen shot of the Tehran cityscape. At first gently and then overwhelmingly,...
The sole Iranian entry in the 2023 Cannes Official Selection, “Terrestrial Verses” opens with a panoramic, widescreen shot of the Tehran cityscape. At first gently and then overwhelmingly,...
- 5/25/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
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