The Chess of the Wind (1976)
(Shatranj-e baad)
Country: IR
Technical: col 93m
Director: Mohammad Reza Aslani
Cast: Fakhri Khorvash, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, Akbar Zanjanpour, Shohreh Aghdashloo
Synopsis:
A widowed artisan lives in the palatial house of his late wife with his crippled stepdaughter. He plots to dispossess her of the inheritance by forgery and despises his two nephews who pay court to her. She, meanwhile, in love with her maidservant, plans to murder him, elope with her and live abroad on her rents.
Review:
With its still life compositions and upstairs-downstairs machinations this is like Walerian Borowczyk re-envisioned by Sergei Parajanov! The head of the household is a violent despot, the nephews weak, the woman, deprived of agency except through her maidservant, is devious and corrupted; the populace, represented by the washerwomen, gossip in the courtyard below. We end on a tilt and pan over present day Tehran. A film freighted with subtext, therefore, and small wonder it was banned by the Islamic Revolution and thought lost for many years, with its lascivious groaning and subversive household. The restoration may, in its triumphant discovery of the original negative, have come to exaggerate the artistic value of the outcome, which marries painstaking technique with enigmatic action and leaden pacing.
(Shatranj-e baad)
Country: IR
Technical: col 93m
Director: Mohammad Reza Aslani
Cast: Fakhri Khorvash, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, Akbar Zanjanpour, Shohreh Aghdashloo
Synopsis:
A widowed artisan lives in the palatial house of his late wife with his crippled stepdaughter. He plots to dispossess her of the inheritance by forgery and despises his two nephews who pay court to her. She, meanwhile, in love with her maidservant, plans to murder him, elope with her and live abroad on her rents.
Review:
With its still life compositions and upstairs-downstairs machinations this is like Walerian Borowczyk re-envisioned by Sergei Parajanov! The head of the household is a violent despot, the nephews weak, the woman, deprived of agency except through her maidservant, is devious and corrupted; the populace, represented by the washerwomen, gossip in the courtyard below. We end on a tilt and pan over present day Tehran. A film freighted with subtext, therefore, and small wonder it was banned by the Islamic Revolution and thought lost for many years, with its lascivious groaning and subversive household. The restoration may, in its triumphant discovery of the original negative, have come to exaggerate the artistic value of the outcome, which marries painstaking technique with enigmatic action and leaden pacing.
(Shatranj-e baad)
Country: IR
Technical: col 93m
Director: Mohammad Reza Aslani
Cast: Fakhri Khorvash, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, Akbar Zanjanpour, Shohreh Aghdashloo
Synopsis:
A widowed artisan lives in the palatial house of his late wife with his crippled stepdaughter. He plots to dispossess her of the inheritance by forgery and despises his two nephews who pay court to her. She, meanwhile, in love with her maidservant, plans to murder him, elope with her and live abroad on her rents.
Review:
With its still life compositions and upstairs-downstairs machinations this is like Walerian Borowczyk re-envisioned by Sergei Parajanov! The head of the household is a violent despot, the nephews weak, the woman, deprived of agency except through her maidservant, is devious and corrupted; the populace, represented by the washerwomen, gossip in the courtyard below. We end on a tilt and pan over present day Tehran. A film freighted with subtext, therefore, and small wonder it was banned by the Islamic Revolution and thought lost for many years, with its lascivious groaning and subversive household. The restoration may, in its triumphant discovery of the original negative, have come to exaggerate the artistic value of the outcome, which marries painstaking technique with enigmatic action and leaden pacing.