Dynamic Persian Cats Sings a Catchy Tune
Freshly released from prison, musicians Negar (Negar Shaghaghi) and Ashkan (Ashkan Koshanejad) dream of fleeing Tehran in order to play the music they love at a concert in Europe. Turning to fast-talking promoter Nader (Hamed Behdad) for help the trio proceed to put together a band, write new music and look for options in obtaining passports and visas that would allow them to leave the country.
Negar Shaghaghi in IFC Films' No One Knows About Persian Cats
There’s not much more to director Bahman Ghobadi’s (A Time for Drunken Horses, Marooned in Iraq) latest effort No One Knows About Persian Cats, but just because that’s so don’t for a second think this musical odyssey isn’t a complex and emotional maelstrom full of surprises. While the bones here are familiar, if only just because of its setting inside Iran’s busy capital city the movie has an immediacy and a freshness unlike much else this year. As much as I thought I knew where all this was heading in reality I never had the first clue, everything culminating in a bit of brutally frank honesty that while completely unexpected still felt authentic and true.
On the surface Ghobadi’s freewheeling musical has the same effervescent elegance of something like say John Carney’s Once. Both offer up a saga of musicians struggling to find success. The difference here, of course, is that unlike Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová the road Negar and Ashkan are on is filled with obstacles laid out by their own government. They and their band mates are forced underground in order to perform, every angry phone call to the police by an irate neighbor a chance the lot of them could find themselves in prison facing a lengthy sentence effectively ending their careers before they even begin.
I can’t help but wonder how this film was conceived let alone made. It’s the first Iranian film that I can recall that is openly critical of the current regime ruling that country, using the plight of the anti-establishment youth and their love affair with music as a springboard to highlight current events. Shot on location, filled with real people portraying themselves, Ghobadi takes risks other filmmakers would run screaming from, his film oozing with a validity it never would have achieved otherwise.
Understandably this gives the film a fast and loose feel that feels almost adlibbed. Shot in just 14 days with a digital camera and with no authorization from the government, Ghobadi lets the musicians and the lyrics give the film its structure and its dramatics for him. The film almost becomes a Tehran travelogue, and by the time it was over I felt like the director had just taken me into places I was both privileged to see and more than likely would never be given the opportunity to visit ever again.
But just because the film sometimes has the feel of a low budget documentary or an experimental music video doesn’t mean the characters are given a short shrift. Negar, Ashkan and Nader are complicated figures filled with nuance, and while the first member of this trio does tend to get a little annoying now and again her whines have a point considering the uphill nature of what it is they’re all trying to accomplish. What’s more, by the time the film comes to its stunning conclusion I was so caught up in their collective plight I almost felt I was running through the streets of Tehran right along with them.
Does No One Know About Persian Cats do anything different as far as the making-the-band genre of rock dramas is concerned? No, not really, but that doesn’t make it any less memorable or vibrant. Ghobadi gives us an insight into a city and a youth culture many never would have gotten the opportunity to see otherwise. It is filled with joy and heartbreak, dreams and devastation, the whole thing pulsating with a hopefulness that not even sudden tragedy can destroy. This is a movie worthy of celebration, and for all its familiarity this is one movie with an intoxicating melody that manages to sing a song uniquely all its own.
Film Rating: êêê1/2 (out of 4)
