Neither Vahid Jalilvand nor Andrew Dominik is a newbie when it comes to the Venice Film Festival. Though the Iranian director never before competed for the Golden Lion, his films have won many prizes at the Lido, screening within the festival's parallel sections. Maybe Beyond the Wall can repeat the feat and nab some trophy from Julianne Moore's jury. As for Andrew Dominik, his adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' Blonde is already the topic of much controversy. Critics are divided regarding the movie's depiction of sexual exploitation – some see it as a ruthless dissection of celebrity culture, and others lament another voyeuristic desecration of Marilyn Monroe's personhood, intimacy, her legacy.
For the Venice at Home program, let's remember two instances when these cineastes directed their leading men towards acting prizes. No Date, No Signature won Navis Mohammadzadeh the Venice Horizons Award in 2017. Ten years before that, Brad Pitt earned the Volpi Cup for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford…
NO DATE, NO SIGNATURE (2017)
In the international arthouse scene, Iranian cinema used to be known for its neorealist experiments, stretching and fracturing the porous lines between fiction and documentary. It was like this during the last decades of the 20th century when directors like Abbas Kiarostami or the Makhmalbaf clan came to typify what worldwide audiences expected from the country's national cinema. As the new millennial dawned, other auteurs diversified these outsider expectations, chief among them Asghar Farhadi.
Instead of metatextual experimentation, social dramas structured around moral quandaries became Iran's chief export to international film festivals, especially in Europe and North America. But, of course, this is a reductive purview of a complex and multifaceted national cinema whose entirety cannot be encompassed by such limiting labels. Nevertheless, what is Jalilvand's No Date, No Signature, if not another Iranian drama dripping with complicated inquiries on morality?
The plot revolves around Dr. Kaveh Nariman, who, one night, accidentally hits a motorcycle while driving home after work. The family riding on the vehicle seems fine, though their 8-year-old boy might have a concussion. Days later, the child shows up at the morgue of Nariman's hospital. While the autopsy indicates that the cause of death was botulism, the doctor grows convinced he had a part in the boy's untimely demise. At the same time, the father contends with his own sense of culpability, believing his son's death can be traced to the cheap chicken meat he purchased under the table. Though a bit schematic, the picture's script thrives on tragic ambiguities and how they collide with legal assertions of liability.
From these conundrums emerges a corroding doubt that spreads over guilty consciences, those of the doctor and the aggrieved patriarch. While I have reservations about the text, there's no denying the film's emotional impact. In other words, No Date, No Signature is a devastating watch whose pulverizing sense of sorrow is beautifully articulated by the cast. Though every actor deserves plaudits, Navid Mohammadzadeh is a force to be reckoned with, crumbling in paroxysms of self-reflective fury as the man who might have unwittingly brought upon his son's mortal sickness.
His big scene at the poultry farm is awe-inspiring, a monologue growing in ragged intensity until words lose their meaning, the actor's voice gaining the quality of an open wound, vulnerable and oozing, redraw.
You can rent No Date, No Signature on Apple iTunes and Amazon Video.
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (2007)
As wonderful as that long-winded title might be, it's also potentially misleading. Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is no dry transcription of historical facts nor a story that's exceptionally focused on its titular murder as an act of bloodshed. Working from Ron Hansen's homonymous novel, the Kiwi filmmaker is more interested in perpetuating a tradition of autumnal westerns, big screen narratives set at the twilight of an era. It's when the Wild West crumbled under the pressure of 'civilization,' when the Frontier of yore gave way to new modernity, condemning its living legends to obsolescence.
A land of myth became demystified by the unstoppable march of history, progress killing mystery, and the kind of hegemonic mythos that allowed frontiersmen to see themselves as heroes in an epic poem. Taking the sorrowful tonalities of something like Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Dominik dials them to eleven until the movie at hand is a contradiction in terms – both an elegy and a critique of what was lost, a song of love and hate for bygone mythology. To simplify this florid spiel, let's just say that The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a film about (paradoxical) storytelling.
Notice the presence of an omniscient narrator who tells us the movie in a literary fashion. It alienates the viewer, forcing them to consider what's on-screen as an artificial object about a distant past. There's no immediacy in the movie, no sense of dramaturgical urgency, and that's to its benefit. In its stead, one finds a beautiful meditation shot by Roger Deakins in what's a good candidate for the cinematographer's crowning achievement. Appealing to Malickian lyricism and Old Hollywood technique, the director and DP revisit the West of celluloid mythos, dig into it and carve themselves a home that's equal parts revisionism and revival.
Pardon for going on about Deakins when The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a most pristinely assembled film. Every behind-the-scenes creative is working at the top of their game. The talent in front of the camera is not too shabby, either. Pitt is legitimately surprising as Jesse James, playing against his movie star charisma in unnerving ways. Casey Affleck, who category-frauded his way into an Oscar nomination, makes Robert Ford a tragic figure for the ages, a pathetic man who made the fatal mistake of meeting one's hero.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is available to rent on most services.
Are you excited to see Dominik's Blonde, or are you dreading the experience instead?