The Green Chronicles

June 13^th, 2009: Sweat drops would trail around the edges of my smile. My blood would flit to the CNN broadcasts about protests. 

I asked my mother for permission to vote at the Hyatt in New York. She dismissively explained, “Oh, it’s all rigged. It doesn’t even matter if you vote.” I am encircled by disillusioned Iranians expatriates. Fittingly, they are the least bit surprised by Ahmadinejad’s win. Within Iran, however, the youths and other reform-supporters seem terribly aggravated. As a result, protests are now unfurling in Tehran. My mother is asserting that the protests will soon stop. I pray to Khodah that they’ll continue.

June 15^th 2009: Not going to Iran this summer? Only over my dead brown body will I be stopped.

Since I’ve grasped the structure and vices of this regime, I’ve been strictly taught not to discuss politics while in Iran. Curiosity can only be suppressed to a certain extent. Soon enough, inquiries will run from under the iron fist in zigzags and crude eagerness. When I was 13, I calculatingly stayed in my cousin’s bedroom, closed the door, and then broached the topic of regime support and the prospect of a revolution. While the invitees were reclining against the chairs with their wine and the women are dipping their heads in gossip, a 17-year old me turned to a companion and inquired after the Gay Pride movement in Iran. The youths with whom I have conversed gave me sparse responses. Now, it will be unavoidable to not discuss reformation. Would it be too optimistic of me to think that I might even get involved in a protest?

June 17^th 2009: “Maman, unless things get really bad, we’re still going right?”

June 19^th 2009: “All this needs to stop. They’re not organized. They have no real leader.”

A pregnant woman lost her child because it’s head was ripped apart by the bullet of a Basij soldier. My mother’s e-mail account has been bombarded with YouTube videos of worried screams and bleeding scalps. She is now calling my cousins in Iran. The continuing ringtone slits my smile. The winds of blood that once whirled in excitement are now raindrops falling down my chest. My cousins didn’t answer the phone. Are they out marching? It doesn’t seem like them to do such a thing. But if they are, I hope they’re okay.

Mousavi has been ensnared by these protests. Involuntarily he has become a symbol for this week of dissidence. Regardless of his progressive views on freedom of speech, women’s rights, Israel, foreign relations, etc., he is still a believer of the Revolution and the Islamic framework of the government. Whether it be Ahmadinejad or Mousavi, both of them still will act in accordance to the wishes of their Supreme Leader whether it be Khamenei or Rafsanjani. And it is the Shari’a-weilding power and authority of the Grand Ayatollah that essentially makes Iran a dictatorship. So … is anyone’s life worth only minimal reformation?

June 25th 2009: "Sogand, we're not going anymore." 

Images: Curtis, Ben. Salemi,Vahid. Nikoubaz, Mortezal."Opposition Defies Protest Ban in Tehran." The New York Times. 2009. 15 June.

“Loneliness, Ugliness, and the Pain in my Legs”

I stumbled across a canvas showered with lime and burnt orange. In its middle ground there is a dancing figure. The strokes of wet paint are shrilling with the sounds of a cheap music hall. In the foreground of the film shot there is painter with spectacles, an unlit beard, and a worn face. Two minutes later, the painter is lying down. His short legs cannot reach the post of the day bed. “Oh my God,” I shout, “IT’S LAUTREC!”

John Houston is famous for his gritty American films starring most notably Humphrey Bogart: The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Key Largo. I was astonished to learn that he directed a film set in a late 19^th century Paris. Furthermore, it is a film about the out casted painter and consorter of Parisian nightlife, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Haven’t you ever wondered why the 2001 film Moulin Rouge! has a pointless exclamation point? It is because of the above mentioned 1952 film, Moulin Rouge.

Biographical pictures from the Studio System Age were largely romanticized and controversy-filtered. One such example is the 1946 film Night and Day about Cole Porter. Now, Mouline Rouge is a fictionalized account of Lautrec’s life because it was released to a largely conservative and Hays Code familiar. However, the unique internationality of the cast and production team and the progressive cinematography style grasps the fundamentals of Lautrec's legacy. Of course, there is John Houston’s well-known grittiness. In addition, the actresses in the film are French and their articulations of ‘Henri’ are all the more richening. Although José Ferrer, who portrays Lautrec, is Puerto Rican, his exoticism also contributes to the loud tones of Moulin Rouge. The film’s British cinematographer, Oswald Morriss, uses warm impressionistic techniques (which earned him an Academy Award â) that bring to mind the work of fellow Briton Jack Cardiff in The Red Shoes. There is a mildly crude depiction of the Moulin Rouge and of Lautrec’s alcohol addiction but there is no explicit sexuality, which in an accurate illustration of Lautrec’s life would be necessary. However, as always in art there is a reason for everything.

In my AP Art History class, we learned about Lautrec and how in paintings of his like At the Moulin Rouge (1892-95), he exaggerates the elements. There is glaring artificial light and masklike faces along the oblique plane and strong line patterns. By simplifying the elements, Lautrec distorted them even more. That is exactly what the creative team of Houston’s Moulin Rouge did. They simplified his character into a lonely, ugly alcoholic with pain in his legs. And this distortion makes his life and work all the more fascinating. 

La Primavera di Fellini

The institutionalized uncle’s silhouette is erect with unrest. It is perched a top a tree that towers over the sunset. He yells, “Voglio una donna/ I want a woman!” His anxiety scrapes against his words. “VOGLIO UNA DONNA!” The villa’s farm suddenly loses its calmness. But with the addition of a quirky realism, the setting has developed a brilliance.

In Fellini’s 1974 film Amarcord, the renowned Italian filmmaker documents the full-flavored relationships between residents in the coastal town of Remini. In particular, he hones in on a pubescent boy’s experimentations with sexuality set against the arousing beginning of Mussolini’s reign. In the first sequence of Remini’s villa, Fellini shoots dialogues between noteworthy characters. A youth banters with the blind accordian player. The elegant middle-aged men inquire after the town prostitute’s most recent pay off. The beggar is tricked into staying a top the trash used for the bonfire. Remini’s most beautiful resident saunters until her body jerks to the sudden noise of firecrackers. The focal boy’s father reprimands him for donating a house chair to the bonfire. The comedic characters and their hilariously crude dialogue upstage each lives' bleakness. For example, one the characters who breaks the third wall with the audience is a mustached, blue-eyed lawyer. His romantic lectures on Remini’s history and praises of Dante, Pascoli, and D’Annunnzio are interrupted pranksters’ farts. He dips his forehead in disappointment then turns back to the viewer, props his chin and starts remarking on the Roman and Celtic blood of Remini’s people. This lawyer embodies Amarcord’s theme of positive wackiness overshadowing conflict. 

As a result of the emphasis on the quirky relationships of the people, the viewer reflects on the humor of the story rather than the rise of fascism and the financial deficiencies of Amarcord’s setting and residents. From the introductory burnfire to the concluding wedding, there are conveys of sadness, discontent, and frustration. But, for every quarrel at dinner between the mother and the father, there will be a still of a peacock in the snow. For every shot of a construction laborer in the summer, the townspeople will gather at midnight to celebrate the passing of cruise liner. Fellini reminds the audience that although the extreme seasons will discomfort me, “a m'arcòrd/ I will remember” the Springs of my life.

As his nurses escort the institutionalized uncle back to a car, they inquire after why climbed the tree. His aged face animates with a grin, “Non so/ I don’t know.” The uncle then swings his head and giggles. “I just don’t know.” And as the uncle smiled, the viewer just chuckles.

Awake Iranian

When asked, “Are you a god?” Buddha responded by saying, “No.” “An angel?” “No.” “A saint?” “No.” “Then what are you?” Buddha answered, “I am awake (Smith [All the World's Religions] 82).”

My parents’ home country of Iran is under an Islamic authoritarian regime. Often one hears stories about Iranian expatriates, who upon returning to Iran after the Revolution become depressed over its disarming bleakness. My father asserts, “This Iran is not my home. Cruel people came and took my country away from me.” My mother laments, “Sogand azizam, this isn’t the same Iran. You wouldn’t believe how different it was before.” Is it the unleaded fuel, the air pollution, the humidity, and the mute-colored cars that evoke this sense of bleakness? Or it is the repression of Iranians? No matter how many times I’ve traveled to either Tehran or Mashad, every time I walk down from the air port buses and into the terminals, I’m always arrested with distraught. To see Iranians engulfed in Shari’a and shackled to religion just makes my heart so heavy.

Under the Oxford English Dictionary, to be ‘awake’ means to "arouse into activity, stir up, excite; kindle (desire, anxiety, interest, attention, etc.)” In a theocracy, one is confined to a dark place. How can one experience Enlightenment when the dark clouds of censorship are always infringing upon the sunlight? When a woman is confined to her house because even her college degree won’t help her get a job? When an acoustic guitarist’s performance is shut down because of ‘Western influence?’ When a homosexual is hung for experiencing love? According to Houston Smith, “Religion confronts the individual with the most momentous option life can present. It calls the soul to the highest adventure it can undertaken a proposed journey across the jungles, peaks, and deserts of the human spirit.” If faith is a way of knowing and a path to critical reasoning, then the Ayatollah and the government’s ideology is not Islam; for the Iranian is not awake.