It is rare when a feature film competes in an international
film festival and wins not just the top honour for the best film but two other
major awards (one for best director and one for the best actor) as well. That’s
the accomplishment of Reza Mirkarimi’s Iranian film Castle of Dreams at the 2019 Shanghai International Film Festival.
While Mirkarimi’s previous feature film Daughter (2016) dealt with a father-daughter protective
relationship, Castle of Dreams also
looks at another relationship within a family. The family relationship explored
in Castle of Dreams is a more
complex one, as it involves a broken family where the mostly absent father is forced
by circumstances to realize that he has to take care of his two biological
children whom he has neglected for long, when his wife passes away in a hospital
after a sudden critical illness.
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| Jalal (Hamed Behdad) with his sister-in-law |
A simple subject, one could surmise. But the amazing screenplay plays out from
start to finish as a thriller forcing the viewer to stay riveted to the plot to
see how the unusual social predicament would resolve itself. There is no hero in this film, only an
anti-hero Jalal (Hamed Behdad), who has separated from his wife, Shirin, (never seen on screen) and has had minimal
interaction with his two kids for a minimum of 3 years.
The early introduction of Jalal in Castle of Dreams presents many of his negative aspects of his
character upfront making the viewer to abhor this lout. The events that follow
let the viewer to perceive a gradual change in this individual as he is forced,
much against his original plan, to take on himself the responsibilities of a
father. As the film progresses, the
audience witnesses a gradual change in Jalal’s behaviour and attitudes, prompted
by a series of events involving peripheral
characters and a series of short conversations with his own kids. The viewer is able to glimpse what the late
Shirin, evidently a smart lady, saw in this man Jalal to marry him after he had
repaired her broken down car and continued to acknowledge his positive traits, long
after he had separated from her and continued
to neglect their children. Shirin consciously painted fictional tales for her offspring
to admire their absent father instead of exhibiting bitterness. Shirin tells
her son that his father lives in a castle (hence. the title of the film) and
that the bicycle that she has bought for him with her own savings had been
gifted by his absent father Jalal.
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| Jalal with his cute little daughter |
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| Jalal with his son and daughter on the road trip |
The fascinating original script written by two little known
scriptwriters (Mohammad Davoud and Mohsen Gharaie) keeps the audience guessing how the tale
would end, somewhat like a thriller, while characters seen (Jalal) and unseen
(Shirin) are slowly revealed in depth as the film progresses. It is not surprising the film won the best
screenplay (Crystal Simorgh) award at the Fajr Film Festival in Iran. These character
developments are facilitated by actions and spoken words of the two kids of the
two principal characters. The first child
is a cute, innocent girl called Sara and the second is her elder brother, who
is savvy enough to operate an electronic notebook, ride a cycle, and use a
debit/credit card with ease. The interactions of these young kids with
their father, who they have not seen for years, are crucial vignettes in the
film.
Facts tumble out as the film progresses. Jalal had come to
Shirin’s house merely to pick up his car—not to interact with his kids or even
visit his wife Shirin lying in a critical condition in a hospital. Shirin, we
learn as the film progresses, is a smart woman who teamed up with an elderly
rich man to grow flowers in a greenhouse and the resulting business model is
thriving. The proceeds of her business are sufficient to support her
financially as a single mother of two kids. We also learn from conversations
that she is very much still in love with her estranged husband Jalal. She possibly knew she was terminally ill and
therefore left a loaded debit/credit card with her son, planning in advance for
the eventual bleak scenario.
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| Jalal re-evaluates his relationship with his Azei lady fiend |
Jalal, we learn is an Azeri (from the original Azerbaijan)
not Persian and is planning to live with an Azeri lady. (Azeris are a
significant minority in Iran who speak the Azeri language and even Ayatollah Khomeini
who led the Iranian revolution was an Azeri Iranian). When Jalal does not want his kids to hear
conversations with his lady friend they speak in Azeri language as the kids can
only comprehend Farsi.
Both the kids have been encouraged to love animals by their
mother Shirin. The small girl has a
turtle as a pet and the elder boy is an animal lover. These factors play a strategic part in the interesting
script at crucial points to transform their father during a short road trip
after their mother’s demise (evidently not revealed to the kids).
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| Director Mirkarimi (with cap) directs his lead actor Hamed Behdad during the filming |
The film is in some ways reminiscent of the Russian director
Andrei Zvyagintsev’s 2007 film The
Banishment, where too the father of the nuclear family transforms after the
death of his innocent wife and has to take care of his two kids, a boy and a
girl. That film, of course, was an acknowledged adaptation of William Saroyan’s
novel The Laughing Matter. Both films Castle of Dreams and The
Banishment have one common facet: the viewer is forced to re-evaluate the
major male character as he transforms in attitudes and character.
Castle of Dreams presents
one of the most sophisticated screenplays with an ending comparable to that of
Arthur Penn’s existential thriller Night
Moves (1975). Castle of Dreams is
definitely one of the remarkable films of 2019 and possibly the best work of
the Iranian director Reza Mirkarimi.
(The film is showcased at the on-going Denver Film Festival, USA.)
P.S. Reza Mirkarimi’s film Daughter (2016), a film focussing on a
father-daughter protective relationship within a patriarchal conservative Asian
framework has been reviewed earlier on this blog. Andrei Zvyagintsev’s 2007
film The Banishment has been reviewed earlier on this blog. (Click on the film’s titles within this
postscript to access the review.) The author’s best Iranian films is listed
here with rankings. Castle of Dreams is the best film among the top 20 films of 2019 for the author.
