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Review / ‘Rosewater’ (M) *** and a half

RosewaterAMERICAN TV talk-show anchorman and comedian Jon Stewart has gone upscale to write and direct a challenging feature film based on real events.

The smell of rosewater combined with human sweat pervades Iranian mosques. Most of the film unfolds in Evin prison where Javadi (Kim Bodnia) interrogated Iranian/Canadian TV journalist Maziar Bahari (Gael Garcia Bernal) for 118 days to force him to confess to spying. Whenever Javadi entered Bahari’s cell, he brought the smell of rosewater.

For Australians in particular, the film’s mise-en-scene calls to mind Peter Greste’s confinement in Egypt. But Bahari’s incarceration, involving brutality, emotional and physical torture and threats against his family, was unsanctioned by any legal proceedings.

“Rosewater” will never be the high point of a family night out. But it was worth making and is worth seeing, a cautionary tale made credible by its basis in Bahari’s book telling of his experiences. It doesn’t proselytise against Islam. But it shows how a country with a sectarian government can raise walls against democracy, thereby, in Islamic countries, depriving its citizens of basic cultural freedoms practiced in other countries.

In Fyshwick markets on Sunday, I often chat with an Iranian man who misses his motherland but does not regret leaving it. He has lent me a translation of the Quran because I have no understanding of what Islam is about. I consider it a political manifesto rather than a spiritual guide. That grieves me because of its restrictive influence on middle-eastern peoples for so many centuries. And it sharpened my awareness of the message “Rosewater” is sending.

At Palace Electric

 

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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