THE END OF THE LINE
by
Chris Dashiell

Crimson Gold opens with a tragically bungled jewelry store robbery -- the action taking place in the darkened foreground, and a gathering crowd of witnesses seen through the light of the open doorway in center screen. Sensational in content (at least for Iran), the scene is presented in a dry, formal style that typifies the approach of director Jafar Panahi, as well as Iranian film in general. The extraordinary is ordinary; calamity is a matter of fact. Social critique sneaks past the censors by treading carefully, but it would be a mistake to think that's the point of the film, which focuses squarely on the experience of one inarticulate human being, without the adornment of psychological explanations, or the habit (ingrained in our Western cinematic traditions) of trying to create "identification" for the audience.

The rest of the movie tells, in flashback, the story of the robber, a big hulk of a man named Hussein (Hossain Emadeddin), a veteran who ekes out a living delivering pizzas on his motorcycle. When his best friend steals a purse in which he finds a receipt for an unbelievably expensive necklace, Hussein gets it into his head to buy some jewelry from the same store for his fiancée. The brusque treatment they receive there throws into relief his everyday experience of alienation, standing on the outside looking in at the luxuries of the wealthy.

Police presence is a recurrent theme. On one pizza delivery, Hussein is made to wait while the cops stake out a hotel and arrest illegally fraternizing couples as they exit. Later in the film he witnesses a man being dragged out of a neighboring flat for an unspecified crime. The director sometimes uses real time to depict the humdrum life of his hero -- we see Hussein walk up four flights of stairs to deliver a pizza, a sequence that would be cut from most American films, but emptiness and boredom are weapons in Panahi's arsenal, and in his mentor Abbas Kiarostami's, who wrote the film, a fact that continues to offend those viewers seeking escape or entertainment. But the film wants us to feel what it's really like to be this person, and all that implies. In this, Crimson Gold succeeds with complete assurance and economy.

The picture's style and theme coalesce most memorably in a long sequence in which Hussein delivers pizzas to a neurotic young man, angry at a couple of women that just walked out on him, who invites him in to his lavish apartment. While his host spends most of the time jabbering on a cell phone, Hussein wanders through the palatial residence, which includes an indoor swimming pool, with a look on his face that combines stoic acceptance of this odd situation with a kind of voracious wonder.

Emadeddin is an actual pizza deliverer, and he suffers, so I've read, from schizophrenia. His performance is so steady, so mutely convincing, that it's alternately amusing and unnerving. While the film's title combines the colors of blood and money, the method is anything but didactic. The divide between classes, if it is to be anything more than an abstract idea or a call to arms, must be felt as a lived condition. Crimson Gold, in its modest way, conveys that experience, without a trace of fanfare or self-consciousness. When the sun rises on the morning of the robbery, we've truly come full circle.

Just next door, in Georgia, the former Soviet republic, chaos resulted when ownership of the power grid was transferred from the state to a multinational corporation, a situation documented by director Paul Devlin in his film, Power Trip. When the AES Corporation began billing people in Georgia for their electricity, they met stiff opposition, which is no wonder, since they used to pay about $5 a month, and suddenly they were being charged $24, which in that poor country is close to half of the average income.

The picture focuses on Piers Lewis, the charming English-born project director, who vowed to not cut his hair until he could get half the customers to pay their bills. We watch as AES cuts people's power off, only to have them get around it by configuring amazingly ingenious (and dangerous) illegal hook-ups. Devlin had unlimited access to the company, so we tend to get their point of view: the AES folks come off as friendly and well-intentioned, for the most part, with the real obstacles to progress taking the form of the corrupt Shevardnadze government (recently ousted) exempting itself from having to pay.

The film presents an engaging view of the history and social conditions of a little-known country, and the free-wheeling style lends interest to what might seem at first glance a very dry subject. We tend to take electrical power for granted. In Georgia, they're never sure when the lights will be on or off, and it aggravates a sense of backwardness, producing bitterness and resentment. Power Trip explores this issue with intelligence and humor, but it should have paid more attention to some of the opposition voices. The larger issues about suddenly introducing laissez faire capitalism into poor, formerly socialist countries, and what alternatives the good of the community might require, are never touched on.

Overturning expectations can be a fruitful strategy for a film, but it also ups the ante, making failure more likely if the movie hasn't gone far enough in having something new to say. A case in point is Japanese Story, an Australian film written by Alison Tilson and directed by Sue Brooks.

Toni Collette plays Sandy, a tough geologist who seems to live for her work at the expense of her friends and family. She gets saddled with a hated assignment: playing tour guide to a visiting Japanese businessman (Gotaro Tsunashima), who wants to inspect her company's mining interests in the outback. The young man is very reserved, treats Sandy like a servant, and at one point foolishly gets the truck stalled in a godforsaken part of the desert because he won't listen to Sandy's advice. So the expectation is that the gruff, independent woman will eventually see a better side to the young man, the young man will let down his guard and begin to appreciate the woman, and they'll fall in love. Well, that's exactly what starts to happen, but then the film takes a sudden turn into more interesting territory. Instead of a romance/drama about overcoming cultural differences and finding love, we are confronted with a story about guilt, responsibility, and the capricious nature of life in the face of human will and desire.

Interesting, yes. But to be more than just interesting, the filmmakers would need to go deeper, painting their theme in various colors, revealing more nuance and greater meaning as they go along. Unfortunately, they seem to have run out of ideas, with the last third of the film just hitting the same note over and over, and the Japanese-style theme music playing on a seemingly endless loop, until I felt annoyed instead of moved. It's too bad, because it's Toni Collette's show all the way, and she is quite good here -- just not good enough to save Japanese Story from floating away through lack of weight.

©2004 Chris Dashiell
CineScene