THE FAMILY FARM
Iran, 2004, 98 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Rasul Mollaquolipour.
The Family Farm seems a very strange title for a film which has a bulk of its running time as a graphic, very graphic, re-creation of the Iran-Iraq? war, focusing on a particular leader and the platoon that he was leading and its being consistently attacked by the Iraquis, causing death and devastation. However, The Family Farm is the name of a book, written well after the war, by the leader. In the present, he and his family go to a discussion with students about the war, about the memories of the war, about the new era in Iran and about his book (including an interruption by the daughter of the owner of the farm who protests vigorously against the fictionalising of all their suffering, especially her own rape). However, the film is also a fantasy, corresponding to the way that the author wrote his book. As the war is visualised, his wife and two teenage children continually appear, urging him on, comforting him, concerned about him. At the end of the film in the war sequences, they are killed. However, this is in the fiction rather than real life.
The film is very strong in its depiction of war, probably too much detail and carnage for many audiences. However, it is the Iranians, fourteen years after the end of the war, still trying to come to terms with it in their national psyche. It makes a difference that this film was being made at the time of the Iraq war in 2003, changing the potential relationship between Iraq and Iran.
While the film is strong in the war scenes, the fantasy sequences when the family appear give an atmosphere of poetry and different meaning to the struggles of war and the deaths of so many people. There is a particularly tender scene between husband and wife - they don't come very near each other, but the tenderness they express is very strong in erotic suggestion for an Iranian film.
1. The impact of the film? The Iran- Iraq war and its duration, the terrible consequences for the Iran military, death and devastation, the countryside, the destruction of families, of farms? The aftermath of the war? Time passing?
2. The film director as screenwriter and art director, especially for the construction of the action sequences, the great attention to detail, the weaponry, the battles and the way that they were edited? The contrast with the modern era, the cafes and the ice cream sequence? The sequence on the farm with the family splashing? The fantasy sequences as the family appeared during the war?
3. The title of the film, the title of the novel - the homely attitude in such dreadful circumstances?
4. The character of Mahmoud, seeing him when he was young, when old? Going with the family and buying the ice cream, his looking back, memories of the past, memories of his fiction? The group discussing the war and their action? His return to the car, their going into the countryside, the picnic, in the corn, splashing and the games at the fountain? The tender love scene? The creation of an atmosphere of the family, the genial children, the almost idealised wife? His going to the discussion with the students, answering all the questions, their asking about the fiction and reality and his family being present? His wife being embarrassed by his praise? The questions by the students, their concern about the 21st century rather than the war, opportunities, unemployment_? The intervention by the sister (and the way that she was visualised during the action sequences)?
5. Mahmoud in war, leadership, the battles, the presence of his family and their inspiration, their trying to hold him back, wanting him to come home? The reflection on family and war after the event?
6. The range of soldiers, in action, their personalities (or not quite so clearly delineated)? The man with the bird and his death, the blood on the bird? The tough man and his drug injections? The others in the trenches, their being shot at, the tanks, the helicopters? Losing the positions, retreating? The burning fields? The Iraqis invading, the women raped? The film's presentation of the horrors of war?
7. The impact for a non-Iranian, non-Iraqi audience? To understand the reality of the war, in the situation of the 1980s? The film's anti-war stance - and its meaning for an Iranian audience?
