SILENCE BETWEEN TWO THOUGHTS
Iran, 2003, 95 minutes, Colour.
Moazen Mayam Moqadam.
Directed by Babak Payami.
Silence Between Two Thoughts is the work of Babak Payami, the Afghan-born director of such films as The Secret Ballot. This film was made in Afghanistan and Iran but, during 2003, the footage was confiscated by the Iranian government. Payami put together material from his final cut as well as material that he had prepared for editing in order to show the film, in incomplete form, at festivals around the world so that audiences would see the film and understand something of the religious and secular tensions in Iran.
The setting is Afghanistan, a village where a local group is in charge, violently, the leader relying on the Koran for his domination of the village people and appointing a man to be the executioner of those who did not conform. A crisis looms when the woman he is about to shoot is understood to be a virgin and therefore cannot be executed. The solution is for him to marry her and then execute her. This is a challenge to his own simple-minded and single-minded beliefs, allowing the woman some freedom, even allowing her to go on a women's pilgrimage to a shrine. This puts him at a disadvantage with the people turning against him and the leader denouncing him.
The film ends with a confrontation between the man and the people, his values in confusion. At the opening, in a very long single-shot opening scene which focuses on him shooting people and then circles around him to show his being on guard in the village, he undergoes a journey from fanaticism if not to resolution at least to a questioning of what was happening. The director says that the silence between two thoughts refers to the moment when an individual or a whole society wakes up from the nightmare of blind conviction. The director states that he is very strong against religious fanaticism - especially with relationship to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
1. The impact of the film? The director's Afghanistan upbringing and perspective? Iranian perspective? The difficulties with the Iranian government?
2. The locations, the desert, the village, the cliffs? The musical score?
3. The title, the director's interpretation of this silence, the thoughts about single-mindedness and the change to openness of perspective? Religious fanaticism in Iran and Afghanistan? Social extremes? The use of the Koran to justify these stances?
4. The opening, the long shot of the executioner, his casual shooting, the sound of the victim falling, the camera circling him and revealing the town and the people? His role, his acceptance of his role, his ease with killing people? Haji and his domination of the town? The issue of the virgin, his not shooting her, his having to marry her, then kill her? The repercussions for him? The acceptance? Meeting the young woman, learning to understand her, trying to give her some freedom in the house? Allowing her to go on the pilgrimage? His growing dilemma as to what he should do? The character of the woman, her words, her silence, her being a victim? Her learning to assert herself and gain personal affirmation and freedom?
5. Haji, the command of the town, the religious rulers, the domination of the people, the interpretation of the Koran? The officers accepting his orders and presuming they were based on religious texts?
6. The people in the village, being dominated, going about their ordinary work, the executions? The women and their going on the pilgrimage, the effect of the pilgrimage, the reasons?
7. The people turning on the executioner, hounding him, Haji fleeing? His confusion, danger? The reaction of the woman?
8. The film illustrating the Middle -Eastern and Asian interpretations of Islam and its dominance, fundamentalism, especially in countries like Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq as well as the Arabian Peninsula?
