THOSE THREE
Iran, 2007, 80 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Naghi Nemati
Those Three is a short story, filmed poetically in the snowy mountains of northern Iran. The director and his crew spent a period of over two years making the film.
The focus is on three conscripts who are discontented with their training and decide to desert. The initial focus is on the men, their training, the officer in charge. However, most of the film is their trek through the snow, their gradually weakening, their interactions with each other, meeting a group of young boys on the way, encountering a pregnant woman who was smuggled over the border but abandoned by the smuggler. Eventually, nature overwhelms them and they die. However, the woman is very strong and gives birth to a child. With these themes of birth and death in the vast indifference of nature, the film is very much a mood piece, very grim.
1. A short story, the poetic visual style, fatalistic, death and birth?
2. The importance of the location, the snowscapes, the snow itself, on the ground, falling? The isolated trees? The ruined village? The aftermath of an earthquake? The musical score?
3. The prologue, the three men, in the warm baths, talking, the man in solitary, the joke about the turtle and its turning back from Everest? The ending and a kind of paradise in the warmth of the baths?
4. The training, 2 months, the officer in charge, resting, the issue of cigarettes, the fighting, the financial deals to sell cigarettes to the other soldiers?
5. The three as individuals, Esse, Josef, Darius? Esse and his wanting to go home, Josef following him, Darius and his surly attitude, watching them, following? The plan, their walking, in circles, the trees, the encounter with the kids, the woman and her pregnancy, the story of the smuggler? The phone and Esse talking to his family? Josef and his being unable to speak? The voice-over?
6. The shelter, the fire, need of food, the growing weakness, walking, the final collapse, their deaths?
7. The woman being strong, the blanket, giving birth? The final cry of the child over the snowscapes and the dead men?
