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Khatbi
struggles with guilt while trying to cope with the new
Tehran.
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Reza
Khatibi, France/Iran, 2002, 100 min.
It
is one of those contiguous moments of life imitating art and art
imitating life, played out on the silver screen. For Iranian
director Reza Khatibi, it is a story based on reality; a sort of
seven-day personal diary that fictionalizes his own return to Tehran
after 14 years of self-imposed exile in France in order to avoid the
Iran-Iraq war. But even then, it is more.
Seven
Days in Tehran, which debuted at the Human Rights Watch Film
Festival in New York in June, depicts Khatibi’s own search for
redemption for leaving his country, which results in his desperate
need to create a film to change the West’s view of Iran and Islam.
But more cleverly it is a mirror of itself, a drama disguised as a
documentary about the making of a documentary. With Islamic
traditions and customs as the backdrop, this film offers a
unencumbered look at how Iranian Muslims lead their daily lives, for
better or for worse, and how their choices are perceived by a
Western audience.
The
film follows a French TV crew, with Khatibi playing himself, which
comes to Iran after the re-election of President Mohammad Khatami to
film the country’s tenuous rise towards democracy. Khatibi wants
to control the filming, but his French producer, Franck, feels they
must shoot every nuance of Iranian life in the post-Islamic
revolutionary period, be it positive or not.
But
as each member of the crew immerses themselves in Iranian culture in
engaging subplots, they come to understand the enormous pressure
Khatibi feels to show only the good of Iran and Islam – only to
find life’s messiness and ambiguities perpetuating itself at every
turn of the camera. The film smoothly switches between shots of the
“documentary” with scenes of the crew (many who keep their first
names) making the documentary.
In
the film, Khatibi constantly butts heads with Franck. Khatibi wants
to censor certain scenes, which makes no sense to Franck. But the
whole argument cleverly becomes a mouthpiece for Iran’s own
censorship problems. “I knew there were some things I could not
say,” Khatibi told the New York Times. “So one way of saying
them was for me, as Reza the documentary director, to tell the
television reporter not to discuss the status of women or religion
or politics or press freedom on camera.”
“We
also show a traditional dinner at Reza's mother's house at the same
time as Reza is forbidding the cameraman from recording it. So by
appearing to censor myself, I wanted to show the degree of
censorship,” Khatibi added.
In
fact the film is banned in Iran for reasons unknown to its French
producer, Jean-Marie Boulet.
“It’s
not easy for us to understand why this film was censored,” Boulet
said following the screening of the film. “We tried our best to
follow the customs of Iran.”
The
film is slow to start, with too much time spent setting up each
character. But once days four and five roll around, the story picks
up with emotional dialogue and apt pregnant pauses that allow for
each individual sensation to set in. It’s painful to witness
Khatibi and Franck’s misunderstandings, which come to a head in a
powerful scene where Franck spontaneously snatches an Iranian
woman’s purse and takes off as a sort of rebellion against
Khatabi’s command not to film another thief in action.
The
next day, Franck comes to Khatibi’s house and explains what he
did. “I know [the West] has a bad vision of the Muslim world. …
But your traditions are your strengths,” he quietly says, advising
Khatibi to film all Iran as to offer without censoring anything.
One
of the film’s most wrenching subplots concerns Franck’s search
for his best friend, Esfandiar, who returned to Iran after they
completed their studies in Paris. Esfandiar is beautifully played
Esfandiar Esfandi, an Iranian friend of Khatibi’s who co-wrote the
screenplay. In the film Esfandiar, a professor in Tehran, admits to
Franck that he has cancer. With the crew, Esfandiar is a gracious
host, but with Franck, he wears his emotions on his sleeve in a
searing performance that makes use of every uncomfortable pause.
Esfandiar
is a powerful representation of those who stayed in Tehran during
its tumultuous years of war. He reads the Qu’ran and calls himself
a believer but is besieged by doubts. His struggles are from within
while Khatibi’s are from the outside. “We want to show the
professor whose job it is to speak, yet he dare not speak his
mind,” Khatibi said. “When he falls ill with cancer, we want to
show there is an illness among Iranian intellectuals who do not
speak.”
Though
the movie is quite mild, some scenes that hint at mild flirtations
may slightly offend a Muslim viewer. But more importantly Seven Days
in Tehran is a clever study of a country on the cusp of religion and
politics. It is a complex turn of events framed in the context of
seven days that force Khatibi, Franck and the rest of the crew to
find a mutual understanding for the customs of Iran and Islam. 
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