My second-to-last film of this year's festival, and the second film chosen by my wife, was The Night, also the second Iranian film of this year's festival for me. Which, incidentally, makes it possibly the first time at MIFF I have ever seen two films from the same country that wasn't either the U.S. or Australia.
But exactly how Iranian is this movie, actually?
To be sure, the principal cast is primarily Iranian, Farsi is the language most commonly spoken, and the director (Kourosh Ahari) is also from Iran.
But in the first scene of the movie, at a dinner party featuring three Iranian couples, I commented to my wife that exactly one of the characters was speaking primarily in English, and how weird that was, since the rest of the conversation was conducted in Farsi. As the scene went on, the other characters sprinkled in some English, until I realized the movie was actually set in the U.S. Although it's mostly a two-hander between actors Shahab Hosseini (the star of Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman, which I saw at MIFF in 2016) and Niousha Noor, the story introduces a hotel concierge and a police officer who are both American, and have probably the third and fourth largest speaking roles in the film.
This may be the first film I've seen with a primarily Iranian creative team that was filmed in the United States. IMDB lists Los Angeles as the shooting location. While on the one hand I find it kind of dispiriting that these people have all had to leave their home country, I guess if it allows them to make movies they might not otherwise be able to make, hopefully they consider it a change for the better.
On second thought, this description also fits Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. And like that really exceptional film, this is a horror, about a husband and wife hiding secrets from each other who are tortured by apparitions and inexplicable occurrences during an endless night at a hotel. It's a lot more distinctive than that basic description makes it sound.
The Night was really great for its first 40 minutes or so, at which point it starts to lose a little focus, and at which point it starts to be clear that there are going to be number of red herrings in terms of the film's themes, talismans and imagery. "Red herrings" is the kind way to put it; "loose ends" is the more critical appraisal, from a screenwriting perspective. Simply put, some of this stuff just goes nowhere.
But the mood it creates is creepy throughout, and the number of discrete instances of getting chills was off the charts for me. I wish it had come together a bit better, which would have led me to rate it higher, but as it is, it's still well worth watching.
Can you tell I'm running out of a bit of steam here?
Well never fear, it's MIFF closing night tomorrow night. Or really, in about an hour's time, given the lateness of the hour at which I'm writing this. Tune in tomorrow for my final MIFF post of 2021.
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