- Kiss Me Deadly - Robert Aldrich (1955)
“Kiss Me Deadly” - Robert Aldrich (1955)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is considered by many reviewers to be the ultimate film noir [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Consider, for example, these critical remarks:
[Kiss Me Deadly is] “arguably the greatest example of American noir cinema. Film historian Steven Scheuer called Kiss Me Deadly 'the apotheosis”\' of the classic film noir period. More than once, the film has been called the best film noir ever made. Certainly the film was decades ahead of its time.” [2]
“Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is the definitive, apocalyptic, nihilistic, science-fiction film noir of all time.” [6]
Personally, I wouldn’t go that far. But the film does have a spectacular, over-the-top presentation of some of film noir’s flashy features. As film critic Robert Weston commented [2]:
“So what makes Kiss Me Deadly the paramount of the film noir tradition? Frankly, it’s got everything. The predominance of darkness and nighttime? Check. Morally ambiguous protagonists? Check. Existential underpinnings? Check. Dramatic compositions influenced by German Expressionist artists and filmmakers? Check, check, check.”
However, I would say that a truly great film noir needs a kind of narrative unity that Kiss Me Deadly doesn’t quite deliver. But I will come back to that point later.
The story of the film is based on famous crime novelist Mickey Spillane’s novel Kiss Me Deadly (1952), and it features as its lead character Spillane’s famous hardboiled private investigator Mike Hammer. Screenwriter A. I. Bezzerides adapted this story for the film, which was directed by Robert Aldrich and photographed by Ernest Laszlo.
Actually, as the above quotations seem to testify, Laszlo’s in-your-face, expressionistic cinematography is very much a key creative element to the film. It features numerous atmospheric high- and low-angle shots, including many shots looking up and down steep staircases. These are sharply punctuated by expressive closeups shot from a low angle. In addition there are a number of well-crafted indoor moving-camera shots, some lasting three minutes. These various images all combine to portray a dark, threatening, and labyrinthine world having obscure antagonists and no clear-cut answers or goals for the protagonists.
The story of Kiss Me Deadly plays out over four acts.
1. A Mysterious Murder
The film begins in spectacular film-noir fashion by showing a young woman, wearing only a trench coat covering her otherwise nude body, running frantically down a dark highway. She is desperately trying to hail a ride from passing cars, but noone will stop for her. Finally she stands in the middle of the road, forcing the next car to swerve off the road to a stop to avoid hitting her. The driver is Mike Hammer (played by Ralph Meeker), who grudgingly allows the young woman to get into his sports car. She tells him that he only has to drop her off at the nearest buss station. But they are soon stopped by police looking for a young woman who has escaped from an insane asylum, and Hammer, no friend of the police, shields her by pretending to them that she is his wife. Proceeding, they soon have to stop at a service station, and while stopped the woman goes inside and quietly gives the attendant a letter she would like him to mail for her.
Back on the road, the woman (Cloris Leachman) gets into some friendly banter with the sullen Hammer. She tells him that it is obvious from his flashy car and his demeanor that he is the ultimate self-indulgent male:
The story of the film is based on famous crime novelist Mickey Spillane’s novel Kiss Me Deadly (1952), and it features as its lead character Spillane’s famous hardboiled private investigator Mike Hammer. Screenwriter A. I. Bezzerides adapted this story for the film, which was directed by Robert Aldrich and photographed by Ernest Laszlo.
Actually, as the above quotations seem to testify, Laszlo’s in-your-face, expressionistic cinematography is very much a key creative element to the film. It features numerous atmospheric high- and low-angle shots, including many shots looking up and down steep staircases. These are sharply punctuated by expressive closeups shot from a low angle. In addition there are a number of well-crafted indoor moving-camera shots, some lasting three minutes. These various images all combine to portray a dark, threatening, and labyrinthine world having obscure antagonists and no clear-cut answers or goals for the protagonists.
The story of Kiss Me Deadly plays out over four acts.
1. A Mysterious Murder
The film begins in spectacular film-noir fashion by showing a young woman, wearing only a trench coat covering her otherwise nude body, running frantically down a dark highway. She is desperately trying to hail a ride from passing cars, but noone will stop for her. Finally she stands in the middle of the road, forcing the next car to swerve off the road to a stop to avoid hitting her. The driver is Mike Hammer (played by Ralph Meeker), who grudgingly allows the young woman to get into his sports car. She tells him that he only has to drop her off at the nearest buss station. But they are soon stopped by police looking for a young woman who has escaped from an insane asylum, and Hammer, no friend of the police, shields her by pretending to them that she is his wife. Proceeding, they soon have to stop at a service station, and while stopped the woman goes inside and quietly gives the attendant a letter she would like him to mail for her. Back on the road, the woman (Cloris Leachman) gets into some friendly banter with the sullen Hammer. She tells him that it is obvious from his flashy car and his demeanor that he is the ultimate self-indulgent male:
“You have only one real, lasting love – you.”
And indeed as the tale progresses, we will see just how true her observation is.
She also tells him that her name is Christina Bailey and that she was named after the Pre-Raphaelite poetess Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894). Then turning serious, she urgently tells Hammer that if they don’t make it to a bus stop, to “remember me”. This phrase, “remember me”, turns out to be a “MacGuffin” [7,8], which is a an artifact in a film that serves as a motif for a revealing narrative element. Scriptwriter Bezzerides introduced this “MacGuffin”, which was not present in Spillane’s original story.
Sure enough, they don’t make it to that bus stop. Hammer’s car is stopped by some gangster thugs, who for most of this tale are only shown by their lower legs and black shoes. The gangsters torture Christina to death and beat Hammer until he is out cold. Then they dump the two bodies into Hammer’s car, which is pushed into the river.
Evidently rescued from the river, Hammer comes to in a hospital bed, where he is greeted by police lieutenant Pat Murphy (Wesley Addy) and his beautiful secretary and girlfriend, Velda Wickman (Maxine Cooper). From subsequent police and FBI interviews we learn that several people have recently disappeared under mysterious circumstances. We also learn that Hammer is a private investigator who operates as a lowly “bedroom dick” – he rigs divorce cases by getting Velda (who is obsessively enamored with Hammer and so willing to do anything he asks of her) to prostitute herself and seduce the male member of a litigant married couple, thereby establishing that person’s marital infidelity.
2. Following Some Leads
The fact that the FBI is involved in the missing-person investigations convinces tough-guy Hammer that something “big” (i.e. lucrative) is going on and he should get himself involved in privately tracking down this “whatzit”, whatever it is. He gets Velda to use her seductive charm to dig up some contact info and then uses that to trace down further evidence. In this way he finds out Christina’s old address and then tracks down her old roommate, Lilly Carver (Gaby Rodgers).
While he is following these various trails, Hammer learns that he is sometimes being followed, and he brutally punches out one of these thuggish shadows on the street. Eventually Hammer’s pursuits lead him to the plush home of a gangster, where he is greeted by one of the gangster boss’s “girls”, Friday (Marian Carr), who, like all of the beautiful girls in this film, comes on to Hammer and offers herself to him. But Hammer is only obsessed with money and revenge, and he ignores Friday’s lascivious advances so that he can talk to the gangster boss Carl Evello (Paul Stewart). Evello is clearly involved in the mysterious whatzit, and he wants to either scare off or buy off Hammer from the trail, but their conversation comes to nothing.
Knowing that Lilly is now in danger, Hammer goes to her flat and rescues her. When they are safely back in Hammer’s apartment, the beautiful woman, as we might expect at this point, offers herself to him.
Meanwhile the thug shown only in black shoes comes and murders Hammer’s friend and auto mechanic, Nick.
Later when Hammer visits Velda, she criticizes him for obsession with revenge. But she also informs him about a key figure she has discovered, a certain Doctor Soberin.
3. Putting Some Pieces Together
A bit later Hammer learns that the gangsters have come and taken away Velda. And then Hammer, himself, is ambushed at home by Evello’s men (one of whom is memorably played by expressionistic character actor Jack Elam) and taken to an isolated beach house, where they drug him with a “truth serum” to find out what Hammer might know about the whatzit. But Hammer still doesn’t know anything about the whatzit, and neither does the viewer. Anyway, Hammer, in typically ruthless fashion, manages to kill Evello and one of his guards and get away.
Back at his home, with Lilly, Hammer has discovered that the letter that Christina had asked the service station attendant mail for her was paradoxically addressed to him. But when he opens and reads the letter, it just says, “Remember Me!”. Now Hammer puts two and two together and looks in a book of Christina Rossetti’s sonnets for the poem “Remember Me”. When he finds it, he asks Lilly to read it to him, and he pays particular attention to the following lines:
She also tells him that her name is Christina Bailey and that she was named after the Pre-Raphaelite poetess Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894). Then turning serious, she urgently tells Hammer that if they don’t make it to a bus stop, to “remember me”. This phrase, “remember me”, turns out to be a “MacGuffin” [7,8], which is a an artifact in a film that serves as a motif for a revealing narrative element. Scriptwriter Bezzerides introduced this “MacGuffin”, which was not present in Spillane’s original story.
Evidently rescued from the river, Hammer comes to in a hospital bed, where he is greeted by police lieutenant Pat Murphy (Wesley Addy) and his beautiful secretary and girlfriend, Velda Wickman (Maxine Cooper). From subsequent police and FBI interviews we learn that several people have recently disappeared under mysterious circumstances. We also learn that Hammer is a private investigator who operates as a lowly “bedroom dick” – he rigs divorce cases by getting Velda (who is obsessively enamored with Hammer and so willing to do anything he asks of her) to prostitute herself and seduce the male member of a litigant married couple, thereby establishing that person’s marital infidelity.
2. Following Some Leads
The fact that the FBI is involved in the missing-person investigations convinces tough-guy Hammer that something “big” (i.e. lucrative) is going on and he should get himself involved in privately tracking down this “whatzit”, whatever it is. He gets Velda to use her seductive charm to dig up some contact info and then uses that to trace down further evidence. In this way he finds out Christina’s old address and then tracks down her old roommate, Lilly Carver (Gaby Rodgers).
While he is following these various trails, Hammer learns that he is sometimes being followed, and he brutally punches out one of these thuggish shadows on the street. Eventually Hammer’s pursuits lead him to the plush home of a gangster, where he is greeted by one of the gangster boss’s “girls”, Friday (Marian Carr), who, like all of the beautiful girls in this film, comes on to Hammer and offers herself to him. But Hammer is only obsessed with money and revenge, and he ignores Friday’s lascivious advances so that he can talk to the gangster boss Carl Evello (Paul Stewart). Evello is clearly involved in the mysterious whatzit, and he wants to either scare off or buy off Hammer from the trail, but their conversation comes to nothing.Knowing that Lilly is now in danger, Hammer goes to her flat and rescues her. When they are safely back in Hammer’s apartment, the beautiful woman, as we might expect at this point, offers herself to him.
Meanwhile the thug shown only in black shoes comes and murders Hammer’s friend and auto mechanic, Nick.
Later when Hammer visits Velda, she criticizes him for obsession with revenge. But she also informs him about a key figure she has discovered, a certain Doctor Soberin.
3. Putting Some Pieces Together
A bit later Hammer learns that the gangsters have come and taken away Velda. And then Hammer, himself, is ambushed at home by Evello’s men (one of whom is memorably played by expressionistic character actor Jack Elam) and taken to an isolated beach house, where they drug him with a “truth serum” to find out what Hammer might know about the whatzit. But Hammer still doesn’t know anything about the whatzit, and neither does the viewer. Anyway, Hammer, in typically ruthless fashion, manages to kill Evello and one of his guards and get away.
Back at his home, with Lilly, Hammer has discovered that the letter that Christina had asked the service station attendant mail for her was paradoxically addressed to him. But when he opens and reads the letter, it just says, “Remember Me!”. Now Hammer puts two and two together and looks in a book of Christina Rossetti’s sonnets for the poem “Remember Me”. When he finds it, he asks Lilly to read it to him, and he pays particular attention to the following lines:Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of a future which you plan
Only remember me, you'll understand
But if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once we had.
This suggests to Hammer that Christina’s secret must have been small and on her, perhaps something so secret that she had even swallowed it.
So Hammer and Lilly go to the city morgue and ask to examine Christina’s corpse. When the morgue attendant refuses permission without a bribe, Hammer cruelly smashes his hands in his desk drawer until he relents. What they find is that what Christina had swallowed was a key to a locker at the Hollywood Athletic Club.
Going to the club, Hammer muscles his way past the attendant at the counter and uses the key to unlock the locker. What he finds in there is a case containing a lead-lined box. When he starts to lift the lid of the box, though, he sees that the box contains something blinding and white-hot. So he quickly closes the lid and relocks the locker, warning the attendant to keep everyone away from the locker. Leaving the club, Hammer finds that Lilly has disappeared.
At home, Hammer encounters police lieutenant Murphy, who tells him that the real Lilly Carver drowned a while ago and that the woman calling herself by that name, whom Hammer had been hiding in his home, is an imposter. Murphy, who has been working with the FBI investigation, also cryptically tells Hammer that the lead box he had seen at the club contains radioactive material and is linked to nuclear weaponry. So now we know a little more about the mysterious whatzit. As Murphy is about to leave, Hammer beseeches him to help in rescuing Velda, but Murphy, in keeping with the selfish tenor of all the characters in this story, cynically dismisses the idea. He has his own business to attend to.
After Murphy leaves, Hammer phones the athletic club, but there is no answer. The camera shot at the club end of the line shows that the attendant has been murdered, the locker has been broken into, and the mysterious box is gone.
4. Tracking Down the Box
Hammer is still trying to rescue Velda, and his further bullying investigations lead him to believing that the Dr. Soberin Velda had mentioned is a key figure in the mysterious goings on. And Hammer ultimately traces Soberin’s whereabouts to the same beach house where Evello and his gang had held him prisoner.
Now the focalization finally shifts away from Hammer and over to the beach house, where Dr. Soberin is shown to be the mysterious and treacherous man wearing the black shoes. He is with the woman who had passed herself off as “Lilly Carver”, but whose real name is Gabrielle and who is shown to be Soberin’s lover. They also have with them the mysterious box that everyone has sought.
When Soberin tells her he is going away alone and taking the box with him, the greedy Gabrielle shoots him dead in order to get the box. Just then Hammer breaks in, and 
she shoots him, too. Now Gabrielle wants to finally see what’s inside the treasured box, but when she opens it up, there is a flash of heat and light, and the woman is engulfed in flames.
Hammer is severely wounded, but still alive. He staggeringly gets up, finds Velda locked up in one of the beach house rooms, and together they stagger out onto the beach, as the beach house explosively erupts in flames behind them.
There are several aspects of Kiss Me Deadly that distinguish the film, even among the film noir genre. One is its cartoon-like image of masculinity. Hammer’s explosive belligerence seems to invariably feature one-punch knockout power. But when Hammer is hit, he always gets up and escapes. The women he encounters – Christina, Velda, Friday, and Lily/Gabrielle – all throw themselves at him.
Another extreme aspect of the film is the universal expressions of contempt on the part of just about all the male members of the story. And these goes beyond the usual noirish obsession for revenge; it applies to everyone. This is true of the police and FBI, in particular Lt. Murphy, as well as Carl Evello, Dr. Soberin, and the other gangster assailants. And above all, it is a constant behavioral feature of Mike Hammer, himself. There are basically no sympathetic male characters in this film with whom the viewer might want to empathize. For these reasons Kiss Me Deadly doesn’t present a compelling narrative that can draw in the viewer’s attention and fascinate him or her with what goes on.
More interesting is the quizzical nature of the never-fully-revealed whatzit – the contents of the box. Kiss Me Deadly was made when there was more awareness of the likely apocalyptic fate of mankind [9]. The whatzit in this story was the subject of multiple dreamlike interpretations that might provide answers in this respect. In this connection Robert Weston has commented [2]:
Going to the club, Hammer muscles his way past the attendant at the counter and uses the key to unlock the locker. What he finds in there is a case containing a lead-lined box. When he starts to lift the lid of the box, though, he sees that the box contains something blinding and white-hot. So he quickly closes the lid and relocks the locker, warning the attendant to keep everyone away from the locker. Leaving the club, Hammer finds that Lilly has disappeared.
At home, Hammer encounters police lieutenant Murphy, who tells him that the real Lilly Carver drowned a while ago and that the woman calling herself by that name, whom Hammer had been hiding in his home, is an imposter. Murphy, who has been working with the FBI investigation, also cryptically tells Hammer that the lead box he had seen at the club contains radioactive material and is linked to nuclear weaponry. So now we know a little more about the mysterious whatzit. As Murphy is about to leave, Hammer beseeches him to help in rescuing Velda, but Murphy, in keeping with the selfish tenor of all the characters in this story, cynically dismisses the idea. He has his own business to attend to.
4. Tracking Down the Box
Hammer is still trying to rescue Velda, and his further bullying investigations lead him to believing that the Dr. Soberin Velda had mentioned is a key figure in the mysterious goings on. And Hammer ultimately traces Soberin’s whereabouts to the same beach house where Evello and his gang had held him prisoner.
Now the focalization finally shifts away from Hammer and over to the beach house, where Dr. Soberin is shown to be the mysterious and treacherous man wearing the black shoes. He is with the woman who had passed herself off as “Lilly Carver”, but whose real name is Gabrielle and who is shown to be Soberin’s lover. They also have with them the mysterious box that everyone has sought.
she shoots him, too. Now Gabrielle wants to finally see what’s inside the treasured box, but when she opens it up, there is a flash of heat and light, and the woman is engulfed in flames.Hammer is severely wounded, but still alive. He staggeringly gets up, finds Velda locked up in one of the beach house rooms, and together they stagger out onto the beach, as the beach house explosively erupts in flames behind them.
There are several aspects of Kiss Me Deadly that distinguish the film, even among the film noir genre. One is its cartoon-like image of masculinity. Hammer’s explosive belligerence seems to invariably feature one-punch knockout power. But when Hammer is hit, he always gets up and escapes. The women he encounters – Christina, Velda, Friday, and Lily/Gabrielle – all throw themselves at him.
Another extreme aspect of the film is the universal expressions of contempt on the part of just about all the male members of the story. And these goes beyond the usual noirish obsession for revenge; it applies to everyone. This is true of the police and FBI, in particular Lt. Murphy, as well as Carl Evello, Dr. Soberin, and the other gangster assailants. And above all, it is a constant behavioral feature of Mike Hammer, himself. There are basically no sympathetic male characters in this film with whom the viewer might want to empathize. For these reasons Kiss Me Deadly doesn’t present a compelling narrative that can draw in the viewer’s attention and fascinate him or her with what goes on.
More interesting is the quizzical nature of the never-fully-revealed whatzit – the contents of the box. Kiss Me Deadly was made when there was more awareness of the likely apocalyptic fate of mankind [9]. The whatzit in this story was the subject of multiple dreamlike interpretations that might provide answers in this respect. In this connection Robert Weston has commented [2]:
“But the great whatzit is clearly a symbol of truth. The idea that all will be revealed once it is found is each character’s fundamental motivation. Everyone is desperately fighting to find the mysterious box because it represents an answer to something they can’t explain, a desire for the ultimate; a divine explanation for everything. They have no idea that such an object is unattainable in an existential world. Each character, even Mike, who for most of the film does not even know what he’s looking for, rationalize the great whatzit into something they want or need. For Christina, it might have been truth or beauty. For Mike, it appears to be money, or perhaps redemption. For Dr. Soberin and the FBI agents, it is power.”
Overall, it is that apocalyptic mystery element that elevates Kiss Me Deadly above the mundane members of its genre.
★★★
★★★
Notes:
- David Mattin, “Kiss Me Deadly (1955)”, BBCi, (16 June 2006).
- Robert Weston, “Kiss Me Deadly(1955)”, Film Monthly, (4 May 2001).
- Andrew L. Urban, “KISS ME DEADLY”, “Urban Cinefile”, (3 October 2019).
- Mick Lasalle, “FILM REVIEW -- `Kiss Me Deadly' Still Packs Punch / Ralph Meeker stars in 1955 film noir”, SFGATE, (6 October 1995).
- Alan Vanneman, “Whose Noir Is It, Anyway? Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly”, Bright Lights Film Journal, (1 November 2007).
- Tim Dirks, “Kiss Me Deadly (1955)”, amc Filmsite, (n.d.).
- "MacGuffin", Wikipedia, (23 September 2019).
- The Film Sufi, "Alfred Hitchcock", The Film Sufi (23 May 2009).
- The threat of nuclear annihilation, however, is no less now than it was in 1955 – especially when you consider some of the narcissistic and irresponsible world leaders now in power.
“Hamlet” - Grigori Kozintsev (1964)
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, like many of his works, is rather complicated and has been difficult to film for presentation to general audiences. There are multiple threads of revenge, and the main 
character is persistently morose and obsessed with his own futility. On top of that, most staged versions of the play last four hours, which is a long time for an audience to sit through. And yet Hamlet is probably Shakespeare’s most famous and popular work, which is probably due to the play’s profoundly existentialistic tone and theme. Capturing this melancholy and thoughtful tone is the principal challenge of anyone who films Hamlet, and this would presumably require someone very sensitive to the nuances of the main character’s moody and pensive soliloquies. Nevertheless, probably the best job has been done, not by an English-speaking creative team, but by Russian filmmaker Grigori Kozintsev and his production colleagues. Kozintsev’s Hamlet (Gamlet, 1964), which he adapted from Boris Pasternak’s translation of Shakespeare’s play, is an expressionistic tour de force that is likely to enthrall most viewers. And Kozintsev managed to cover all the material in a relatively brisk two hours and twenty minutes.
Shooting the film during the “Khrushchev Thaw” (1954-64), when Russian censorship was somewhat more relaxed, and having by this time considerable cultural stature of his own, Kozintsev had relative artistic freedom to pursue his own goals and make a truly expressive film [1]. The film’s production values under Kozintsev’s supervision – including the cinematography by Jonas Gricius, the music by Dmitri Shostakovich, and the acting performances – are excellent throughout.
Following his own instincts, some of Kozintsev’s artistic modifications to the play are notably well conceived. For one thing, the nature of the film medium enabled him to stage some of Hamlet’s soliloquies more appropriately as thoughtful meditations in voiceover. More importantly, Kozintsev chose to stage a number of key scenes outside , in front of his castle and by the shore near a turbulent sea [2].
Indeed, the many shots of the relentlessly churning sea provide a key visual metaphor for man’s existential loneliness in the face of a universe of surrounding nothingness and an inevitable fate of meaningless oblivion. Hamlet feels this all-encompassing sense of meaninglessness to the world – not only as an absence of justice and love but also a meaninglessness to life, itself. This was a truly modern sense of despair and alienation that we, immersed in our conventional materialistic understanding of reality, can all feel. In this connection Saviour Catania observed [2]:
character is persistently morose and obsessed with his own futility. On top of that, most staged versions of the play last four hours, which is a long time for an audience to sit through. And yet Hamlet is probably Shakespeare’s most famous and popular work, which is probably due to the play’s profoundly existentialistic tone and theme. Capturing this melancholy and thoughtful tone is the principal challenge of anyone who films Hamlet, and this would presumably require someone very sensitive to the nuances of the main character’s moody and pensive soliloquies. Nevertheless, probably the best job has been done, not by an English-speaking creative team, but by Russian filmmaker Grigori Kozintsev and his production colleagues. Kozintsev’s Hamlet (Gamlet, 1964), which he adapted from Boris Pasternak’s translation of Shakespeare’s play, is an expressionistic tour de force that is likely to enthrall most viewers. And Kozintsev managed to cover all the material in a relatively brisk two hours and twenty minutes.
Indeed, the many shots of the relentlessly churning sea provide a key visual metaphor for man’s existential loneliness in the face of a universe of surrounding nothingness and an inevitable fate of meaningless oblivion. Hamlet feels this all-encompassing sense of meaninglessness to the world – not only as an absence of justice and love but also a meaninglessness to life, itself. This was a truly modern sense of despair and alienation that we, immersed in our conventional materialistic understanding of reality, can all feel. In this connection Saviour Catania observed [2]:
“Worth mentioning is that Kozintsev settled for the beach as the setting for the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy after experimenting with various other locations. His choice was finally determined by his belief that the rocky Crimean beach could be made to embody and partake of the metaphysical issues at stake.“
In addition, Kozintsev uses images of the turbulent sea to separate the theatrical acts that make up Shakespeare’s narrative.
The five acts encompass a story that tells of nine murders, including one suicide, which engender compulsive desires for “justice” and revenge.
Act 1
At the outset, Prince of Denmark Hamlet (played by Innokenty Smoktunovsky) is shown grieving over (a) the recent death of his father, King Hamlet, and (b) the fact that within an unseemly two months his widowed mother, Gertrude (Elza Radzina), had married his uncle, the deceased king’s brother, Claudius (Mikhail Nazvanov). This means that Claudius has now assumed the throne.
New King Claudius has an elderly advisor, Polonius (Yuri Tolubeyev), whose two children, Laertes (Stepan Oleksenko) and Ophelia (Anastasiya Vertinskaya), are shown discussing Prince Hamlet’s romantic overtures to Ophelia. Laertes warns his sister to keep a distance from Hamlet, but Ophelia insists that Hamlet’s expression of romantic interest have been sincere.
Then Hamlet is informed by his friend Horatio (Vladimir Erenberg) that last night he saw the ghost of Hamlet’s father on the ramparts outside the castle. They arrange to see if they can see the ghost
the next night, and when they do so, the mournful ghost informs his son that Claudius had murdered him and that Hamlet should avenge his death.
Not sure whether to believe this apparition or not, Hamlet tells Horatio that he will investigate the truth of the ghost’s claims and that for the time being he will feign madness in order to facilitate his investigations.
Act 2
With Hamlet now showing signs of madness, the suspicious Claudius urges two of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz (Igor Dmitriev) and Guildenstern (Vadim Medvedev), to spy on his nephew.
Hamlet, for his part, comes upon a traveling theater troop and arranges for them to soon stage a play, The Murder of Gonzago, which will have some of Hamlet’s own words inserted into the dialogue of the murder scene, which will feature details in accordance with what the ghost told him about his own murder. Hamlet’s intention is to see if upon watching this scene performed, Claudius will react guiltily.
Act 3
Walking alone outside near the water, Hamlet has his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, during which he questions the meaningfulness and unlikely persistence of life. Then Hamlet and
Ophelia have a conversation, during which Hamlet, still feigning lunacy, furiously rejects her love.
Later The Murder of Gonzago play is performed before the royal family and entourage, with Hamlet and Horatio checking Claudius’s reaction to the murder scene. Sure enough, Claudius is seen clearly to be upset.
(This is the end of Part 1 of this two-part film.)
Now Gertrude, upset over her son’s seeming madness, summons Hamlet to her chamber. But Polonius, just to help ensure Gertrude’s safety, decides to hide behind a curtain in her room. When Hamlet arrives, he gets into an intemperate argument with his mother. In the ensuing commotion, he hears a noise from behind the curtain, which he assumes must be Claudius, and he thrusts his knife into the curtain, killing Polonius.
Act 4
To get his erratic nephew out of the way, Claudius sends Hamlet, along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, off to study in England. However, on the way, Hamlet discovers that his two erstwhile friends are secretly carrying an official letter ordering the execution of Hamlet upon arrival in England. So Hamlet manages to surreptitiously exchange this letter with a forged one of his own condemning Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, instead.
Meanwhile Ophelia, with her father murdered and the one she loves, Hamlet, having rudely rejected her, goes mad, herself. She eventually commits suicide. Also, her brother Laertes returns from studying abroad and finding his family in ruins, demands revenge.
Act 5
The still brooding Hamlet now returns to Denmark and hooks up with his friend Horatio outside the castle. They soon encounter a funeral procession for Ophelia, which is how Hamlet shockingly learns of his beloved’s death.
Also, Laertes is seeking revenge for what has happened to his family, so Claudius arranges for Laertes and Hamlet to have a “sporting” honor duel with swords. However, he will ensure that Laertes’s sword is poison-tipped, and just to make sure that Hamlet dies, he also prepares a poisoned goblet for Hamlet to drink from.
When the duel is formally conducted with Claudius, Gertrude, and other courtiers in attendance, a sequence of deadly events quickly ensues. Gertrude mistakenly drinks from Hamlet’s poisoned goblet, and both Hamlet and Laertes get fatally wounded by the poisoned sword. And when Hamlet then learns from Laertes’s dying words about Claudius’s perfidy, he fatally stabs Claudius. But Hamlet, himself, is dying, and with his last strength, he staggers outside and looks out onto the sea’s waters of oblivion as he dies.
The image of Hamlet as the existentially lonely protagonist is again metaphorically emphasized with these last shots, as Saviour Catania has observed [2]:
The five acts encompass a story that tells of nine murders, including one suicide, which engender compulsive desires for “justice” and revenge.
Act 1
New King Claudius has an elderly advisor, Polonius (Yuri Tolubeyev), whose two children, Laertes (Stepan Oleksenko) and Ophelia (Anastasiya Vertinskaya), are shown discussing Prince Hamlet’s romantic overtures to Ophelia. Laertes warns his sister to keep a distance from Hamlet, but Ophelia insists that Hamlet’s expression of romantic interest have been sincere.
Then Hamlet is informed by his friend Horatio (Vladimir Erenberg) that last night he saw the ghost of Hamlet’s father on the ramparts outside the castle. They arrange to see if they can see the ghost
the next night, and when they do so, the mournful ghost informs his son that Claudius had murdered him and that Hamlet should avenge his death. Not sure whether to believe this apparition or not, Hamlet tells Horatio that he will investigate the truth of the ghost’s claims and that for the time being he will feign madness in order to facilitate his investigations.
Act 2
With Hamlet now showing signs of madness, the suspicious Claudius urges two of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz (Igor Dmitriev) and Guildenstern (Vadim Medvedev), to spy on his nephew.
Hamlet, for his part, comes upon a traveling theater troop and arranges for them to soon stage a play, The Murder of Gonzago, which will have some of Hamlet’s own words inserted into the dialogue of the murder scene, which will feature details in accordance with what the ghost told him about his own murder. Hamlet’s intention is to see if upon watching this scene performed, Claudius will react guiltily.
Act 3
Walking alone outside near the water, Hamlet has his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, during which he questions the meaningfulness and unlikely persistence of life. Then Hamlet and
Ophelia have a conversation, during which Hamlet, still feigning lunacy, furiously rejects her love. Later The Murder of Gonzago play is performed before the royal family and entourage, with Hamlet and Horatio checking Claudius’s reaction to the murder scene. Sure enough, Claudius is seen clearly to be upset.
(This is the end of Part 1 of this two-part film.)
Act 4
To get his erratic nephew out of the way, Claudius sends Hamlet, along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, off to study in England. However, on the way, Hamlet discovers that his two erstwhile friends are secretly carrying an official letter ordering the execution of Hamlet upon arrival in England. So Hamlet manages to surreptitiously exchange this letter with a forged one of his own condemning Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, instead.
Meanwhile Ophelia, with her father murdered and the one she loves, Hamlet, having rudely rejected her, goes mad, herself. She eventually commits suicide. Also, her brother Laertes returns from studying abroad and finding his family in ruins, demands revenge.
Act 5
The still brooding Hamlet now returns to Denmark and hooks up with his friend Horatio outside the castle. They soon encounter a funeral procession for Ophelia, which is how Hamlet shockingly learns of his beloved’s death.
Also, Laertes is seeking revenge for what has happened to his family, so Claudius arranges for Laertes and Hamlet to have a “sporting” honor duel with swords. However, he will ensure that Laertes’s sword is poison-tipped, and just to make sure that Hamlet dies, he also prepares a poisoned goblet for Hamlet to drink from.
The image of Hamlet as the existentially lonely protagonist is again metaphorically emphasized with these last shots, as Saviour Catania has observed [2]:
“For Kozintsev’s is a world where Hamlet wanders for the most part lonely in a crowd. Significantly, there is a dire need in Kozintsev’s Hamlet to return to the rocky beach whose comfort he seeks in his death-scene. Admittedly, Horatio does accompany the dying Hamlet to the beach, but the focus is not their relationship. Kozintsev’s interest lies in considering Hamlet as a figure apart.”
imagery makes the subjects in the frame surrounded by the bleak surroundings and therefore less visually significant. In addition, there are few closeups throughout, which further de-emphasizes the importance of the individual in the frame. Many of the shots of figures are taken from a low angle, with the high, dark, and forbidding walls of the castle in the background, and this also conveys a mood of people at bay and continually threatened by unknown forces that are “out there”.I also thought that the slight alterations that Kozintsev made to Shakespeare’s script were beneficial, particularly the enhancement to Ophelia’s presence, the emotive acting for which was exceptionally well performed by actress Anastasiya Vertinskaya.
existential mystery that it explores, but it does convey and evoke feelings that we, ourselves, often have about the futility of human existence. Kozintsev’s rendition of Shakespeare’s work does a good job of evoking these feelings that go beyond their textual presentation, as well as our textual understanding of our own experiences.★★★★
Notes:
- Peter Sellars, “Peter Sellars on Grigori Kozintsev”, King Lear (DVD), Facets Video, (2007).
- Catania, Saviour, "The Beached Verge": On Filming the Unfilmable in Grigori Kozintsev's Hamlet", Enter Text: An Interactive Interdisciplinary E-Journal for Cultural and Historical Studies and Creative Work, Brunel University. 1 (2): pp. 302–16, (2001).
“Marmoulak” - Kamal Tabrizi (2004)
Marmoulak (The Lizard, 2004) is a popular Iranian film that has been interpreted in somewhat different ways by different people. Many people have seen it as a comedy, even a 
farce, but I considerate it to be a profound existential and social satire, more along the lines of Voltaire’s Candide (1759) or Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince (1943). Indeed, explicit reference to de Saint-Exupéry’s famous novella is made in this story.
The film concerns a prison convict who escapes by masquerading as an Islamic mullah and the ensuing complications that arise from his disguise. Commercially released in Iran in 2004, the film was an instant smash hit with critics and at the box office [1,2]. But after concerns about the film were expressed by members of the Islamic clergy, the government banned the film after only three weeks. The clerical critics were evidently concerned that the religion was being laughed at, but I would say that, on the contrary, the film offers a sympathetic portrait of how religious principles can enter into the lives of all types of people. In fact some observers have connected this film’s message with the thinking of noted Iranian Islamic and Sufi thinker Abdolkarim Soroush [3].
Nevertheless, Marmoulak is not just any narrowly-focused art house fare [3]. The film has excellent production values with a commercial-film cinematic pallette covering a spectrum of social activities. It was directed by Kamal Tabrizi, written by Peyman Ghasem Khani, and with cinematography by Hamid Khozouie; and it features an outstanding acting performance by Parviz Parastui in the lead role. (Parastui would soon also appear in Border Café (Café Transit, 2005) and The Willow Tree (Beed-e Majnoon, 2005)).
The story of the film traces the actions of and what happens to Reza Meshgali, aka “Marmoulak”, which is the Farsi word for ‘Lizard’. Reza has been given that nickname on account of his uncanny ability to climb high brick walls unaided, like a lizard. However, note that in Farsi the term‘marmoulak’ is also used metaphorically to refer to a chameleon, which is a particular type of lizard that changes its skin color in order to adapt to its surroundings. And in this story our Reza, The Lizard (played by Parviz Parastui) does seem to be a chameleon at various times when he alters his identity as the changing circumstances demand.
Actually, confused labeling is a thematic undertone in this story. On several occasions people get lost looking for an address, because street names and numbering have unaccountably been changed by the local authorities. In addition, although in most stories or dramas, the creators are careful to make sure each character has a distinct name, in this story, in contrast, there are several people named Reza, the confusion concerning which is part of the plot.
However, the most basic theme concerns religious interpretation. Over the course of Marmoulak’s narrative, the viewer is exposed to two distinct and contrasting ways of interpreting Islam (or virtually any religion, for that matter) [4]:
farce, but I considerate it to be a profound existential and social satire, more along the lines of Voltaire’s Candide (1759) or Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince (1943). Indeed, explicit reference to de Saint-Exupéry’s famous novella is made in this story. The film concerns a prison convict who escapes by masquerading as an Islamic mullah and the ensuing complications that arise from his disguise. Commercially released in Iran in 2004, the film was an instant smash hit with critics and at the box office [1,2]. But after concerns about the film were expressed by members of the Islamic clergy, the government banned the film after only three weeks. The clerical critics were evidently concerned that the religion was being laughed at, but I would say that, on the contrary, the film offers a sympathetic portrait of how religious principles can enter into the lives of all types of people. In fact some observers have connected this film’s message with the thinking of noted Iranian Islamic and Sufi thinker Abdolkarim Soroush [3].
Nevertheless, Marmoulak is not just any narrowly-focused art house fare [3]. The film has excellent production values with a commercial-film cinematic pallette covering a spectrum of social activities. It was directed by Kamal Tabrizi, written by Peyman Ghasem Khani, and with cinematography by Hamid Khozouie; and it features an outstanding acting performance by Parviz Parastui in the lead role. (Parastui would soon also appear in Border Café (Café Transit, 2005) and The Willow Tree (Beed-e Majnoon, 2005)).
Actually, confused labeling is a thematic undertone in this story. On several occasions people get lost looking for an address, because street names and numbering have unaccountably been changed by the local authorities. In addition, although in most stories or dramas, the creators are careful to make sure each character has a distinct name, in this story, in contrast, there are several people named Reza, the confusion concerning which is part of the plot.
However, the most basic theme concerns religious interpretation. Over the course of Marmoulak’s narrative, the viewer is exposed to two distinct and contrasting ways of interpreting Islam (or virtually any religion, for that matter) [4]:
Literal Rule Following – Adherence to rigid laws and associated sanctified text. This adherence to traditional rules takes no account of context and the human feelings associated with any circumstantial context.
- Loving Compassion – Adoption of the intrinsic and heartfelt directive to love and come to the aid of those in one’s surroundings in contextually appropriate ways. This is suggested in the film by the phrase, “there are as many ways to reach God as there are people.”
Associated with each of these two contrasting interpretations of the sacred teachings is a distinctive approach for leading others to the higher realms of being:
- Literal Rule Following –> Punishment – the path to salvation is a forced march
- Loving Compassion –> Taming (as outlined by the fox in de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince)
In this story, Reza, The Lizard, gradually and intuitively discovers the right path to follow. In this connection, I will identify below (with “CA-#”) some moments in the narrative when Reza seems to take a step further in his progression towards compassionate altruism.
The story of Marmoulak plays out over the course of five acts.
1. Reza, The Lizard, in Prison
Reza Meshgali, a small-time thief, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for armed robbery and is brought before the heartless prison warden Mojaver (played by Bahram Ebrahimi). Mojaver is committed to spiritual restitution by imposing punishment, so we can see he follows the Literal Rule Following path. He immediately sends Reza to a week of solitary confinement in order to help straighten him out.
Later, when Reza is out of solitary and has a chance to wander in the prison courtyard, he rescues a pigeon caught in the barbed wire atop the prison wall by using his marmoulak skill to scale the wall and save the pigeon. When Mojaver sees this, he reassigns Reza to another week of solitary confinement. All of this “restitutional” punishment depresses Reza and makes him suicidal, an attempt for which lands him in the prison infirmary.
In the infirmary bed next to his, Reza finds not a prisoner, but a temporarily-ill mullah, Hajji Reza Ahmadi (played by Shahrokh Foroutanian, who also appeared in Going By (Az Kenar-e Ham Migozarim, 2001)). Mullah Reza is not a sanctimonious preacher,
but a sympathetic member of the working class. He tells Reza, The Lizard, that there is no single path to God – “there are as many ways to reach God as there are people.” Then he reads to him a passage from de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, where the fox tells the little prince to tame him. When the prince asks the fox what that means, the fox responds that it means, “make me love you”.
Then Hajji Reza goes to take a shower, leaving on the bed his clerical garb, which Reza, The Lizard, opportunistically dons and uses as a disguise to escape from the prison.
2. On the Way to the Border Town
Reza’s goal is to escape to Turkey, so after stealing some money from a private taxi, he meets with an outlaw friend who tells him to travel to a border town and hook up with a Mahmoud Montazedi, who is a passport forger. So, still wearing his mullah garb, Reza, who now calls himself “Hajji Reza”, boards a train headed for the border town.
In his private train car Reza is joined by two ladies, one of whom, Faezeh (Rana Azadvar), is young and pretty. Reza, still the selfish nihilist at this pont, is instantly attracted. The other woman is Faezeh’s mother, and she explains how she recently arranged for her daughter’s divorce from her thuggish and abusive husband.
On the long train ride Reza also meets some government officials who are impressed with having a hajji on their train and arrange for Reza to conduct a prayer session for the passengers at one stopover. This is a scary proposition for Reza, but he somehow manages to fumble his way through it.
Upon arrival in the border town, Reza presumably hopes to disappear into the town, but he is unexpectedly met by some religious enthusiasts who have been excitedly awaiting the arrival of their new village mullah, who, by happenstance, is named “Hajji Reza”. They usher him to their mosque, which hasn’t had a fully qualified mullah for a year. At the mosque Reza happens to see a mute young boy staring at him. This mute boy is seen on subsequent occasions throughout the film, and he seems to be a symbol of nonjudgemtal innocence.
Meanwhile back at the prison in Tehran, Mojaver is shown to be extremely upset over Reza’s escape.
3. Reza, the Village Mullah
Originally hoping to quickly grab his fake passport and disappear across the border, Reza now has the public eye upon him and finds himself forced to attend to the ritual duties of the mosque’s mullah. Compelled to give a sermon to the assembled congregation, Reza tells all of them what he had just learned from the mullah he had met in prison (CA-1):
The story of Marmoulak plays out over the course of five acts.
1. Reza, The Lizard, in Prison
Later, when Reza is out of solitary and has a chance to wander in the prison courtyard, he rescues a pigeon caught in the barbed wire atop the prison wall by using his marmoulak skill to scale the wall and save the pigeon. When Mojaver sees this, he reassigns Reza to another week of solitary confinement. All of this “restitutional” punishment depresses Reza and makes him suicidal, an attempt for which lands him in the prison infirmary.
In the infirmary bed next to his, Reza finds not a prisoner, but a temporarily-ill mullah, Hajji Reza Ahmadi (played by Shahrokh Foroutanian, who also appeared in Going By (Az Kenar-e Ham Migozarim, 2001)). Mullah Reza is not a sanctimonious preacher,
but a sympathetic member of the working class. He tells Reza, The Lizard, that there is no single path to God – “there are as many ways to reach God as there are people.” Then he reads to him a passage from de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, where the fox tells the little prince to tame him. When the prince asks the fox what that means, the fox responds that it means, “make me love you”.Then Hajji Reza goes to take a shower, leaving on the bed his clerical garb, which Reza, The Lizard, opportunistically dons and uses as a disguise to escape from the prison.
2. On the Way to the Border Town
Reza’s goal is to escape to Turkey, so after stealing some money from a private taxi, he meets with an outlaw friend who tells him to travel to a border town and hook up with a Mahmoud Montazedi, who is a passport forger. So, still wearing his mullah garb, Reza, who now calls himself “Hajji Reza”, boards a train headed for the border town.
In his private train car Reza is joined by two ladies, one of whom, Faezeh (Rana Azadvar), is young and pretty. Reza, still the selfish nihilist at this pont, is instantly attracted. The other woman is Faezeh’s mother, and she explains how she recently arranged for her daughter’s divorce from her thuggish and abusive husband.
On the long train ride Reza also meets some government officials who are impressed with having a hajji on their train and arrange for Reza to conduct a prayer session for the passengers at one stopover. This is a scary proposition for Reza, but he somehow manages to fumble his way through it.Upon arrival in the border town, Reza presumably hopes to disappear into the town, but he is unexpectedly met by some religious enthusiasts who have been excitedly awaiting the arrival of their new village mullah, who, by happenstance, is named “Hajji Reza”. They usher him to their mosque, which hasn’t had a fully qualified mullah for a year. At the mosque Reza happens to see a mute young boy staring at him. This mute boy is seen on subsequent occasions throughout the film, and he seems to be a symbol of nonjudgemtal innocence.
Meanwhile back at the prison in Tehran, Mojaver is shown to be extremely upset over Reza’s escape.
3. Reza, the Village Mullah
Originally hoping to quickly grab his fake passport and disappear across the border, Reza now has the public eye upon him and finds himself forced to attend to the ritual duties of the mosque’s mullah. Compelled to give a sermon to the assembled congregation, Reza tells all of them what he had just learned from the mullah he had met in prison (CA-1):
There are as many ways to reach God as there are people – even for the prisoner.
- How often does one pray at the North Pole, where a day lasts six months?
- How should astronauts in outer space pray?
Reza uses his own intuition to give answers to these questions (CA-2 and CA-3), and the parishioners are further convinced of Reza’s divine enlightenment. However, Reza stills has a ways to go. After he sees Faezeh’s ex-husband, Javad Delangiz, robbing a food store, his old habits cause him to urge the store owner to respond to this sort of thing with violence.
Then after some difficulties, Reza makes it to Mahmoud Montazedi’s home where his grieving mother (Farideh Sepah Mansour ) informs him that her son has been imprisoned and that the fake passport is unavailable.
4. A Village Transformed
However, Reza’s idolizers, Gholamali and Mojtaba, have been surreptitiously tracking Reza’s evening meanderings in the poor village areas and wrongly impute these to be secretive acts of charity on the part of the mullah. When these activities are reported to the other parishioners, they are even more convinced of Reza’s saintliness, and they all tearfully come to Reza’s quarters to provide him alms to give to the poor.
Meanwhile Mojaver, tracking Reza, has come to the border town, although he doesn’t know that Reza, unrecognizable in his clerical garb, is now the village mullah.
Reza, for his part, continues spreading his own version of the Word. Walking through the park one day, he comes upon Gholamali talking alone with a single young woman. Gholamali immediately expresses shame for this “sin”. But Reza scoffs at such assumptions of guilt, telling the young man (CA-4),
Then after some difficulties, Reza makes it to Mahmoud Montazedi’s home where his grieving mother (Farideh Sepah Mansour ) informs him that her son has been imprisoned and that the fake passport is unavailable.
4. A Village Transformed
Meanwhile Mojaver, tracking Reza, has come to the border town, although he doesn’t know that Reza, unrecognizable in his clerical garb, is now the village mullah.
Reza, for his part, continues spreading his own version of the Word. Walking through the park one day, he comes upon Gholamali talking alone with a single young woman. Gholamali immediately expresses shame for this “sin”. But Reza scoffs at such assumptions of guilt, telling the young man (CA-4),
“if He [God] were against these things, he wouldn’t give us the tools for mischief”.
And later when he comes home, Reza learns that Javad Delangiz has been abusing Faezeh again, and he goes to Delangiz’s locked home to query him. With a crowd of worshipful villagers 
looking on, Reza uses his marmoulak skills again to scale the wall of the home and confront Delangiz. When Delangiz proves to be belligerent, Reza knocks him out cold with a professional head-butt. When the man comes to, he realizes that he has met his match, and he instantly becomes a total convert, renouncing crime and now following the religious path.
However, Reza, still trying to escape the country, finds another person, a woman named Ozra, in the poor quarter who can make him a fake passport. But just before she is about to do it, she receives alms from the former criminal Delangiz, and she, too, is moved to renounce illegal activities. In fact Reza’s sermons at the mosque are now jam-packed with listeners, since shadier characters from the criminal underworld, influenced by Delangiz’s conversion, are coming, too.
But now a power-hungry member of the upper class, Engineer Shojayi, hears about Hajji Reza’s renown and wants to use him to support his candidacy for parliament. In this connection he forcibly ushers Reza to the local prison so that he can host a sermon by Reza to the prisoners there. When the tremulous Reza assumes the pulpit, he is shocked to see Mojaver in the audience and is also moved to be asked to pass on wisdom to people of his own kind, i.e. prisoners. Tearfully, he tells them (CA-5):
looking on, Reza uses his marmoulak skills again to scale the wall of the home and confront Delangiz. When Delangiz proves to be belligerent, Reza knocks him out cold with a professional head-butt. When the man comes to, he realizes that he has met his match, and he instantly becomes a total convert, renouncing crime and now following the religious path.However, Reza, still trying to escape the country, finds another person, a woman named Ozra, in the poor quarter who can make him a fake passport. But just before she is about to do it, she receives alms from the former criminal Delangiz, and she, too, is moved to renounce illegal activities. In fact Reza’s sermons at the mosque are now jam-packed with listeners, since shadier characters from the criminal underworld, influenced by Delangiz’s conversion, are coming, too.
But now a power-hungry member of the upper class, Engineer Shojayi, hears about Hajji Reza’s renown and wants to use him to support his candidacy for parliament. In this connection he forcibly ushers Reza to the local prison so that he can host a sermon by Reza to the prisoners there. When the tremulous Reza assumes the pulpit, he is shocked to see Mojaver in the audience and is also moved to be asked to pass on wisdom to people of his own kind, i.e. prisoners. Tearfully, he tells them (CA-5):
- The gates of prison may be closed to you, but God’s gates are always open.
- God doesn’t only belong to good people.
- It is only God who doesn’t look at people differently.
- We have to do something to tame people. Taming means creating love.
- Man is worthy of honor for his soul and humanity. Beautiful attire does not reflect his worth.
- I hope all of you will be released from here very soon and that you can find your path. Please pray for me to find a path, as well
Afterwards, Reza and Shojayi are taken to a discussion room with prison officials, where the suspicious Mojaver, still not fully recognizing Reza, praises him for his eloquence. But during this meeting, Reza overhears a loudspeaker announcement that prisoner Mahmoud Montazedi has been summoned to go the visitor’s room. Reza quickly excuses himself from the discussion room to go to the toilet. At the visitor’s room Reza learns from Montazedi that his mother does indeed have the fake passport for him and that he should go back to her and properly identify himself this time as Reza, The Lizard.
5. Reza’s Exit
Reza goes back to Mahmoud Montazedi’s mother and collects the fake passport. Then he goes to the border crossing, but he is told it is temporarily closed for a few hours, so he returns to town. Back in the village, he comes upon Faezeh carrying some heavy shopping bags, and he offers to carry them for her to her home. She gratefully accepts his offer, and she invites him for tea at her home, where she will be alone. Reza is tempted by this offer, but he refuses it and gets the reformed Delangiz to carry her bags instead (CA-6).
But at the police station, Mojaver gets official word that the real Hajji Reza meant for this village had recently passed away, and that is why the villagers had mistakenly assumed that Reza, The Lizard, was their mullah when he arrived at the train station wearing clerical garb. Mojaver also learns that Mahmoud Montazedi has testified that Reza was not armed during the crime they had committed together, and so Reza’s prison sentence should be reduced. So Mojaver goes ahead and confronts Reza and has him taken into custody.
Before they are all to depart in the police car, Reza sees the mute boy one last time. He hands over to the boy his clerical clothes, and he tells him they are helpful for taming people. Reza adds further that it is good for people to become tamed (CA-7), and the boy responds softly, but audibly, in the affirmative. Yes, he understands – and we do, too.
As the police car with Reza aboard drives off into the town, the final shot shows the mosque congregation listening to holy singing and being dimly aware of the background sound of the car being driven away.
Marmoulak is a well-crafted drama with excellent, nuanced acting performances, particularly on the part of Parviz Parastui in the title role. An interesting narrative theme featured in the film is that of mistaken identity. Reza’s masquerade as a mullah sometimes gets him out of trouble, but it also leads to some lost connections (such as with Mahmoud Montazedi’s mother and with city taxi cabs). But in this case the mistaken identity also helps lead to the dissimulator taking on the virtues of his disguised role.
But at a deeper level, the film gives the viewer a beautifully dramatized depiction of the contrast between two distinctly different paths toward existential enlightenment:
As the police car with Reza aboard drives off into the town, the final shot shows the mosque congregation listening to holy singing and being dimly aware of the background sound of the car being driven away.
Marmoulak is a well-crafted drama with excellent, nuanced acting performances, particularly on the part of Parviz Parastui in the title role. An interesting narrative theme featured in the film is that of mistaken identity. Reza’s masquerade as a mullah sometimes gets him out of trouble, but it also leads to some lost connections (such as with Mahmoud Montazedi’s mother and with city taxi cabs). But in this case the mistaken identity also helps lead to the dissimulator taking on the virtues of his disguised role.
But at a deeper level, the film gives the viewer a beautifully dramatized depiction of the contrast between two distinctly different paths toward existential enlightenment:
- rule-following driven by punishment and
- compassionate love driven by “taming”.
humanity and not some external notion that needs to be injected into inherently sinful human beings [5]. Religion, in its most benevolent form, can help us (tame us) to invoke that loving feeling that is appropriate for each of us. This is what Marmoulak is showing us. So Marmoulak does not make fun of religion; rather, the film shows an example of religion serving as a vehicle for evoking our intrinsic instincts for altruistic love. ★★★★
Notes:
- Deborah Young, “The Lizard”, Variety (16 May 2004). x
- Jonathan Curiel, “FILM CLIPS / Also opening today”, SFGate, (6 August 2004).
- William Brown, “There are as many paths to the time-image as there are films in the world’: Deleuze and “The Lizard”“, Chapter 5, Deleuze and Film (Deleuze Connections), (ed. by David Martin-Jones and William Brown), Edinburgh University Press, (2012), pp. 88-103.
- The Film Sufi, "The Two Religions", The Film Sufi, (30 May 2015).
- Matthieu Ricard, Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World, Little, Brown and Company, (2013; English translation by Charlotte and Sam Gordon, 2015).