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Women Without Men

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Having read the novella, I was curious as to how the film would function without the girl Mahdokht turning into the tree and then to seed scattering in the wind. Shahrnush Parsipur, the author of the novella writes in a magical realism style akin to Marquez and the South American writers. The film managed quite well without that episode and still managed to have a dreamlike quality from beginning to end by use of predominantly black and white except for a few injections of color at strategic moments.The former prostitute Zarrinkolab, being painfully thin and speechless throughout the entire film had a surreal quality to it. It turns out in real life she is a Hungarian actress and couldn't speak Farsi. Especially the garden had a ghostly quality to it with its diagonal rows of tall thin trees. They actually filmed three different gardens to get the effects. The film gave a greater emphasis to the Mossadegh theme which was only an historic reference point in the book and it showed that women's involvement in politics in Iran is not a new phenomena. Women have been political activists in Iran for several centuries because they have more at stake. The soldiers in black and the protestors in white like a chess game also had quite a dramatic effect and obvious symbolism.

Some newspaper critics here in the US found the film depressing and only of interest to Iranian expats but I think they missed the point. The discrimination and repression of women is not something unique to Iran, nor is rape and prostitution and the currency of the symbolism used had universal appeal and a familiarity to Western icons. Shirin Neshat mentioned to us at a discussion group at Stanford University that the scene of the former prostitute Zarrinkolab lying unconscious on her back floating in the middle of the pond was borrowed from Ophelia. Shahrnush said that the title of the book "Women Without Men" was taken from Hemingway's book "Men Without Women." The point of the book and the film were not to put men in a bad light but rather to show the world from women's perspectives. The nuturing healer and person with the most moral integrity and loyalty in the story was actually the male gardener. He was like a father figure. The new owner of the country house, the socialite Farrokhlaga, was portrayed very true to the book and to life especially the silent pain you can see in her eyes that she endures when the man she has secretly always been in love with showed up for her soirre with a younger American fiance.

Shirin Neshat mentioned at the Stanford University discussion group that the film was shot entirely in Morocco and they had to enlist the Moroccan Army as the soldier extras in the film and she jokingly said that it was probably the most action the army had seen in years. I loved the scene of the Shah's military crashing the elegant dinner party at the country house looking for the dissident Munis and ending up with their captain drinking with the guests and reciting poetry. This is so typically Iranian, that people of every walk of life, no matter how good or bad can recite poetry.

And the finale with the leftist political activist Munis embracing and crying over the dead body of the Shah's young soldier, who had been killed by one of her colleagues, to me was the symbol of mother Iran trying to heal her disparate children. As Shirin Neshat pointed out in the discussion, in the post election protests of last summer 2009, women could be seen intervening to protect protesting men from being beaten by police and also shielding defeated policemen from being beaten by the angry mob. Despite the impression in the West, women are far from passive in Iran.

Two other points of departure between the novel and the film, are that Farrokhlaga does not push her pompous overbearing general husband off the balcony to his death at the start of the film like she does in the book and Faizeh does not become the second wife of Munis' sanctimonious brother, Amir. Shahrnush who does not consider herself a feminist was describing a real phenomena of polygamy which occurs in certain societies which I believe has a correlation to poverty but Shirin couldn't bring herself to casting Faizeh into such a passive role and instead shows her defiantly telling her would be spouse that she has no interest in becoming servant to his third and younger wife some day just as he was suggesting his current wife would be to her...

I think this film is well worth seeing and it goes beyond merely Iranian themes and interests. It has a universal appeal to it as well as being a cinematographic piece of artwork. It has been my privilege to have become friends both with Shahrnush Parsipur and Shirin Neshat over the past few years. Shahrnush spent many years in jail under both the Pahlavi regime and the IRI and her writing has been banned in Iran mostly for speaking candidly of women's issues. Shirin Neshat cannot return to Iran under the current regime and her work has also been banned there. Life in exhile is not easy and it has a surreal quality to it as well. I was very proud of Shirin Neshat when she received the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennial last year and I thought that Shahrnush's acting debut was quite convincing as a Madame. I wish that more of her novels would be translated into English and I hope that Shirin will make many more films. This was her first full length feature film. In Shirin's own words she said that she was amazed that a film about Iran had found main stream distribution at all in the USA. She has been on tour for the past three weeks at screenings in Europe where I am sure it will find a wide audience. The film was actually financed by European producers due to lack of interest here.

I wish both these women all the best.

Exiled Iranian visual artist and now filmmaker, Shirin Neshat interprets the 1989 novella "Women Without Men" by Shahrnush Parsipur, also an Iranian exile. Both women have attempted movingly to portray the oppression of women in Iran. Set in 1953 during the CIA-backed overthrow of the democratically elected government, led by Mohammed Mossadegh, the film also has a political message. It is dedicated to Iranians whose lives have been lost in struggles for independence there since the turn of the last century.

The women of the title are all abused and betrayed in some way by men. Middle-class and middle-aged Zinat is trapped in a stultifying marriage to an Army officer, who berates her for her creative talents (she is a poet and singer) and threatens to take a second, younger wife. Thirty-year-old Munis is absorbed by current political events but is brow-beaten by a brother who wants her married off as soon as possible. Meanwhile, her friend Faezeh has the misfortune of being found alone in the streets by two men who rape her. Zarin, a shudderingly anorexic young prostitute, barely tolerates her male customers, who treat her brutally, but recoils in horror when she discovers that one of them lacks a face. Zinat leaves her husband and acquires a rural property - a huge old house with extensive gardens where two of the other women join her in retreat from the rest of the world. A kindly gardener attends to them, but otherwise it is their world without men.

The tone of Parsipur's novella is darkly humorous and finally hopeful, but the film is more elegiac. It parts company with the novel as public protests in the streets mount, calling to mind demonstrations we have seen in 1979 and again in 2009. Munis, escaping from her home, by means of an episode of magical realism (also a recurring device in the novella), joins a cell of young leftists. But the triumph of the military and the collapse of the government as invited guests gather for an evening at the house, dictate the narrative outcomes for the characters. The resolution of the film reflects the erosion of hope for Iranian women in the 20 years since the book was written. This is a gracefully told and beautifully photographed film. Location footage, the use of muted colors, and the haunting music track make it a richly moving experience.

Summer of 1953 in Thehran, Iran lives middle aged singer Fakhri in an emotionless marriage, prostitute Zarin that is shocked by her customers changing faces, young Faezeh that loses her dreams of marriage and her friend Munis that strongly objects to her brothers rules.

Feature film debut of the exile-Iranian visual artist that started her artistic work as a photographer is an aesthetic art-film with strong contrasts where the realistic and surrealistic converges. Her vision of a prehistoric Iran is complimented by the symbolic photos created by prominent photographer Martin Gschlacht "Revanche" (2008) and "Lourdes" (2009), and her archetype film style is characterized by quiet camera movements, varied moods, distinct female portraits, remote recordings and long takes without dialog. With this profoundly moving picture that contains one of modern film history's most artistic scenes and that was honored with the Silver Lion and UNICEF-award at Venice Film Festival in 2009, individualistic filmmaker Shirin Neshat who immigrated to the united states at the age of seventeen has paled way for future Iranian filmmakers. A political character drama and a social comment that leaves loud echoes.

All of the previous reviews do a great job of politically and ideologically contextualizing this stunning first film by Neshat, so I just wanted to note something that may sadly be overlooked in a movie of such social import:

Women Without Men is a cinematic gem, something that American cinefiles MUST see.

To sell it in plain terms, if, aesthetically speaking, Terrence Malick and Ingmar Bergman had an Iranian daughter, she might make a film that looks like this. The absolutely gorgeous visuals, meditated upon in spiritual silences, the otherworldy garden that proves sanctuary for these embattled women shot in heavenly light and mist, the incredibly moving Bergmanesque performances by the lead actresses, all of these things make for a film that, if it was somehow possible (though not desirable) to look on apolitically and from just aesthetic terms, is simply beautiful.

I saw this film debuted at the Levantine Center in los Angeles by Neshat herself, and Vilmos Szigmond was on the panel as well, giving the work a cinematic rating of "11 out of 10". If a cinematographic legend like Szigmond has this appraisal of it, well, you get the picture.

See it. You will not be disappointed. If you were, like me, largely ignorant of the secular socialist near-past of Iran and never knew just how much Iran was sociopolitically like, say, Europe (pre-fascist Italy or Spain, for example), you will get a beautiful lesson in how this modern culture, which has been dehumanized in the propaganda of Western culture, is more like "us" than we thought.

There are so many fine films that have been made, and many masterpieces...this, to my taste, is one of the greatest.

I just saw the film. Cold, without any prior knowledge of it, the filmmaker Shirin Neshat, or Shahrnush Parsipur's magic realist novel. And I've never seen an Iranian film before. It took a few minutes before I could sort out the politics and history--it got very clear as the film progressed, but with the first image I was hooked. The stunning imagery and iconography held through the entire film. It's a unique vision that somehow resonates with the great films of Ingmar Bergman.

Prior reviews have been very helpful to me in contextualizing WOMEN WITHOUT MEN (that's a strange title, btw, which is way more misleading than helpful). I would only add that this film reaches greatness because of the way it handles the great historical flux of power shifts. It would be a very narrow reading of this work to say it shows that to the truly powerful (here, the US and Great Britain) freedom was (is?) is a far less precious commodity than oil. We see the seeds of the Islamic Revolution that disposed of the Shah, and know the fruit of that tree will not be glorious. Ultimately, what I loved most about the film WOMEN WITHOUT MEN is what I love in the great Egyptian novelist and Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz: it tells the heartbreaking story of the recurring impossibility of human aspirations in so particular a fashion that the pleasure in the opportunity to live many lives vicariously balances the ache of recurring disillusionment. Sharin Neshat builds the illusions magnificently.

Throughout this remarkable film -- along with exquisite natural dioramas -- I subliminally focused on its star turn of Water. Whether as first request of female pilgrim to no-mans-land sanctuary (a drink of water) or sacred and isolated grotto, this pristine fluid proffered solace for healing the feminine from male abuse.
Slaking thirst, purifying, submerging, containing, nurturing, perhaps water's role since the beginning of time -- even in the cultural stories we tell ourselves. (For example, remembering Mary Magdalene's washing the feet of Jesus)
And may explain why women almost universally will chose a bathtub over a shower - when given the option.
The images and cinematography within "Woman without Men" -- by two talented and courageous Iranian women -- spring from and speak to (my) intuition, so ineffable. Best let them talk to yours -- rather than attempt to pin down the numinous with words.
I highly recommend this topical film for both men and women, as we currently ratchet up our demonizing of Iran -- and justifications for disasterous sanctions (and perhaps war) -- against this hoary, precious poetic culture~

I was so excited for this dvd, i waited like 1 month to get it. after i received it and watched it, i got really disappointed. First of all, the landscape has nothing to do with iran, secondly the story is just so simple but it's been filmed in a very complicated manner. Everyone knows that shah with the help of USA did a kudeta and overthrown Dr. Mossadegh who was elected by iranian people. i don't see any point to film this fact in this fashion.