Rosewater

Jon Stewart – 2014 – USA

Being as out-of-touch with movies as I am, I completely forgot that humorist Jon Stewart was the director of this film.  Since the credits appear at the end, I was genuinely surprised by the fact.  It’s based on the case of Mazier Bahari, a Canadian journalist who was imprisoned for four months in Iran, erroneously accused of being a spy.  Normally, I’m resistant to socially-conscious movies, especially those of a ‘based on true events’ nature that may or may not be on the prowl for some Oscar statues, but I have to admit that I was carried away by the sincerity, passion and modesty of this film.  It doesn’t settle for the flimsy, cheerleading ‘fight the power’ message that most such movies espouse, but instead lays the groundwork for a solid case against theocracy.  In this case it’s radical Islam, of course, but under the right circumstances, as history has shown, a similar state of affairs could happen anywhere and be fueled by any religion.  In a prologue, we see Bahari (played by Gael Garcia Bernal) be subjected to an unwarranted intrusion and interrogation by government men who present him with all of his media and artistic interests – TV shows, music, magazines, etc. – and can only interpret them as either subversive or (more often) pornographic.  It’s a scene straight out of Kafka’s The Trial, where reason has no hope once a band of thugs have been programmed to find evidence against a targeted suspect.  Bahari is naïve to a fault, and this undoubtedly contributes to his persecution at the hands of the secret police, but it is also his salvation.  His love of performance, culture and the arts ultimately overrides the festering political extremism that surrounds him, and it’s what allows him to survive as a human being and resist becoming a blinkered zealot with a thirst for vengeance.  His captors are simple brutes, and Bahari accurately senses that their desperation and fury come from their awareness, deep down, that they cannot win.  Stewart does a fine job of directing; resisting the flashy stylistic choices that first-time directors who are already celebrities often make.  But the film, in my view, really belongs to Gael Garcia Bernal, an exceptional actor who has proven on screen that he can literally do anything.  His warm and unaffected performance is the epitome of human; somehow fearless and humble simultaneously.  I like Rosewater because it suggests that police states can be toppled by peoples’ refusal to be politicized, not by their taking up arms.