Rating: 5/5
Asian Cinema Challenge 2023 | 6/52 | Iranian New Wave
There is no shortage of ugliness in the world. There would have been more ugliness if man had closed his eyes to it. But man is a problem solver. On this screen will appear an image of ugliness, a vision of pain that no caring human being should ignore. To cure this ugliness, to aid to ease the pain, and to relieve the victims is the motive behind making this film.
We open on a woman affected by Hansen’s disease, or as it’s colloquially known leprosy. She was one of several people with the disease who were kept in the Bababaghi Hospice leper colony. A child reads from the Qur’an a passage thanking God for creating him.
Forough Farrokhzah was a poet and film director. This film was the only one she made before her death in 1967. After making this film, she adopted one of the children named Hossein.
Critics considered this film the forerunner to the Iranian New Wave. The film resembles Italian neorealism in its unwavering depiction of people affected by Hansen’s. But it has a poetic quality that surpasses neorealism’s grounded objectives. It doesn’t just ask you to look at these people’s suffering—it conveys their joys, humanity, and faith despite everything.
The science of the film is out of date in a number of ways. Most importantly, the disease is not as contagious as common knowledge suggests. When this movie was made, the disease had become resistant to all known treatments. As of 1982, we have a cure for the disease but have not eradicated it completely.
One day, the heavens turned, and I fell into this asylum.