Review: Mandoo
Posted by Elliott Pen on September 7, 2010 · Leave a Comment
In the wake of this week’s announcement from President Obama that “Operation: Iraqi Freedom” has come to a close, it is fitting to view a film about Iraq and an Iranian family desperate to help their father/uncle back to their homeland in the wake of violence and failing health. Also in the wake of this promise for full control of their own nation, it is equally fitting that director Ebrahim Saeedi employs a unique cinematic style as a device to create identity.As violence in Iraq reaches a fever pitch Iranian Kurd Shaho decides to move his wife, daughter, and dying father back to Iran in hopes of peace and conditions conducive to his father’s health. Shortly before their journey begins Shaho’s cousin, Sheelan, an Iranian Kurd refugee now living in Sweden and practicing medicine, employs Shaho to bring his family to Sweden where conditions are much more favourable. This begins a struggle for the length of the film between the differing ideals of prosperity and safety, and the attraction and call of the motherland. Even despite his best attempts to shake Sheelan and leave her on the side of the road, this passionate woman keeps finding her way back to the van they are travelling in, much to Shaho’s dismay.
What makes this film interesting is not the story, rather it is director Saeedi’s decision to tell the story through the vantage point of the dying father. From the beginning of the film the audience is the father, granting the camera a sense of liberation which is not married to the narrative. In fact, numerous times due to the location of the immobile father, the narrative will continue offscreen or on a much more distant plane that is not entirely visible to the audience. As a member of the cinematic community in the middle east this is an interesting perspective for Saeedi. Too often directors attempt to tell a story rather than let a story unfold, and through the point of view vantage, the story of Mandoo certainly unfolds naturally.
Unfortunately Saeedi breaks the spell of enchantment that this film could have possessed. Though only a few seconds in length the audience is given its reflection in the form of the father looking at himself in a mirror. This is enough to completely change the feel of the film from something that could be experienced by any and all, to a very specific story with a very specific image in mind, as the father is presented quite differently than expected. By this token Mandoo is not a refreshing attempt to create national identity by way of cinema, rather it is another attempt to force a story on a nation rather than letting the nation tell its story through the camera.
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