![]() ![]() Moussavi and his wife remain under house arrest. If anything, the Guards regard Darvish as a troublemaker: He directed a campaign video for Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the reformist candidate in the controversial 2009 presidential elections, which led to mass protests, violence, and widespread accusations of vote-rigging in favor of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Rastakhiz, which is estimated to have cost $13 million, doesn’t have comparable political backing. The producer, Muhammed Mehdi Heiderian, estimates it cost $40 million, the biggest budget ever for an Iranian movie. With so much money at stake, it is hard to imagine that the Revolutionary Guards would have allowed Muhammad to be shut down by irate mobs. Majidi’s film was financed in part by the Bonyad Moztazafan, a charitable “foundation” run by the powerful Revolutionary Guards. As so often in Iran, faith is mixed up in politics, with commercial considerations thrown in for good measure. Religious sensibilities don’t fully explain the disparate fates of the two films. No sooner had the film opened in Tehran than mobs-apparently encouraged by hardline clerical and political figures-stormed the cinemas, forcing them to close. Majidi’s Muhammad, by contrast, has been named Iran’s official entry for the next Academy Awards. (Depicting the visage of the prophet himself, in any medium, is beyond the pale for most Shia.)ĭarvish turned down my requests for an interview, saying only that he’s still hoping that religious authorities will relent and allow his movie to be shown. But he has previously said he got explicit permission to show Abbas’s face from religious scholars, and that after a private screening, he made some cuts to ameliorate their anxieties. Among the Shia, who make up the majority in Iran, the picture is less clear: many of the faithful think nothing of hanging artists impressions of Imam Ali-the prophet’s son-in-law and the founder figure of Shia Islam-and other Shia heroes in their homes, but recoil from the idea of showing them in film, played by actors. Many Muslims, especially in the majority Sunni sect, believe it is forbidden to depict the faith’s revered figures in any form, whether in portrait or on celluloid-or in cartoons, come to that. ![]() Majidi and Darvish were both aware they were taking on tricky subjects. Actually, two faces-one on screen, and one behind the scenes. So why has one film been singled out for vilification? Neither would have been allowed to shoot within the country without the blessing of the all-powerful Ministry of Guidance and Islamic Culture. ![]() Both directors say they consulted several ayatollahs and other scholars before starting on their projects. ![]()
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