In July last year, Tariq Ali wrote an excellent article about Iran for The Nation. He deftly covered the political history of the country through the 20th century and from that argued that Iran is already on a road to democracy and shouldn’t be interfered with.
In the article, Ali used the acclaimed Iranian film industry amongst his evidence. That film industry has been one which I’ve been trying to follow for some time, even to the extent of gradually making my way through The New Iranian Cinema, an excellent collection of essays on the social and political currents present in the neo-realist cinema which has emerged from Iran in recent years.
The latest film I managed to lay my hands on was Secret Ballot, a rather awkward tale of a soldier and a female election official thrown together for a day as they travel round a rural area collecting votes. In many ways the film was a disappointment, lacking any real clarity in its narrative, but its strongest point was the reaction of each of the major characters to the many challenges to their established ideas which they meet during the course of the day.
The young election official is so determined that voting is an important part of everyone’s lives that she is reduced to implausible claims of the remote candidates’ intimate knowledge of the area; she is flabbergasted when the one group of truly engaged voters question the fact that their preferred candidates are not on the ballot paper (’this is the official list’ is all she can say); and she is lost for words when encountering women for whom the thought of voting without their husbands’ consent is anathema.
Her soldier escort appears to find her constant jibes about his reliance on his gun for status humiliating but through the day his attitude clearly softens. His initial scepticisms—summed up when he appears to think women are technically unable to drive cars—gradually dissolve as his expectations are contradicted. It’s not a major change, but his increasing curiosity was perhaps my favourite aspect of the film.
If you want to experience Iranian cinema I would not recommend starting here (for that I’d recommend The Colour of Paradise or The Day I Became A Woman) but this film reinforces Tariq Ali’s point that Iranian film uncovers that society’s ability to question its own preconceptions.