"The Seed of the Sacred Fig" Stands Witness

This is a hard movie to watch, and as a result, a hard movie to write about.  "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" is an Iranian film, written and directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, who has run afoul of Iran's censorship laws multiple times, and had to flee the country to escape a lengthy prison sentence when this film was chosen for the 2024 Cannes film festival.  It takes place roughly in 2022, during the demonstrations and protests that came in the wake of the murder of Mahsa Amini.

A devout, honest man named Iman (Missagh Zareh) is promoted to be a judge in Iran's Revolutionary Court, which oversees major crimes including threats to the power of the state.  This means Iman enjoys better living conditions, but also tighter restrictions on his family, and he is issued a gun for protection.  His wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) does her best to keep their daughters in line - Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) who is attending college, and teenage Sana (Setareh Maleki) who lives at home.  Despite their mother's efforts, the daughters both support the protests and are affected by the social unrest.  Iman, faced with going against his principles as the protests escalate, becomes stressed and unstable.  And then the gun goes missing.

The family becomes Iran in miniature - a paranoid authoritarian father, an oppressive mother trying to placate him, an older daughter who speaks out against the injustice she sees, and a younger daughter who is surrounded by too much violence not to be affected.  Before the gun disappears or the social unrest erupts in Tehran, the tensions in the household are already high due to Iman's promotion.  Najmeh seems to be endlessly criticizing her daughters, and pressures them to stop associating with a friend, Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi) from a more permissive family. It's Najmeh who is the crux of the film, who starts experiencing doubts when the situation worsens.  She has to face the fact that she can do everything right and still be in danger.     

Mohammad Rasoulof is not a director I'm familiar with, but he's taking his cues from fellow Iranian filmmakers like Jafar Panahi, who are fiercely critical of the current regime, and not afraid of tackling major social issues head-on.  The making of this film was reportedly an ordeal - Rasoulof filmed it in secret while under a filmmaking ban, and was convicted on propaganda charges during its production.  He uses actual footage from the protests interspersed throughout "The Seed of the Sacred Fig," the aspect ratio changing so it looks like we're watching events unfold on phones along with the girls.  These images are also banned in Iran, of course.  They give the film an incredible immediacy and heighten the sense of danger and disruption.  

The strongest parts of the film are the first two thirds, where we watch the family react to multiple crises and reach their breaking points.  Najmeh starts out doing her best to play peacemaker, finding justifications for everyone's behavior, and ignoring what she can't fix. I find it fascinating the way that Rasoulof gets to the heart of the conflict, which is not about religion or moral values, but about living in a society built on fear and absolute control.  There's a bleak sequence where Najmeh and her daughters are questioned by a family friend who is also a government interrogator.  From the fear tactics and doublespeak, it's clear that mindless obedience is more important than actually finding out the truth.  Iman soon becomes so warped by his work as part of the unjust legal system that he views all dissent as rebellion.    

What's so brilliant about the storytelling is that we're seeing all of this largely in the terms of a present-day domestic drama, contained within a single, instantly familiar family unit.  The gradual breakdown of trust between Iman and his wife and daughters over the film's long running time is intense and upsetting.  The last third of the film turns very melodramatic, and moves the action out of the city, which I thought was a misstep - we're suddenly in a different kind of story where the threats shift from psychological to physical.  However, I understand why it was necessary thematically, because the film's critiques go beyond the current government.  Putting the family's conflict against the backdrop of an abandoned village is a reminder that the current instability in Iran is part of a much longer and more complex history. 

I doubt "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" will find much of an audience beyond the usual arthouse crowd, which is a shame.  This is very watchable and accessible for an Iranian film, and very relevant to political unrest happening all over the globe right now.  We don't get a lot of cinema this vital and this urgent, and it's absolutely remarkable that it was made at all.    

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"Zero Day" and "The Residence"

Quick thoughts on two Netflix limited series today.  Minor spoilers ahead.

"Zero Day" is a show that I had been anticipating for a while.  It features an unusually high profile cast, including Robert DeNiro as ex-president George Mullen, Joan Allen as his wife, Lizzy Caplan as his estranged daughter, and Jesse Plemmons as his personal aide.  Angela Bassett plays the sitting president.  Every episode is directed by Leslie Linka Glatter.  The showrunner is Eric Newman, best known for "Narcos."  In short, "Zero Day" has a pedigree that few other series could match.  And somehow, it's borderline unwatchable.

What "Zero Day" wants to be is a political thriller about the aftermath of a fictional cyberattack on the United States, which destabilizes the country.  Mullen is appointed to be the chairman of a special commission to find the perpetrators, and resorts to some very questionable means to do this.  As you'd expect, there's a lot of sensationalism, a lot of improbable political developments, and a lot of chances for Robert DeNiro to give impassioned speeches.  The trouble is that "Zero Day" had the misfortune to have been delayed by the recent strikes, and was released in early 2025.  "Zero Day" is patterned more or less on the US response to 9/11.  Thus, it is operating in a political reality that bears absolutely no resemblance to the present day.  The secret conspiracies look absolutely ridiculous when the people currently in office are doing much worse out in the open without real consequences.  The cyberattack and resulting transportation and telecommunications failures aren't examined in any real depth, despite featuring so heavily in the marketing.  Instead, they're just the impetus for generic civil unrest that never seems as threatening as it's made out to be.    

I think what really sinks the show is that we see everything play out mostly from Mullen's very limited POV, and somehow everything important ties back to him personally.  It's his daughter who happens to be the Representative tasked with monitoring the special commission's activities.  He has personal relationships with nearly every important figure involved in the story.  It feels like the creators don't trust the audience to be engaged by the political drama without piling so much personal drama on top of it.  There are some attempts to reflect the current political landscape, such as including influential tech moguls and a loudmouth conspiracy theorist as thorns in Mullen's side, but it just makes it all the more obvious how tone-deaf and out of date "Zero Day" is.  The answers are too easy and the problems are too quickly resolved, the result of a small group of bad actors who can be handily dispatched after Mullen makes a few tough decisions.  I don't mind DeNiro getting to flex a bit, and I enjoyed seeing everybody from Dan Stevens to Connie Britton popping up in supporting roles, but too much of "Zero Day" is indulgent political fantasy with no depth to speak of.  

And now, on to something completely different.  Shondaland's latest project is "The Residence," an eight episode murder mystery comedy that takes place in the White House.  Created by Paul William Davies, "The Residence" follows the efforts of consulting detective Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) as she tries to solve the murder of the White House's Head Usher, A.B. Wynter (Giancalo Esposito), during a state dinner for the Prime Minister of Australia (Julian McMahon).  There is a very long list of suspects, including an executive pastry chef played by Bronson Pinchot, Ken Marino as a scummy presidential advisor, Jason Lee as the president's even scummier brother, and Kylie Minogue, appearing as herself.  However, Cordelia Cupp doesn't believe in suspects.  She believes in keen observation, scrupulous journaling, and birding.  And she does all of these things constantly as she tries to piece together what happened to A.B.

"The Residence" is the most flat-out fun I've had with a murder mystery series in some time.  It's extremely well written and well edited, juggling lots of different characters and incidents and clues.  Each episode introduces more suspects - the engineer (Mel Rodriguez), the social secretary (Molly Griggs), the party crasher (Timothy Hornor), the ambitious underling (Susan Kelechi Watson), and the president's mother-in-law (Jane Curtin), just to name a few -  and shows us events from many different POVs.  It's immensely satisfying when everything pieces together in the end.  The show is very self-aware, with Detective Cupp and her Watson figure, Agent Park (Randall Park), calling out tropes when they come across them, all the episodes named after other famous mysteries, and a framing device with Al Franken running a Congressional hearing into the murder for more meta commentary.  I really like the way some of the exposition is done, using montages of different interviews and conversations so that many disparate characters appear to be relaying bits of the same story, responding to each other, and adding to each other's testimonies.  Brief clips of particularly pivotal moments come back multiple times over the course of the show, building on each other, and helping the audience to keep track of different theories.  The Wes Anderson-ian humor is also great, with sight gags and silly callbacks galore.       

Despite taking place in the White House, "The Residence" is apolitical, and a nice break from reality.  Well, the President (Paul Fitzgerald) has a First Gentleman (Barrett Foa) instead of a First Lady, and Senator Bix (Eliza Coupe) bears a resemblance to a certain Republican Congresswoman, but the specifics never match up.  Instead, the show is very concerned with the inner workings of the White House as its own institution.  A nonfiction book, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, by Kate Anderson Brower, is credited as the main inspiration for the show, and a significant amount of time is spent spotlighting all the different employees and departments that keep the place running, from the Head Usher to the butlers, gardeners, housekeepers, kitchen staff, and security personnel.  In the course of trying to figure out whodunnit, we learn all the ins and outs of the fictional household, and it's fascinating stuff.  One of the show's best visuals is when it shows us dollhouse-like views of the White House, to highlight the different rooms in relation to each other.    

I want to give special kudos to Uzo Aduba, who puts her own stamp on the eccentric detective figure.  Cordelia Cupp is odd, stubborn, and brilliant, as many fictional detectives are, but also wonderfully patient, accepting, and self-aware of her own flaws.  It's a lot of fun to watch her work, and I hope to see her again in another mystery someday.     

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The Worst 2024 Movies I Bothered to Watch

This was a lot of fun to write last year, so I think it's going to be a regular feature.  All the usual caveats apply.  I'm not a professional critic and do my best to avoid seeing the movies that usually end up on "Worst of" lists, so I have not seen the real bottom-of-the-barrel dreck.  The list is in no way comprehensive, and mainly just a way for me to let off some steam as I'm working through the last few titles from last year.  It's a few months until I can finalize my "Best of" list for movies, but I'm pretty much done seeing all the mainstream releases I care about.   Minor spoilers ahead. 

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim - This movie was doomed the second the trailer was released.  I don't think that a new animated "Lord of the Rings" movie is a bad idea - the Bakshi version is a cult classic - but the anime style was the wrong way to go here.  I've read up on what was going on with the production, and all the great talent and all the technical wizardry involved, but the end result just looks disappointingly bland and generic.  It may not have been a film that was created just to keep the rights to the franchise with New Line, but it sure feels like one.    

Mother, Couch - Sometimes you see a terrible film from a first time director, that somehow has an A-list cast and resources that other directors would kill for, and you have to applaud everybody for taking a big risk that in no way paid off.   "Mother, Couch," was directed by a Swedish guy named Niclas Larsson, who made some award-winning short films and commercials.  From interviews, he seems to think he's made a horror film.  I think he's actually aiming for an absurdist existential comedy, but wandered off course.  There are some signs of talent, but Larsson's not ready for long form yet.

The Crow - Easily my biggest disappointment of the year, because I really loved the original "Crow" movie starring Brandon Lee, and I often like Bill Sarsgaard as a leading man.  This remake, directed by Rupert Sanders, occasionally has some good-looking visuals, but it's clear that Sanders still doesn't know how to do action, the writer doesn't understand the material, and the performers are all left adrift.  After decades of different versions in development limbo with so many actors and directors attached at various points in time, I can't believe this is what actually got made.

Cold Copy - A thriller about a young journalist who uncovers her mentor's unethical tactics isn't a bad premise.  It's just that everything about the portrayal of journalism in this film is decades out of date, and the unethical tactics are tame compared to what we know actually goes on in the industry.   Bel Powley and Tracee Ellis Ross are doing the best that they can, but they don't have much to work with.  "Cold Copy" is the brainchild of another European first-time director, Roxine Helberg, who made a lot of commercials.  I think it's better than "Mother, Couch," but not by very much.    

Bagman - Colm McCarthy is a very solid British director, whose last horror film was the excellent "The Girl With All the Gifts."  So what happened here?  The script is nonsense.  There's no atmosphere to speak of.  The bagman monster is kind of interesting at first, until you realize that it isn't actually going to do anything scary. Like the recent "Wolf Man," the parental anxiety themes are laid out well enough, but all the subsequent chills and thrills fall totally flat.  Also, was there a coherent ending to this film that was left on the cutting room floor somewhere?   

Reunion - I suspect the plan was to stick a bunch of talented actors and comedians in a by-the-numbers murder mystery together, and hope something watchable would result.  Well, it didn't. Lil Rel Howery, Billy Magnussen, Jillian Bell, and Jamie Chung all spend 94 minutes bumming around somebody's house, going through the motions as the plot slowly works itself out around them with zero thrills, laughs, or surprises.  The writers are the guys behind the "Edge of Sleep" series with Markiplier, so you can draw your own conclusions.   

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