‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ Review: Repression Hasn’t Chastened Mohammad Rasoulof, Who Responds With a Marathon Domestic Critique
For more than two decades, Iman (Misagh Zare) has functioned as a civil servant, doing work that his kids — who represent Iran’s younger generation — would be ashamed of. Better to keep them in the dark. At last, for his loyalty, Iman has been given a promotion, not to judge (the job he wants) but to inspector (a job no one wants). Inspectors are the goons who interrogate students his daughters’ age when they’re arrested for protesting, the ones who sign off on death sentences for alleged dissidents. Iman doesn’t just work for the Iranian regime; he is the regime.
With livid, thinking-person’s thriller “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” director Mohammad Rasoulof responds to his own imprisonment in 2022 (during which a wave of protests erupted after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, who was arrested and beaten for wearing an improper hijab) by examining Iranian tensions within the context of a well-placed Tehran family. For most of this slow-boiling nearly-three-hour movie, the main character is not Iman but his submissive, rule-abiding wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani). The Jina Revolution marked a historical turning point for women in Iran, and “Seed” depicts the germination of a new solidarity, which started with students but takes root once average citizens like Najmeh buy in.
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At the outset, however, Najmeh is so committed to her husband’s success that she orders her two girls, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki), to be “irreproachable” in every way: how they behave, how they dress, with whom they associate. She frowns upon their more free-spirited friend Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi). Now that they’ve been able to upgrade to a three-bedroom apartment, the slightest slip could bring not only shame upon the family but an end to Iman’s career, and Najmeh won’t allow it. While Iman enforces the status quo at work, she does so at home.
Like Rasoulof (who miraculously managed to attend the film’s premiere on the final day of the Cannes competition), leading lady Golestani was imprisoned for her activism, though audiences would never guess that by watching the stern, unquestioning matriarch she plays here. Najmeh believes everything she sees on TV, scolding her daughters anytime they show the slightest independence. Of the defiant young people in the streets who shout things like “Down with theocracy! Down with the dictator!” she hisses, “They’re not people, they’re thugs.” But scores of alarming real-world videos — undoctored evidence of a people’s uprising, interspersed throughout the film — suggest otherwise.
Within this family, we can see the same tensions playing out that have galvanized so many in Iran as a whole. Iman and Najmeh believe in both the regime and the religious precepts on which it’s founded, which lend a frightening sense of righteousness to their convictions. “I submit to the one who submits to You. I fight the one who fights You, until the last day,” Iman repeats to himself. But this latest promotion has been eating away at him in strange ways. His colleague Ghaderi (Reza Akhlaghi) gives Iman a pistol upon his promotion — for “self-defense,” he says. But the gun serves only to make Iman more paranoid, especially after it vanishes from his home.
Who could have taken it? As feminists and university students joined forces in the Jina Revolution, the names, photos and home addresses of certain officials were made public. Could one of these activists have broken in? Maybe Sadaf, who came over with a face full of buckshot after a confrontation with the police? In an even more unthinkable scenario, might one of Iman’s family members have stolen the gun? For Iman, losing the weapon could mean losing his job and a prison sentence of up to three years. But what would taking it mean, and why would anyone do so?
This turning point occurs 86 minutes in, at the midpoint of the film, and shifts what has been a slightly didactic portrait of the difference of perspective between conservative-minded parents and their more change-oriented children into a gripping and all-around more suspenseful look at the extremes to which the older generation will go to maintain its control.
Among internationally renowned Iranian auteurs, many of whom work either in miniature or in meta-fiction, Rasoulof demonstrates some of the strongest technical chops. He’s not afraid of marathon running times (his Berlin-winning 2020 feature “There Is No Evil” clocks in at just over two and a half hours), but also is remarkably efficient in which details he chooses to share. While his dramaturgical instincts aren’t quite as literary or tight as “A Separation” director Asghar Farhadi’s, he clearly knows his Chekhov: From the moment Iman’s gun first appears, it’s only a matter of time before the weapon goes off. When it disappears, the intrigue becomes that much more compelling.
Iman turns on his family, which is terrifying to witness, as he drags both daughters and his wife over to his colleague Alireza (the actor prefers to remain anonymous) for interrogation. Rasoulof informs us that students, when picked up by the police for protesting, are locked in solitary confinement until they agree to record an on-camera confession. Facing Alireza — whom she’d always considered a friend — Najmeh objects to his treatment. “Never has a person sitting there been treated with such respect,” he replies. It’s a chilling moment, but nothing compared with what Iman has in store when he drives the family out to his childhood home.
Rasoulof packs the last act of this long (but never dull) film with all kinds of twists, as Iman’s desperation reaches the point where he starts to lock up his own loved ones. This metaphorical location represents the ruins of what Iran once was: a crumbling labyrinth where Sana stumbles upon a stack of old tapes, including one featuring a banned song from half a century ago, in which a woman celebrates the beauty of female hair. Today, going uncovered can get one killed. As a patriarchy treats its citizens, this father handles his wife and kids — with increasing suspicion and unreasonable force.
The situation Rasoulof depicts is hardly limited to Iran. There are echoes of Nazi Germany and modern-day China in the way average citizens submit, while the pressures to inform on one’s neighbors recall pre-perestroika Soviet policies. Rasoulof’s genius comes in focusing on how this dynamic plays out within a family, which makes it personal. Early on, Iman hesitates to comply with an order that conflicts with his ideals. By the nail-biting finale of this masterful allegory, decades of compromise have eroded what he stands for, threatening to bury him and the authoritarian system he represents.
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