THE ROVING
EYE Six
degrees of (Iranian) separation By Pepe Escobar
In the end, no one
will remember Billy Crystal's lame jokes, Angelina
Jolie showing a tweet-exploding leg, Jennifer
Lopez' monster wardrobe malfunction, Meryl Streep
faking surprise, that Macau-casino shtick by
Cirque du Soleil, or the designer-enveloped
collective narcissism of a bunch of millionaires,
part of the cream of the 1%, exchanging gold
statuettes.
In fact the best
capture-the-zeitgeist line of the night was by an
anonymous photographer on the red carpet;
"Smokin' hot! Over your shoulder on the left
angle, Jennifer!"
The Artist
may have won the 2012 Oscars for Best Movie -
and French director Michel Hazanavicius at least
had the grace of
thanking the great Billy
Wilder, three times, as his inspiring angel.
But the real breaking news here is the Oscar
for Best Foreign Language Film for Iran's A
Separation, directed by Ashgar Farhadi. Leave
it aside the academy voters' schizophrenia. A
Separation was also a nominee for best
screenplay. It would never have become the
masterpiece that it is without having being
carefully written and composed as a Persian
miniature. (For a review of the film, see Family
traumas span US-Iran divide Asia Times Online,
January 28, 2012.)
And Best Foreign
Language Film is also as silly as Robert Downey Jr
trying to do Brechtian distance; A
Separation is the best movie of 2011 in any
language. The Artist is a divertissement.
A Separation is about all of us - how we
deal, as human beings, with our six degrees of
separation.
And then there was Farhadi's
acceptance speech - so un-Hollywoodish and
unjaded; and most of all, as elegant and
delicately nuanced as his picture.
At this time many Iranians all over
the world are watching us and I imagine them to
be very happy. They are happy not just because
of an important award or a film or a filmmaker,
but because at the time when talk of war,
intimidation and aggression is exchanged between
politicians, the name of their country, Iran, is
spoken here through her glorious culture.
A rich and ancient culture that has been
under the heavy dust of politics. I proudly
offer this honor to the people of my country, a
people who respect all cultures and
civilizations and despise hostility and
resentment. Thank you very much.
Eat
this - US neo-con and Israel lobby warmongers.
A Separation is an immensely
political film - without even referring to
politics. It depicts the politics of everyday
life, which is trespassed by institutional
politics in a complex, seamless way. In Farhadi's
words, "Smaller problems that you can't really
see," intersecting with big problems. It's all so
seamless, in fact, that Iran's rigid censors
didn't even detect it.
The characters in
A Separation may also be seen as a mirror
of Iranians caught in the crossfire of constraints
weaved by the military dictatorship of the
mullahtariat on one side, and the constraints
derived from the non-stop foreign threat of
"bombing Iran" on the other; as if the announced
deluge of "smart" made in USA bombs was programmed
not to produce any "collateral damage".
A Separation also dispatched to the
dustbin of the "news" cycle the drab publicity
stunt/marketing booster operated by Sacha Baron
Cohen for his upcoming flick The Dictator -
which the trailer firmly establishes as some sort
of sick Zionist Arab Spring propaganda, crammed
with Islamophobia, to be taken as face value (as a
lot of people will) or not. Chaplin it ain't.
We may be all, on average, six steps away
from being introduced to any other person on
Earth. This, one of the best films of a so far
sorry young century, reminds us that there are
only six degrees of separation between here and
Tehran.
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