Rosewater, the impressive feature film debut as both writer and director for The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, tells the story of an Iranian journalist imprisoned for conspiring to acts of comedy.
Rosewater
Starring Gael García Bernal, Kim Bodnia, Dimitri Leonidas, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Claire Foy. Written and directed by Jon Stewart. At GTA theatres. 103 minutes. 14A
Restraint isn’t the defining feature of The Daily Show, the nightly skewering of newsmakers hosted by satirist Jon Stewart.
The opposite would be true. Such was the case in June 2009 when Stewart’s team tested the funny bones and patience of Iranian authorities by having a comedian pose as a U.S. spy in a tongue-in-cheek interview from Tehran with Maziar Bahari, an Iran-born correspondent for Newsweek.
The bit was a hit, but not within the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian ruler of the day, who was running for re-election against a close rival. Following the completion of balloting and the hotly disputed election result, Bahari was tossed into prison on grounds of being “an agent of foreign intelligence organizations.”
Rosewater, Stewart’s impressive feature film debut as both writer and director, tells Bahari’s story and also repays the debt Stewart felt he owed to his Daily Showparticipant, who conspired only to comedy.
Here’s where Stewart shows uncommon and commendable restraint, but also makes an impact, with a film he bases on Bahari’s bestselling memoir Then They Came For Me.
Stewart doesn’t set out to lampoon Ahmadinejad, at least not in this film. He’s careful not to exploit comic aspects of the situation, although there are moments of dark wit.
When clueless cops show up to roust a sleepy Bahari (Gael Garcia Bernal) from the home of his mother (Shohreh Aghdashloo), they become suspicious of his DVD collection of popular American movies and TV shows.
“Porno?” one asks, holding up a disc.
“No, Sopranos,” Bahari sighs.
He’s tossed into solitary confinement in Tehran’s feared Evin Prison, a fate similar to that of his late father and sister, who were denounced as “communists” and imprisoned years early by the regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Flashbacks fill in some blanks. Bahari has both Iranian and Canadian citizenship, but he’s normally based in London, where his pregnant wife (Claire Foy) anxiously awaits his return: “Something special is happening here,” he tells her.
Bahari attracted unwelcome attention from Iranian authorities during the election campaign not just because of The Daily Show stunt, which seemed to puzzle him a bit, too: “It’s supposed to be funny,” he tells someone.
The intrepid journalist and his fearless driver (Dimitri Leonidas) had interviewed supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s main rival, perhaps naively assuming that the relative calm of the election campaign presaged new freedoms for Iran.
The final straw for Bahari in official Tehran’s eyes, as the film suggests, was likely his videotaping and providing to the BBC of evidence of police brutality against election protesters.
Stewart’s restraint also extends to the depiction of Bahari’s 118 days in prison, during which he consoled himself with the music of Leonard Cohen, whose songs “Everybody Knows” and “Dance Me To The End Of Love” grace the film’s soundtrack.
This not the stuff of standard jail dramas. Bahari’s main captor and interrogator, played by Kim Bodnia and nicknamed “Rosewater” for his floral scent, seems reluctant to act on the instruction of his brutal boss to use extreme means to extract a confession (nothing major is shown on camera).
Instead, Rosewater goes in for the slower torture of constant questioning, which are both repetitive and pointless (“Why did you go to New Jersey?” is a favourite).
The routine takes a toll on Bahari, but also on the urgency of the film, which slows to a halt rather than sprints to a dramatic conclusion.
Kudos to Stewart, though, for sticking to the known facts and not seeking to boost pulses by manufacturing a fake Argo-style finish. Nor does he go out of his way to demonize Bahari’s captors.
He also deserves credit for telling Bahari’s story rather than making the film about The Daily Show and himself. He low-keys this angle so much, in fact, you could also miss the references to the TV show.
Stewart lets the truth roll out, the best he can, believing in the sanitizing effect of sunlight and the inevitable fate that awaits all despots.
As Bahari says of his captors, “They know in their hearts that they can’t win.”
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