Bound to be interpreted as a blatant metaphor for the mass rebellion now sweeping the streets of Iran and claiming lives, Killing a Traitor (Khaen Koshi) is ostensibly an emotional recreation of an ill-conceived bank robbery staged 70 years ago by a group of high-minded, college-educated partisans and working-class supporters of the new prime minister, who was promising sweeping social reforms. Perhaps this pro-reform sentiment is the reason why the current Iranian government confiscated the passport of 82-year-old director Masoud Kimiai at the airport and prevented him from boarding a plane to Rotterdam to be present at the film’s international premiere. It is the latest attack on the creative freedom of filmmakers, one that will certainly boomerang and increase interest in this difficult film.
Kimiai’s 30th movie is a wild and confusing ride through American cinema as well as Iranian history, an odd merger that overlays the excitement of action filmmaking with a murky storyline. Though set in 1950’s Tehran, it freely references Western saloon brawls and bloody, Untouchables-style shoot-outs in the streets in which men in suits and Borsalinos mow down their enemies along with plenty of pedestrians. Jumping from a nobly motivated, Dog Day Afternoon-type hold-up to smoky opium dens, the story climaxes in an extended slow-motion face-off between good guys and bad, recalling the romanticized mayhem of Sergio Leone, another director with a social conscience.
But what’s it all about, many will wonder, even after seeing the film? As is frequently the case, it’s all about oil. The time was 1952 and the Iranian oil industry, up to then controlled by British Petroleum, was being nationalized. In retaliation, the whole world stopped buying oil from Iran, creating a huge budget deficit that threatened the reformist government of Mohammad Mosaddegh. In this explosive political tinderbox, the government was overthrown in a coup d’etat engineered by MI5 and the CIA, the Shah was restored to full power, and Britain got half its Persian oil back.
If all this sounds like it would make a great historical espionage thriller, it might; only Killing a Traitor is not that film. The weak spot for audiences unfamiliar with Iranian history is that almost none of this is explained, apart from a few passing mentions and typed intertitles. A large collective cast of characters doesn’t help focus the story, and we are well into the second act before Mehdi (Amir Aghaei, last seen in Bahman Ghobadi’s The Four Walls) and Shahrokh (played by the director’s son, Poulad Kimiai) emerge as the heroes. The fact that they master-minded the hare-brained scheme of the bank robbery, along with Mosaddegh’s dignified advisor Sohrab Safa (Mehran Modiri), doesn’t inspire confidence in the group’s leadership. After the film opens on the messy, chaotic robbery timed to take place during a total eclipse of the Sun (a nice visual touch), the bags of money go missing, Mehdi is arrested and the group retreats in disarray to a humble courtyard apartment to wait for who knows what.
Masoud Kimiai gained fame with his second film, Qaisar, which helped kick off the Iranian New Wave in 1969, and his interest in social issues has kept him in the forefront as a director ever since, with a few international festival films like Snake Fang (1989). Here he passionately portrays the lower-class neighborhood where the freedom fighters hide out amid poverty and ambivalent loyalties. The main actors can be intensely gripping: Poulad Kimiai’s hell-bent ideologue Shahrokh with his flaming eyes and suspicious nature, and the cooler headed Mehdi who follows his destiny without flinching. There are also three women in the group, whose motivations are painstakingly explained, though their roles remains disappointingly secondary.
In his brief appearances as P.M. Mosaddegh, Farhad Aeesh captures some of the ambiguity of the man trying to walk a political tightrope and not strong enough to succeed in protecting his followers. Other supporting characters stick in the mind, like Qasem the rowdy one-eyed gambling boss and a mysterious lady in black (in this case, a chador) who tearfully tells Mehdi that “political words have ruined everyone.”
The leading tech credit is Mohammad Salami’s atmospheric cinematography that bathes faces in an unnerving yellow light cut with deep shadows, giving something of a comic book feeling that distances the characters from reality. So when, in the middle of the robbery, Shahrokh and Mehdi pause to discuss how it’s going, or when political prisoner Mehdi looks at a ladder leading to freedom and reflects, “I’m not in the mood to escape”, it can seem perfectly natural.
Director: Masoud Kimiai
Screenplay: Masoud Kimiai, based on a novel be Alireza Abedizadeh
Cast: Amir Aghaei, Poulad Kimiai, Mehran Modiri, Farhad Aeesh, Sara Bahrami, Narges Mohammadi, Pantea Bahram
Producer: Ali Oji
Cinematography: Masoud Salami
Production design: Soheil Danesh Eshraghi
Costume design: Maral Jeirani
Editing: Sepideh Abdolvahab
Music: Sattar Oraki
Sound design: Amir Hossein Ghasemi
World sales: Irimage
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Harbour)
In Farsi
118 minutes
