Review: Crimson Gold

Crimson Gold is more cyclical, socially conscious cinema from the world of Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami.

Crimson Gold
Photo: Wellspring

In April 2001, Iranian director Jafar Panahi left Hong Kong for South America, where his film The Circle was playing at festivals in Montevideo and Buenos Aries. Though he was assured he didn’t need a transit visa, the acclaimed filmmaker found himself shackled by customs officers at John F. Kennedy International Airport during a routine layover. Adding insult to injury: Abbas Kiarostami’s visa to enter the United States in order to attend a screening of Ten at last year’s New York Film Festival was denied. In light of these two events, numerous directors (Aki Kaurismäki, Bertrand Tavernier, and more) subsequently cancelled trips to festivals across the United States in solidarity with Panahi and Kiarostami.

Crimson Gold is more cyclical, socially conscious cinema from the world of Panahi and Kiarostami. This parable begins at the end, with a lonely pizza deliveryman, Hussein (Hussein Emadeddin), shooting himself in the head after a botched jewel heist. The narrative quickly rewinds and Panahi observes the small but devastating events that will slowly come to squash the man’s human spirit. The genius of Kiarostami’s deceptively simple screenplay is how it quietly evokes America’s post-9/11 immigration policy in the repeated embarrassments endured by Hussein. But because the film is also about the oppression of one Iranian man by his own people, it’s impossible to write it off as some knee-jerk anti-American provocation.

The practical and logical Hussein tries to deliver pizza to an apartment complex but is forced to wait outside by authorities that are there to crash a party. This scenario is riddled with endless absurdities (the officers wait for their victims to come to them and not the other way around), and it’s a testament to Hussein’s humanity that he’s able to retain his capacity for kindness in spite of the way he’s treated (while the officers sit around, he offers them pizza). Hussein does a lot of waiting in the film: outside a jewelry store when the owner doesn’t let him in; inside the store after he and his friends dress up and pretend to be rich; and inside a bourgeois apartment while his customer talks nonsense on the telephone.

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“If you want to arrest a thief, you’ll have to arrest the world,” says an armchair philosopher in the film as Hussein’s friend, Ali (Kamyar Sheissi), goes through the contents of a woman’s purse he’s just stolen. Tipsy from this conversation about guesswork, entitlement, and cause and effect, Ali envisions a world where he can spare himself embarrassment by knowing the contents of a purse before pinching it. Crimson Gold is largely concerned with the surface of things, and the message of this mystical scene is abundantly clear: Just as Ali cannot separate the purse from the woman, the United States cannot separate terrorism from Muslims.

Every scene in Crimson Gold evokes oppression within Iran and, much more cunningly, the nasty “you are either with us or against us” mentality the United States adopted after 9/11. Just as Hussein’s constant waiting is meant to humorously parallel Panahi’s own detainment at J.F.K. Airport, a conversation at the film’s crucial jewelry store more largely references our country’s isolationist mentality (the store advises Hussein to buy Iranian gold, not the imported Italian kind). Panahi and Kiarostami understand the effects of 9/11 on our country’s policies, but when does safeguarding one’s country come at the expense of another’s humiliation? Like one character in the film says: “Show some mercy, please.”

Score: 
 Cast: Hussein Emadeddin, Kamyar Sheissi, Azita Rayeji, Shahram Vaziri, Ehsan Amani, Pourang Nakhayi, Kaveh Najmabadi, Saber Safael  Director: Jafar Panahi  Screenwriter: Abbas Kiarostami  Distributor: Wellspring  Running Time: 97 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2003  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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