No One Knows About Persian Cats

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

In the spring of 2010 Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi received a quick, two-day retrospective, via the Film Society of Lincoln Center, of his five previous films in preparation for the theatrical opening of his latest, No One Knows About Persian Cats. While it's taken nearly a full year to get that film onto DVD, the wait proves worth it.

It's an odd thing, initially, to see Ghobadi working in the big city because all his other films (A Time for Drunken Horses, Marooned in Iraq, Turtles Can Fly and Half Moon) have taken place in, around or between remote villages. And his urban Iran seems nothing like that we've seen from Majid Majidi in The Song of Sparrows or in any of the many films of Abbas Kiarostami. This is a home to a younger, music-oriented crowd, who spends their lives not, unfortunately, making music but simply trying to make it, given the prescriptive government restrictions on just about everything.

So the kids make their music in barnyards -- on a dairy farm in which the cows have stopped giving milk, due to the noisy rock music, and from which one band member seems to have acquired hepatitis. They use rooftops and basements, soundproofing them as best they can. Further, the film's leading twosome -- a young woman and a young man -- are also trying to obtain forged passports so that they can leave the country to perform abroad. None of this is easy, and all of it, of course, would be prevented by Iran's government and police -- if they only knew about it.

Persian Cats is full of music, in bits and pieces and sometimes full-length numbers -- one of which leans toward the Bollywood style, and the best of which (and I cannot believe I am saying this, given my general aversion to rap) is a rap song directed toward... god. The movie grows on you, accumulating power, even as the situation for these kids grows worse. And Ghobadi's verite docu style will have you believing that all of this is real.

When their friend and co-conspirator Nader is arrested, we are privy to a wonderful scene in which the young man pleads/guilts his way out of trouble. And in what will prove to many Americans the most surprising -- even crazy -- scene, the twosome is stopped in their car by the police. While the reason for their detention will be difficult to countenance, the result proves even worse.

Even though it's an Iranian film, overall Persian Cats reminded me in many ways of our own home-grown "protest" films of the 60s and 70s: full of life, music and sadness. It is a lovely -- and unsettling -- addition to Ghobadi's oeuvre.