It's Winter [DVD]

Bleak,real landscapes,in a wintry setting.Not a Tehran of hype or rhetoric.This is a dirty, working class downbeat area.The men in this landscape of desolation are interchangeable and their fates somewhat similar.One comes and one goes.Both are after work and a new life.Although there is no happiness here: this is alife totally consumed by work,the need for work,the way men define their manhood through work.This film was made for Iranians as much as for outsiders.To show them their own lives. It has a mystery,no meaning is imposed,the viewer is free to come to their own conclusions.The attractive young wife left behind by one man is courted and married by another.No kissing is shown or the holding of hands(not allowed),just a spirited conversation and smile of deeply shy people.Like the red slap of winter on the sky's face.This has no stereotype images.The train is the only way out of there.One thing noticeable was we never really explore the young woman's feelings.Yet the actress who plays her has some celebrity as an actress.The men are all non actors,all work really as mechanics.A strange dichotomy.

Located in the snowy winters of Iran's alternately grim and beautiful capital 'Tehran', Raffi Pitts' 'It's Winter' is a superb exploration of ordinary life, social conduct, and personal relationships, in a film that maintains the superbly natural feel of the modern Iranian cinema of directors like Abbas Kiarostami. The film's main focus deals with a newly arrived stranger, Marhab, who falls for a local woman whose husband has travelled abroad in search of work, and appears to have either abandoned contact with her, or disappeared altogether. The curious dynamic of the relationship which is created is an intriguing one, and the realism of their burgeoning relationship is one of the highlights of the film, as is Marhab's frustration and friendship with the independent Ali Reza; with whom he goes to work in search of stable employment.

The characterisation of the film, as well as its natural evocation of the tough beauty of Iran's capital, is superb, but the cinematography of 'It's Winter' is perhaps the film's most notable calling card. Ramshackle workplaces, warm hostels, and snow covered train tracks all stick in the mind as beautiful, poignant images of the film's exploration of the drifting self in society, and the attempt to establish oneself in a new, and sometimes hostile terrain. There's little one can complain about in 'It's Winter', besides its being a little too much on the short side. For those not used to or frustrated by World Cinema, the film may appear rather slow and without much in the way of traditional 'action'; but for a poignant, honest and unsentimentalised look at the human condition, and the lives of those in Modern Iran; 'It's Winter' is a hugely engaging and informative watch. Genuinely superb.

The term `poetic' is thrown about a great deal by writers describing the films of various directors - sometimes it's appropriate...other times not so much. In the case of It's winter, it's perfectly apt.

Rafi Pitts has based It's winter on `Safar', a story by famed Iranian writer Mahmoud Dowlatabadi who also wrote the story on which the 1969 film Gaav (The cow) was based. The characters are working class men and women - their lives are unglamorous struggles to survive in a harsh world. As the film opens, Mokhtar (Ashem Abdi), husband to Khatoun (Mitra Hadjar) and father to a little girl (Zahra Jafari) announces to them that he has lost his job and sees no other alternative in supporting them than to travel abroad to find work. He leaves his family, including his mother-in-law (Safari Ghassemi) to survive on the meager wages earned by Khatoun, who works in near sweat-shop conditions as a seamstress.

Arriving in town around this same time is Marhab, a drifter in search of work - he presents himself as a mechanic who specializes in repairing cranes. He meets Ali Reza (Saeed Orkani), who befriends the newcomer and secures employment for him at his workplace. Their friendship has its ups and downs - Marhab is argumentative at times, and alternates between throwing himself into his work and lazing about the job drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. In his travels about the city, Marhab notices the beautiful Khatoun and takes an immediate interest in her. Customs being what they are, he cannot approach her openly or too closely, so he observes her at a distance - he even finds out where she lives and watches her house. Word comes to him that she is married, and that her husband has gone abroad to find work, although there has been no word of him for several months, and the family hasn't received any money from him. One day Marhab sees a policeman walk up to Khatoun's house, seemingly to deliver a message - immediately following the exchange with the occupants, wailing can be heard from within. Marhab guesses that the news is about Khatoun's husband, and that fate has delivered him a chance to pursue her more directly.

At first his attempts at contact are rebuffed - first by the grandmother when he delivers a gift for the little girl, then by Khatoun when she confronts him more directly than he had anticipated: `Why are you following me?' This exchange between the two characters is perfectly captured in all its nuances by the director's patience and technique. In the interview included on the DVD, he explains that he wanted to show the shyness that would inevitably be expressed by Marhab in real life. Mitra Hadjar, who portrays Khatoun, is the only professional actor in the film, and is a well-known star in Iran - all of the other characters are played by non-actors recruited by Pitts during his pre-production period of actually living in the neighborhood where It's winter was to be filmed. Before shooting this scene, Pitts purposefully kept the two principals apart - they met for the first time as the viewer witnesses. The embarrassment and shyness of a working class non-actor doing a scene with one of the best-known female film starts of his country is real - and it's just what the scene needs to come across as uncontrived.

Khatoun slowly warms to Marhab's attentions - his gift to the family of a well-made rug seems to cement the relationship. It's followed shortly by a civil ceremony wedding, and he moves in. A scene shot from a distance on the street, showing Marhab and Khatoun meeting and sharing a walking meal, is touching in its silent tenderness. Without any physical contact between the two of them (forbidden under Iranian censorship regulations), the openness of their expressions and the ease with which they interact conveys volumes - and, being filmed sometime after the two actually met, the shyness of the earlier scene is completely washed away.

Marhab's undependability and contrariness eventually get him into trouble at work. His boss, who has a reputation for not paying his workers on time, if at all, grows weary of Marhab's complaining and insolence and fires him. Now the drifter, who seemed to be on the track to settling down with a job and a family, finds himself in the same fix as Mokhtar.

The cinematography is nothing short of stunning - but not for any panoramic shots of wide spaces, flashy colors or special effects. Pitts has worked wonders here, with help from director of photography Mohammad Davoodi (perhaps best known to western filmgoers for his beautiful work on Baran [2001]). I'm sure there were lights used in filming, but the results are such that each and every scene appears to be shot in natural light - both the indoor and outdoor scenes are replete with subtle shadings such as one might find in painted masterpieces. The dialogue is uncluttered, completely unforced and naturally delivered - the performances Pitts has coaxed from his non-professional cast are first-rate, and add immeasurably to the effectiveness of the film. The story is told gently and slowly, without hurry - it unfolds as if it were occurring in the real world before our eyes. There are nuances to each character that become apparent only as we get to know and understand them - no one is painted in black and white as `good' or `bad' (and Pitts has some interesting comments about this in the interview as well), just as the world around us is populated by people who are more `shades of grey' than in sharp, easily definable terms. The result is one of the finest examples of cinema I've seen in years - I look forward to future efforts from this director.