Hamoun
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: C- Film: B-
Taking another step forward, writer/producer/director
Dariush Mehrjui decided to start addressing family and married life in Iran,
resulting in the comedy Hamoun, focusing on the title character and his
wife’s desire to want a divorce. He
doesn’t understand it. What went
wrong? Why the breakdown? Did he fail her or himself somehow? Being a thinker and intellectual, this
becomes just the starting point towards a deeper explanation of his life, life
in Iran and where is he going.
Of course, Woody Allen’s style of neurotic comedy was set
when Mehrjui did the serious landmark The Cow (reviewed elsewhere on
this site) back in 1969 as Allen did his first feature comedy Take The Money
& Run. Fast-forward to 1990 and
this is new territory for Iran and the legendary Iranian filmmaker. Hamid Hamoun (a alliterated name that speaks
of a cartoon comedy to come) will see his world and mental interior deteriorate
as he does what he can to add things up.
Unfortunately, the more he does this, the more other things crumble.
The 1.66 X 1 letterboxed image has more of a bar at the
bottom than the top and is an older print with the kind of burned-in subtitles
that get lost in the background. Color
reproduction shows its age. The print
has its share of artifacts and scratches.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Farsi Mono is not bad for its age, sounding about
as good as it can for such a low-budget production. Nasser Cheshmazar’s music has interesting uses of electronics in
it that add to the film and its surreal moments. Extras include a Mehrjui biography as text, a small stills
section, text notes by Godfrey Cheshire, and trailers to other First Run
titles.
The only problem is that we have seen many of these things
done in the Comedy genre going back to the Screwball cycle in the 1930s. The only way to appreciate what Mehrjui
really accomplished here is to consider the context and keep trying to remember
this film came from Iran. Who knows the
future of the country, but if things go really bad, Hamoun will be a
time capsule of what could be. Mehrjui
continued to investigate Iranian family life with Leila (also reviewed
elsewhere on this site), but we recommend you first see Hamoun.
- Nicholas Sheffo
