March 11-17, 2004

movies

Zeroing In

Law of desire: Hussein (Hossain Emadeddin, left) and Ali (Kamyar Sheisi) gaze at forbidden fruit.

Crimson Gold reminds us how easy it is to ignore what's right in front of us.

by Sam Adams

In its first few minutes, Crimson Gold reverses the strategy of most contemporary movies; it shocks you with what you don't see. A voice screams in blackness, and the image comes to life: a single, immobile shot of a gated doorway, facing the street. It doesn't take long to figure out that a store is being robbed; a large man with a low voice is doing the threatening, while another man, presumably his partner, nervously keeps watch across the street. The large man, so close to the camera we can only catch fleeting glimpses of his midsection, pushes the store owner from side to side, hurling him in and out of frame, as a woman approaches from the street. The lookout shifts his weight, as if he's about to move, but he chickens out. We sense something awful is about to happen, but we can't move, and the camera won't. It's only at the very end of the scene, right before the large man shoots the store owner and then himself, that you realize the camera has been slowly zooming in all the while; when he stumbles back into frame, he's so close it's an almost physical shock. (Originally scheduled to open this week, the film is now slated for a March 19 opening.)

Like Elephant, Crimson Gold's method is essentially forensic, but since the real-life crime is not the kind that makes headlines, director Jafar Panahi recapitulates it in the opening shot. Then, without warning, the film jumps back in time; we think the gunman's accomplice, Ali (Kamyar Sheisi), is fleeing the scene of the crime, but in fact, he's just stolen a purse, and he's on his way to meet Hussein (Hossain Emadeddin), who has yet to graduate to grand larceny. Like a comedy duo, Hussein and Ali are temperamental as well as physical opposites: The pintsize Ali is raw and enthusiastic, constantly babbling, while the massive, lumbering Ali looks at the world through heavy eyes and rarely speaks.

Where Panahi's previous film, The Circle, concerned itself with women, Crimson Gold's subject is masculine pride, in its optimistic and wounded varieties. Ali is too brash to know when he's been beaten; Hussein, born before the Islamic revolution of 1979, mostly suffers in silence, like an Iranian Willy Loman. Aside from purse-snatching, the two work regular jobs as pizza delivery men, but the meager salary seems to only keep them in a state of elevated poverty. (Hussein's apartment is almost preposterously dingy, a stygian bachelor pad.) Hussein's moped might suggest a degree of mobility, but his job merely offers glimpses of the things he can't have. His former army commander nervously closes the door behind him and buys his silence with a tip; police delay him in the street while they wait to arrest teenagers who are illegally socializing with the opposite sex; a rich man invites him in and reveals that wealth has not helped to ease his loneliness.

The last two sequences together comprise about a third of the movie's 90 minutes, but they don't feel excessive. As the opening shot uses sound and the position of actors within the frame to shift our attention without overtly directing it, so Crimson Gold's ending-first structure makes us reconsider what might otherwise seem to be mundane encounters. We might accept the fact that the police detain Hussein for hours so he can't potentially warn the people they're waiting to arrest as necessary to their jobs, or at least dismiss it as a minor annoyance. But Panahi shows it as a link in the chain of slow degradation: for the police, he's just an object in their path. Likewise, the rich man (Pourang Nakhael) thinks it's an act of kindness to invite Hussein to share the pizzas he's just delivered (his female guests have fled, and he's looking for a sympathetic ear), but every step Hussein takes in the enormous apartment seems to confirm his own inadequacy. Their interaction recalls the conversations between John Turturro and John Goodman in Barton Fink: The rich man's misdirected generosity quickly turns to inadvertent cruelty.

Hussein bears the humiliations silently, even gracefully. Unable to deliver his pizzas to the apartment building, he distributes them to the police. Apart from the robbery, his imposing facade cracks only once. He and Ali take a ring they've stolen to a posh jewelry store to have it melted down. The owner (Shahram Vaziri) gives them a quick look and blocks the door, telling them to seek out the cheap boutiques in the lower part of town. When they return, dressed more formally, it's ostensibly to buy Hussein's fiancee (Azita Rayeji) a necklace, but you sense that they've infiltrated the store just to prove that they can. Hussein's exaggeration of his financial resources gets the clerk's attention, but the owner stays in back, only emerging when a pair of wealthy regular clients come in the door. As Hussein comes close to buying something he can't afford, the owner comes over and advises him to shop elsewhere: He tells Hussein he wants something different, something that can be melted down in the event money gets tight.

What's astonishing about the scene is not just its stark diagram of class politics, the way the clerk's body language and the owner's tone of voice indicates who they'd like in their store and who they'll only grudgingly allow inside. It's the kindness in the owner's voice as he kicks Hussein out, the utter conviction that he's doing what's best for both of them. As he steps out the door, Hussein's eyelids flutter, and he claws at his necktie like a chained animal, almost fainting from the strain. (Just try and imagine any American actor expressing pain so nakedly.) As they ride home on his moped, his wife struggles to understand his distress, but he won't, or more likely can't, tell her. All he can do is swallow the hurt as he has before. "Please stop talking," he tells her.

In primitive society, Hussein's size would have made him powerful, but here, money is the only measure of worth. Doubting a man's ability to satisfy his beautiful girlfriend, Ali sniffs, "She deserves a Ferrari." A friend shows off his expensive new shoes, asserting confidently, "The more it costs, the more it's worth." When their boss claims Hussein has been shirking his duties, Ali defends him: "He's a diamond."

Crimson Gold begins by hiding Hussein's face, and although we know he's the one we should be watching, it's hard to keep your attention from drifting to the constantly chattering Ali. Even in his own movie, Hussein can't command the notice he deserves -- at least, until Panahi strips away everything else. (Such subtractive techniques are the stock-in-trade of Abbas Kiarostami, who wrote the script at Panahi's request.) By the time Hussein is wandering around that cavernous apartment, staggering before he takes a sip of the rich man's alcohol, you feel that no one could have failed to see his desperation. Unless, of course, they weren't looking.

Crimson Gold

Directed by Jafar Panahi A Wellspring release Opens March 19 at Ritz Theaters

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