Yeki bood-o yeki nabood ‘there was one but wasn’t another’ that’s how Iranians start telling a story adding gheir az khoda hich kas nabood ‘and there was nobody except for God’ – for only God has seen it all.
This fairy tale beginning was used by a successful Iranian-born French writer Marjane Satrapi in her latest “Chicken with Plums”. She is famous for an autobiographical Persepolis and an animation picture of the same name. Now she presents to us a peculiar fairy tale, the main hero of which had a real life prototype, Marjane Satrapi’s great-uncle.
It is no bedtime story with a happy ending, here the ordinary and the extraordinary, the bitter and the sweet, the fun and sorrow came together twisted and intertwined. The story that is placed in Tehran of the late 50’s (before the Islamic Revolution of 1979) and has an Iranian spice in it basically could have happened elsewhere and probably will be happening again and again as long as the sun shines.
I was waiting for the film to come to the US theaters for quite a while and I am glad I used this time to read the book first. Actually it’s a black and white comic book but even plainly colored it draws a rainbow of images in your mind. The movie is a mixture of animation and motion picture which makes it interesting.
We all receive wake-up calls from above that make us step back and reevaluate things. My literature teacher used to say that the age of 50 is the time when a person reaps the fruit of his labor and determines whether he is satisfied with it.
I guess Nasser Ali Khan was at around that age when his life was interrupted first by an unexpected flash from the past and then by the loss of his tar (violin in the movie).
Having failed to replace it he decided to die, as simple as that.
Why? Was that tar so precious to him? Well, we have 8 days til his death to find out the answer. In short 8 days he will be gone (naturally, no weapons or poisons involved) but before that we will see it all: his past, his present and the future without him. It doesn’t take us a long time to learn that he was unhappy, unhappy with almost everything – the wife he never loved, the children who couldn’t care less, the brother who was always the smart one.
There was only two things he cherished – the memory of his lost love – Irane and the music. And these two things are interconnected for only when he got separated from his love he managed to ‘seize life’ in music and attain mastery in playing the tar. From now one his tar was singing the song of love that was killed before it really blossomed and Irane was in its every single note and movement. For Nasser Ali his music was the realm of his happy memories, that’s where he actually belonged to. His wife, Farzaneh, didn’t have a hold on him, may be only physically and legally. She was able to make him happy, oh yes , she was – by cooking his favorite chicken with plums (fas: khoresh-e aloo ba morgh).
Farzaneh was suffering too, you know. She waited for 20 years for the man of her dreams to return from his journeys and she thought her love would be enough for them both. But she was fooling herself, whenever she heard Nasser Ali playing, she knew that this music is not about her and never will be. This music was a sharp reminder of their unhappy marriage. She could stand it no more so she broke it only making things worse…
This heartfelt love story is also a tale of Iran after the revolution. Beautiful Irane is Iran itself that was lost after the political turmoil of 1979. Many people had to flee from their country but they never left their memories behind.
As for the movie itself many critics claim it to be disappointing when compared to the original graphic novel. 
Well, the movie made in France is still about Iran but it is less obvious: less political, less islamical – the sufi ‘morid’ looks like a hindu sadhu if not just a homeless ‘saint’. At times it seems more European. But everyone agrees that this movie is worth seeing. But make sure you read the book first.
Related articles
- Marjane Satrapi on “Chicken with Plums” (wnyc.org)
ARTnCULTURA 