I just returned home from watching “Terrestrial Verses”, a 2023 Iranian film directed by Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami.
The film has a simple structure: it is made up of a series of vignettes. In each vignette, a person sits or stands facing the camera, which does not move, and speaks to someone who is mostly off the screen. There is no physical violence, no gore, and no sex. Voices are never raised. There are no fancy visual or sound effects. There are background sounds to match each scene, but there is no added music until the credits. Only in the final scene does the camera move, and even then, it merely zooms.
And yet, the film is extraordinarily powerful. Each vignette, in its own way, is more heartbreaking than the one that precedes it. Each vignette displays the beauty, fragility, and dignity of a human being facing pressure and humiliation from a figure of authority. The second last vignette (“Ali”) brought tears to my eyes.
In my last year of university, many years ago, I took a film course taught by P. Adams Sitney. One of the films we studied was Robert Bresson’s “Pickpocket”. Sitney explained that Bresson would make his “models”, as he called them, repeat a motion over and over, and only record the shot when the movement had become mechanical and devoid of all affect. In this way, he removed acting and emotion from his films. Despite their austerity, however, Bresson’s films induce deep emotions in viewers. I feel that “Terrestrial Verses” also achieves this feat.
A film like “Terrestrial Verses” makes me wish I were a filmmaker. I feel inspired but also a little disheartened. No matter how great a drawing or painting may be, it will never get close to what a moving picture combined with sound can achieve. With a painting, a lot depends on what the viewer wants to see. The filmmaker is much, much more powerful.
There are at least three lessons to be drawn from “Terrestrial Verses”. One lesson is that an artist, whether a painter or a filmmaker, can impose restrictions on themselves which may seem unnecessarily limiting to an outsider but which can make the work all the more powerful. A large budget, with lots of visual effects, does not necessarily make a more powerful film. Self-imposed restrictions can free an artist to focus on what matters.
Second, as it should go without saying but unfortunately doesn’t, a work of art does not have to shock to be great. It does not have to make the viewer feel stupid. It does not have to be pretentious. All it needs is truth and honesty.
Third, a work of art does not have to be flawless. There are lots of little things about this film that one could criticise, numerous ways in which the film could have been more perfect, more refined, and more polished, had it been better funded. But criticising is easy, while creating is difficult.
I can’t end this entry without expressing my deep respect and admiration for the courage of the filmmakers. I hope for a day, soon, when the people of Iran will no longer be forced to suffer arbitrary humiliations at the hands of their institutions, when Iranian artists will be free to express themselves without fear of retribution.