All posts by One Guys Opinion

Dr. Frank Swietek is Associate Professor of History at the University of Dallas, where he is regarded as a particularly tough grader. He has been the film critic of the University News since 1988, and has discussed movies on air at KRLD-AM (Dallas) and KOMO-AM (Seattle). He is also the Founding President of the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics' Association, a group of print and broadcast journalists covering film in the Metroplex area, and was a charter member of the Society of Texas Film Critics. Dr. Swietek is a member of the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS). He was instrumental in the creation of the Lone Star Awards, which, through the efforts of the Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Film Commission, give recognition annually to the best feature films and television programs produced in Texas.
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READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN

Producers: Gianluca Curti, Moshe Edery, Eran Riklis, Michael Sharfstein, Marica Stocchi and Santo Versace   Director: Eran Riklis    Screenplay: Marjorie David   Cast: Golshifteh Farahani, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Mina Kavani, Reza Diako, Arash Marandi, Lara Wolf, Raha Rahbari, Shahbaz Noshir, Catayoune Ahmadi, Sina Parvaneh and Hamid Karimi   Distributor: Greenwich Entertainment

Grade: C

Azar Nafisi’s memoir about intellectual oppression and the subjection of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran during the nearly two decades between 1979 and 1997 was rapturously received when it was published in 2003, after she and her family had relocated to the United States.  It told, from a personal point of view, a story of quiet resistance to brutal repression that profoundly resonated with readers at the time and continues to do so down to the present, conditions in Iran being as they still are.

It would be wonderful to report that Eran Riklis’ adaptation of the book carried similar power.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t, being workmanlike rather than inspired—the sort of engaged but pedestrian treatment one might have expected Stanley Kramer to have brought to such material back in the day.  “Reading Lolita in Tehran” is earnest but, as filmmaking, rather stolid and, dare one say it, dull in spite of the power of the story it tells. 

Like many of Kramer’s films, however, it is at least blessed with some fine performances.  Golshifteh Farahani draws an excellent balance between a general attitude of controlled reticence and occasional bursts of intense emotion as Nafisi, who’s introduced returning to her homeland in 1979.  Buoyed by the hope that the revolution will usher in a new age of freedom in Iran, she’s given up an academic career in the West to teach English literature at the University of Tehran.

But unlike her husband Bijan (Arash Marandi), whose engineering career prospers under the new regime, Azar finds herself increasingly hemmed in as her efforts to broaden the minds of students, both male and female, are circumscribed.  She encounters difficulties early on when some students in her class criticize “The Great Gatsby” as immoral and, at the suggestion of Bahri (Reza Diako), a pious but respectful young man, even put Fitzgerald’s book on trial as inimical to Islamic practice.

As the years go on, the situation deteriorates.  When religious agitators protest at the university and are met by students, government forces that arrive ostensibly to restore order beat the students mercilessly and cart some off for interrogation and torture.   By the time the class discusses Henry James’s “Daisy Miller,” condemnation of the book’s heroine is immediate and almost universal.  Legislation mandating all women to wear the hajib leads Azar to a confrontation with a university guard.  A screening of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1986 film “The Sacrifice” makes the crudity of state censorship abundantly clear.  Finally, Nafisi feels it futile to continue and resigns her position.

She does not cease teaching, however, holding weekly book discussions with some of her former students at her home.  (The film, it should be noted, toys with the chronology, though the purpose behind doing so isn’t clear.)  It’s during these mid-nineties discussions on Nabokov’s “Lolita” and Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” that the women’s understanding of their position in Iranian society is more fully and despairingly discussed and details of their treatment revealed.  One attendee has been slapped by her husband for coming.  Another describes her forced examination when she was suspected of sexual impropriety and her subsequent whipping.  A third discloses that student demonstrators underwent so-called interrogations that amounted to rape.  Finally, a participant reveals her decision to be smuggled to Turkey, where her brother-in-law will be waiting to take her to England.

All of this eats away at Azar, who loses faith in improvement in Iran despite her love of the country and the success of Bijan, who counsels patience.  The result of young men like Bahri returning from the war with Iraq severely injured both physically and psychologically is particularly devastating, especially after one of them, Ghomi (Hamid Karimi) commits suicide in a public, and gruesome, way.

About Azar’s only consolation is her occasional conversation with an unnamed intellectual (Shahbaz Noshir), an older professor who survives by avoiding confrontation but continues to assure her of the power of literature.  One of the most poignant episodes, effective precisely because of its understatement, comes as they sit in the square outside the shuttered store where both used to buy English-language books.  She recalls in flashback the vibrant atmosphere that prevailed there, and he gifts her with his own copy of Nabokov’s memoir “Speak, Memory,” a extremely rare item in Iran.  Though the film doesn’t explicitly make the point, it’s a volume by the émigré author which mirrors the acute sense of displacement and loss that Nafisi has come to feel.

This is obviously a story of wrenching power, and one wishes that Riklis’ film did it justice.  But despite the efforts of a committed cast, especially the luminous Farahani, of a crew (production designer Tonino Zera, costumer Maria Luisa Montalto and cinematographer Hélène Louvart) to give the Italian settings a sense of verisimilitude, and of editor Arik Lahav-Leibovich and composer Jonathan Riklis to endow it with underlying energy, it comes up short.

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HADESTOWN: THE MUSICAL

Producers: Mara Isaacs, Dale Franzen, Hunter Arnold and Tom Kirdahy   Director: Brett Sullivan   Book, Music and Lyrics: Anaïs Mitchell   Cast: Reeve Carney, André De Shields, Amer Gray, Eva Noblezada, Patrick Page, Bella Brown, Madeline Charlemagne and Allie Daniel   Distributor: Bleecker Street/Crosswalk/LD Entertainment

Grade: B+

Singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’s “Hadestown,” which began as a concept album in 2010, began its transformation into a stage musical in 2016 and finally had its Broadway premiere in 2019 to thunderous acclaim that led to numerous awards and long runs internationally, is here preserved in a live stage capture filmed over several days at London’s Lyric Theatre in February and March of 2025.  It’s not, however, simply that West End production.  The stars of the original Tony-winning New York staging have been imported for the occasion, and appear with the London ensemble in the film.

“Hadestown” is, essentially, yet another retelling of the ancient Greek tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, which has been the subject of innumerable operas and films in an array of styles.  But Mitchell coupled it with another piece of Greek mythology, the abduction by Hades, the god of the underworld, of Persephone, a fertility goddess who was compelled to remain with him for half the year, being allowed to live with her mother above ground for the other six months.  Mitchell embellished the work with a score combining folk and jazz elements, as well as narrative themes involving poverty and economic exploitation along with the vicissitudes of love.

The result is a surprisingly entertaining, sometimes quite moving, show.  Mitchell’s score might not dethrone those of, say, Monteverdi or Gluck, or match the evergreen popularity of Offenbach’s send-up of the myth, but it’s insistently attractive and at times intensely emotional.  The book–which places the plot against a depression-era background that finds Eurydice becoming a serf-like worker in Hades’ factory in order to escape her misery aboveground and the smitten Orpheus braving the underworld to rescue her from bondage as Persephone intervenes on his behalf despite her estrangement from her husband–can get fairly heavy-handed in its emphases, but since the music dominates, that doesn’t prove a serious flaw.

The stars, moreover, do the material proud.  Reeve Carney’s high tenor, sometimes bordering on falsetto, won’t be to everyone’s taste, but he delivers the periodic continuations of his big ballad with passion, and Eva Noblezada is a vocally powerful and dramatically potent Eurydice.  As the plot proceeds attention comes to focus on Patrick Page, all fiercely capitalistic greed and brooding bass as Hades, and Amber Gray, equally fierce in her unbridled femininity, as Persephone, and they’re both magnetic.  (Page, it may be noted, suffered a tear in his Achilles tendon, an ironically Greek touch, before the engagement, and is soldiering through it on stage—he’s added a cane to his outfit as a result, but uses even it to enhance his turn.)    

And it’s impossible to overstate the contribution of André De Shields as Hermes, in whose New Orleans jazz joint the musical begins, and who acts as narrator and peripheral character throughout (he is, after all, Orpheus’ boss and mentor).  He’s effortlessly suave as he leads his ward—and us—through the contortions of what he warns us upfront is “a sad song,” and remains so in Mitchell’s retelling.

But despite the traditional downer of an ending, “Hadestown” hardly feels like a sad show as directed for the screen by Brett Sullivan, an old pro at this stage-capture format who’s gone to imaginative lengths not only to bring viewers into the action onstage but to make them feel part of the live experience.  He begins with backstage shots of the performers preparing to go onstage and of the live audiences, who are ready to have a good time (many appear to be repeat attendees).

Then, with strong assists from cinematographer Clayton Jacobson and editors Mark Keser and David Tregoning, he varies perspective, sometimes offering straight-on stage shots but often moving into the action to show us the movement of the set or even giving us a view shot from the rafters above, while periodically cutting to the raucous reactions of the live audience.  It’s an approach that allows us to appreciate the work of the larger ensemble—especially the quasi-Greek chorus of shimmying Fates Clotho (Bella Brown), Lachesis (Madeline Charlemagne) and Atropos (Allie Daniel)—in executing David Neumann’s choreography and commenting on, and sometimes intervening in, the action.

It’s all enough to make you want to pop open a bottle and join in the post-curtain call toast that the cast and audience members share.  This is more than just a record of one of Broadway’s increasingly rare commodities—a successful musical.  It’s an example of how exhilarating a stage capture can be if handled both lovingly and inventively.

“Hadestown: The Musical” will have a limited run in theatres for only five nights beginning July 24, so plan accordingly. You might want to look for a theatre with a bar if you’d like to participate in that closing toast.