How do you tell the story of interrogation, the breaking of the spirit, the finding of resistance and the desire to survive? Rosewater is a good answer. John Stewart the satirist and news anchor to a generation of Americans makes his serious film début by walking away from the usual balloon bursting of his show to take the bull by the horns and show us through imaginative devices like the deceased family of the journalist,flashbacks, a particularly moving moment with Leonard Cohen and straight narrative, how the mind is the strongest muscle in the human body if we allow it.
Modern journalism and the politics of dictatorship clash briefly to set up the main story, a two man play starring interrogator and prisoner. This is not a documentary about the Green revolution, nor is it a touchy feely film about family. John Stewart takes the book Then They Came for Me by Maziar Bahari & Aimee Molloy and focuses on the core material around the detention of the journalist by Iranian authorities. If you compare Rosewater to any number of films that focus even a little bit on interrogation, even in the recently democratic central and eastern Europe, the film stands up well to stories done often by the tortured themselves. Physical brutality is rare in this film and if we are to believe the writers were prepared to make Iran look bad they could have really laid it on thick, yet unlike some US film makers who sacrifice the basic facts for a bit of gore and propaganda, John Stewart stuck to the head games and did it well.
I suspect doing the Daily Show might be getting a bit old for him what with the recent reaction to his material on Gaza. I hope he makes the transition full time soon, he'll be a great addition to the pantheon of directors tackling issues with the same razor sharp intellect he uses in his comedy.
Modern journalism and the politics of dictatorship clash briefly to set up the main story, a two man play starring interrogator and prisoner. This is not a documentary about the Green revolution, nor is it a touchy feely film about family. John Stewart takes the book Then They Came for Me by Maziar Bahari & Aimee Molloy and focuses on the core material around the detention of the journalist by Iranian authorities. If you compare Rosewater to any number of films that focus even a little bit on interrogation, even in the recently democratic central and eastern Europe, the film stands up well to stories done often by the tortured themselves. Physical brutality is rare in this film and if we are to believe the writers were prepared to make Iran look bad they could have really laid it on thick, yet unlike some US film makers who sacrifice the basic facts for a bit of gore and propaganda, John Stewart stuck to the head games and did it well.
I suspect doing the Daily Show might be getting a bit old for him what with the recent reaction to his material on Gaza. I hope he makes the transition full time soon, he'll be a great addition to the pantheon of directors tackling issues with the same razor sharp intellect he uses in his comedy.