I’ve just finished watching this fantastic and atypical movie and thoroughly enjoyed it, thus highly recommend that you too take the time to go out and rent, buy, steel this movie. Hilarious to say the least.
What’s it about? A small-time criminal who’s an adept hand at climbing seemingly unscalable walls (hence, the lizard) gets caught on the job and of course thrown in prison. It’s set in Iran post-Khomaini and the prison warden fancies himself as psychiatrist and stresses the value of incarceration to “correct” the criminal minds into law abiding, God fearing folk.
The thief has other ideas of course, and continues to think of ways to escape. When he stupidly demonstrated his wall-scaling abilities to rescue an entangled pigeon atop the prison wall in the barbed wire, that escape path is closed to him as the warden places guards on the wall!
When he injured himself and required hospitalisation, he shares the ward with a cleric. He steels his robes and then escape from prison is a simple walk down the aisles. Here’s where the story really begins and twists. I’m not going to spoil it for you by saying any more, other than I would strongly advise you to go out and get it. The DVD version has sub-titles in Arabic, English and French.
If you want to read a more thorough review of the movie (not advisable until you have watched it) then Muslim Wakeup has a good one.
I rate this one 5/5.
Comments
Marmoulak (the lizard)
OK. You’ve sold me and I will go to the mall to see if I can find it tomorrow. I may be able to work it into the course I am going to offer on “Exile Cinema” (political cinema of the “non-Western” world) next semester.
Thanks for the tip!
Salaam,
PM
Re: Marmoulak (the lizard)
I notice that Amazon is not carrying it, but you can find it in Yahoo shopping or other DVD sites if you search for it.
I’ve also read some reports about it last night in the major news sites as well as film festival sites. I am not disappointed, I loved it.
Marmoulak (the lizard)
Hey Mahmood,
There has actually been quite a lot of buzz about this movie here in the West for quite a while now. When the film first open in Iran a number of months ago, a number of high-profile news sites (BBC, CNN, and I think MSNBC) were running stories on it, and of the reaction by the Iranian public and the mullahs. Apparently it did very well for the short time that it was out in the theaters. As you might imagine, the powers that be were not very pleased about a film that was skewering them and their authority. The remarkable thing, thought, was that they actually allowed the movie to run for a number of weeks before shutting it down…most people were convinced that they were simply going to not allow it to be played at all.
Unfortunately, it has been pretty near impossible to get the movie shown here in the States–or at least, I haven’t seen any word of it playing in theaters here. However, I imagine it will eventually show up on DVD. When that day comes I will certainly be rushing to see it.
Re: Marmoulak (the lizard)
PM …
Please do us a favor and post the movie list/ book list of the movies that you are going to use for your class on “Exile Cinema”? Pretty please??
Re(1): Marmoulak (the lizard)
Haven’t worked up the syllabus yet but will post the films and selected readings once I have made final decisions. Still have a lot to review and loads of prep — but what entertaining prep it is 😉
Salaam,
PM
Marmoulak (the lizard)
There was a review of this movie in the Wall Street Journal maybe a month or two ago. The Iranian audiences are loving it. It sounds like the jokes may be too inside for an American audience to get them.
Steve