Oppo­nent – a sear­ing, psy­cho­log­i­cal immi­grant drama

The choice to pack up your fam­i­ly and leave your home coun­try for what you hope to be more hos­pitable climes is nev­er an easy one. Nor does it negate any oth­er trau­mas or anx­i­eties you’re expe­ri­enc­ing in life. Milad Alami’s sec­ond fea­ture, Oppo­nent, explores the idea of an Iran­ian man wrestling with his con­science as well as quite lit­er­al­ly wrestling oth­er men in the hope that his par­tic­i­pa­tion in a nation­al team sport would help his appli­ca­tion for asy­lum in Sweden.

Pay­man Maa­di, an actor many will like­ly recog­nise as one of the leads from Asghar Farhadi’s A Sep­a­ra­tion, deliv­ers a tow­er­ing per­for­mance as Imam, a beefy, brusque if secre­tive father-of-two who is wit­nessed in the film’s open­ing scene clob­ber­ing a mous­ta­chioed man to near death. We then join him in his cur­rent, some­what dis­mal sit­u­a­tion in a pokey halfway house with his fam­i­ly, hav­ing dis­cov­ered that he fled from Iran after being shopped to author­i­ties for attend­ing an anti-gov­ern­ment ral­ly. Asper­sions were also cast on his sex­u­al­i­ty and, by exten­sion, his com­mit­ment to his wife and kids.

The film tells an immi­gra­tion sto­ry with a twist, ask­ing the view­er to judge whether Imam is at all sin­cere in want­i­ng to help his fam­i­ly to set up a new life free from the shack­les of an oppres­sive polit­i­cal régime, or instead wants to tus­sle with semi-naked men and enter into the ritzy bour­geois euro-lifestyle that comes with being a minor sports per­son­al­i­ty. The lat­ter would, at least, allow him to be hon­est about any dor­mant desires he may be feel­ing while sat in this exis­ten­tial wait­ing room.

That said, Ala­mi does not use the immi­grant expe­ri­ence as a mech­a­nism to tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, instead pack­ing in lots of back­ground detail about the dehu­man­is­ing process that comes with allow­ing a fam­i­ly to secure the per­son­al safe­ty that they crave. Yet some of the film takes place inside Imam’s head, and when he’s not embar­rass­ed­ly glanc­ing at the rip­pling tor­sos of his fel­low wrestlers, he’s see­ing fel­low trav­ellers los­ing the game they’ve put so much effort into win­ning. Some­times, we’re even par­ty to his fan­tasies, which makes for an even more height­ened and dra­mat­ic view­ing expe­ri­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly when we’re sud­den­ly yanked back to the grim reality.

One ele­ment that feels some­what con­trived is how Imam is set on a path towards a match with the mous­ta­chioed rival that caused all this grief. It makes for a dra­mat­ic show­down, but it’s hard to accept that both men would feel com­fort­able duk­ing it out in the name of gen­tle­man­ly sport. Else­where Imam’s wife Maryam (Mar­all Nasiri) brings him back to earth, and she is seen as the ratio­nal and empa­thet­ic part of the fam­i­ly: the one who might sac­ri­fice a lov­ing mat­ri­mo­ni­al bond in the name of their daugh­ters, and son who’s on the way.

In the end, the film suc­ceeds in nev­er bow­ing to plat­i­tudes or becom­ing too heavy hand­ed in both its cri­tique of the char­ac­ters and the sit­u­a­tion. This isn’t a polemic, but a del­i­cate­ly wrought psy­cho-dra­ma, and Imam’s even­tu­al inabil­i­ty to make a firm deci­sion regard­ing his fate makes for a much more inter­est­ing and insight­ful film than one which allowed for a sim­ple, sac­cha­rine resolution.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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