The Seed of the Sacred Fig review – a melo­dra­ma of resistance

Ahot favorite for the Palme d’Or before any­one at Cannes had seen it, Moham­mad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig arrived late in the Com­pe­ti­tion car­ried by a wave of urgency: set against the back­drop of Iran’s 2022 women’s protests, the film put its direc­tor, already fac­ing an eight-year prison term for his pre­vi­ous film, in addi­tion­al legal jeop­ardy, occa­sion­ing his secret flight from his home­land and arrival at Cannes for a sev­er­al-minute ova­tion even before the screen­ing start­ed, dur­ing which he held up pho­tos of lead actors Soheila Golestani and Mis­agh Zare, who remain in Iran. Time­ly, anguished, and ulti­mate­ly cathar­tic, the movie meets its moment.

The first image we see in the film is a close-up of a hand lay­ing out bul­lets on a table, and then set­ting down a pen, for the recip­i­ent to sign for them. Weapons and words, vio­lence and bureau­cra­cy, are the twin poles on which pow­er rests here. It’s a sys­tem upheld by func­tionar­ies such as Iman (Zare), a civ­il ser­vant pro­mot­ed after twen­ty years to an investigator’s role with­in Iran’s Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Court. The gun is for his family’s pro­tec­tion, and though his wife Najmeh (Golestani) is ner­vous, she’s also excit­ed for the allot­ment of a larg­er apart­ment, so their two daugh­ters, col­lege-aged Rez­van (Mah­sa Ros­ta­mi) and slight­ly younger Sana (Setareh Male­ki) no longer have to share a bedroom.

Caesar’s wife must be above sus­pi­cion, and so must Iman’s daugh­ters. Hav­ing long been kept in the dark about the pre­cise nature of their father’s work, Rez­van and Sana are warned about how to behave in pub­lic, who and who not to asso­ciate with, and to stay off social media; Najmeh is not spe­cif­ic about what behav­iors should or should not be allows, but the investigator’s daugh­ters should know well enough.

Iman him­self is also learn­ing how to self- cen­sor: his first assign­ment at work is to rub­ber-stamp a death sen­tence with­out first review­ing the case first; know­ing what a refusal to do so would mean for his fam­i­ly, he los­es sleep over the assign­ment, and care­less­ly leaves his gun in the pile of dirty clothes for his wife to pick up. At the same time, he puts on a mask of unques­tion­able right­eous­ness for his wife and daughters.

In gen­er­al, char­ac­ters ten­ta­tive­ly ques­tion author­i­ty to their supe­ri­ors, and enforce it vicious­ly on their sub­jects: as a class­mate of the Rez­van is caught up the protests and vio­lent state crack­down fol­low­ing the death in police cus­tody of Mah­sa Ami­ni, Najmeh asserts to her daugh­ters that all the stu­dents and women who were beat­en and arrest­ed ​“must have done some­thing” to deserve it, but also risks legal expo­sure and her husband’s rep­u­ta­tion by pulling strings to locate the miss­ing girl. When some­one comes into the apart­ment wound­ed by the buck­shot sprayed at a crowd by police, Najmeh tweezes the steel out her face so ten­der­ly, but every time she leaves the flat she pulls her hijab a lit­tle tighter.

Though the film is epic in length and ambi­tious in sub­ject, it also has a hur­ried, shoe­string qual­i­ty. The widescreen frame is most­ly used to lay out the fam­i­ly flat at eye lev­el, and it’s this domes­tic inte­ri­or to which the action is large­ly confined.

Restrict­ed by their par­ents from going out, Rez­van and Sana lis­ten to the chants out the win­dow, and furtive­ly watch videos on their phones (via a VPN). Rasoulof inserts a num­ber of real, con­fus­ing, stun­ning videos of the 2022 and 2023 protests into the film, on-the-fly civil­ian jour­nal­ism cap­tur­ing limp and bleed­ing bod­ies, screams, the moments when the uni­formed or plain­clothes police bat­ter women with clubs or chase a man with a car. This gives the film the raw feel­ing of a real-time response to unfold­ing events; Rez­van and Sana speak in hushed, des­per­ate whis­pers even in the pri­va­cy of their own home.

Their con­fine­ment stands in for the larg­er con­fine­ment of women in Iran­ian soci­ety, but the doom­scrolling aspect of the film, the pow­er of the images and the pow­er­less­ness of the view­ers, gives it res­o­nances beyond Iran. That said, the applause halfway through­out the film, when Rez­van final­ly speaks up and artic­u­lates a polit­i­cal con­scious­ness, was sure­ly for the ​“Women, Life, Free­dom” protests.

From that moment, Sacred Fig becomes a dif­fer­ent film. Up until its halfway point, the film resem­bles one of Asghar Farad’s painstak­ing­ly pro­ce­dur­al dra­mas, which cap­ture the intense legal and moral scruti­ny of life in the Islam­ic Repub­lic, show­ing how one bare­ly-glimpsed inci­dent, or a sin­gle per­son­al mis­cal­cu­la­tion, rever­ber­ates through a web of close­ly inter­con­nect­ed char­ac­ters to life-alter­ing effect. In the scene imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing, Rezvan’s speech, Chekhov’s — sor­ry, Iman’s — gun goes miss­ing, and so does Rasoulof’s inter­est in bal­anc­ing the moti­va­tions of his entire ensemble.

As the state los­es con­trol of its peo­ple, Iman los­es con­trol of his fam­i­ly, and evolves over the course of the film into patri­archy per­son­i­fied. To con­sol­i­date his crum­bling author­i­ty, he turns the state’s coer­cive appa­ra­tus onto his own wife and daugh­ters, using inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques, intim­i­da­tion, psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse and gaslight­ing on what seems to him, in his ter­ror, as a viper’s nest of deceit­ful women.

Late in the film, the loca­tion shifts, to anoth­er incon­spic­u­ous semi-lic­it film­ing loca­tion, out of the way in rur­al Iran, a fam­i­ly estate in the shad­ow of old ruins, and the genre shifts as well. Rasoulof throws a sur­pris­ing twist into the miss­ing-gun plot, one that alters the film’s alle­gor­i­cal cal­cu­lus, and Rez­van and Sana’s bud­ding fem­i­nine defi­ance flow­ers into final-girl resource­ful­ness as Rasoulof stages a home-inva­sion thriller with Iman as some­thing like the Islam­ic Republic’s Jack Tor­rance a once-famil­iar father fig­ure turned embod­i­ment of mas­cu­line demons and child­hood ter­rors, a pur­su­ing ogre in a fairy-tale labyrinth. The applause at the con­clu­sion may have been in grat­i­tude to Rasoulof for giv­ing his women an end­ing that the stark real­ist reg­is­ter of his film would not seem to per­mit — though giv­en the thrilling intrigue and high stakes of his own escape from per­se­cu­tion, it’s appro­pri­ate enough that The Seed of the Sacred Fig ulti­mate­ly becomes a melo­dra­ma of resistance.