Ali Asgari’s Tehran-set drama squanders an emotional premise by failing to provide a real insight into its central character.
Like many who came before him, Arash (Missagh Zareh), a once-reputable physician, bears the psychological scars of trauma inflicted by Iran’s theocratic régime. After being caught treating wounded protestors, his medical practice was physically sealed off by the government and he was arrested. Ali Asgari’s A Bit of Light unfolds on a single day in the aftermath of this ordeal. Somewhere in the wake of, or perhaps even during, an unspecified stint in prison, the politically disgraced doctor begins to view his future through a nihilistic lens, concluding that a life such as his own is no longer worth living.
On an otherwise perfectly ordinary afternoon (or as ordinary as one can be under the strenuous conditions of modern Tehran) Arash sets out to forewarn his three siblings and mother of his decision, one by one, as though he is doing them a kindness by anticipating their grief. With his affairs in order, he hands his most valuable worldly possessions over to his brother: the deed to his modest apartment; the keys to his car; and his pet cat, intently meowing away in its crate. Not to mention the dozen or so houseplants, which he takes along on his farewell tour, distributing them among people he trusts to care for them in his absence.
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He receives a modicum of pushback from his two sisters, though nothing substantial enough to sway Arash from his resolute verdict. It becomes apparent that they understand the man before them far more intimately than we are ever afforded the opportunity to. His family proclaim empathy for his suffering, yet on the surface, he appears to be little more than a stoic man. The only inkling we are afforded of his life before he came to feel abandoned by the world comes during secretive visits to his ex-patients and an illicit return to his abandoned medical practice, its floor still littered with blood-soaked gauze and files scattered across shelves.
Throughout these moments that should offer some insight into his psyche, Arash remains emotionally static and exasperatingly elusive, offering little indication of what these remnants of his former life conjure within him. Perhaps there is an intentionality to this restraint – a sign that there is no trace of the man people once knew. In practice, it only constructs a robust barricade which makes it nearly impossible to comprehend the depth of his despair even in knowing his very livelihood is at stake.
In a similar fashion, all three of his siblings fail to react in accordance with the gravity of the situation. Far too easily the trio agree to help inform their mother of Arash’s impending self-inflicted demise. When they do weep, the melodramatic execution reads more like crocodile tears than genuine desperation, and when they don’t, the performances lack the urgency one would expect from someone facing the prospect of spending a final evening with a loved one. The result is a severe case of dramatic inertia; one that feels utterly detached from the enormity of what is actually unfolding.
For a story that so desperately wants to convey the power of family, A Bit of Light lacks the sentimental dexterity both in prose and performance to extract the emotional potency from the relationships at its centre until the eleventh hour, by which point it is far too late to backtrack on the established lack of visual intimacy and thematic hollowness. The greatest irony amidst all this feebleness is that the film asks us to contemplate the grief of losing a man it has scarcely bothered to make emotionally legible.
