secret ballot

bargeboo: have you seen the movie "secret ballot" by babak payami? 

this is the synopsis: "an unsuspecting soldier awakens to discover that he can forget about another uneventful day at his lonely seaside post. it’s election day! a ballot box is parachuted down as a young woman pulls up to the shore of the remote island. to the soldier’s surprise, she’s actually the government bureaucrat in charge of local voting. the couple get off to a rocky start since the soldier expects election agents to be men. whether he wants to or not, the soldier is thrown into an elections adventure that just may put him out of a job. Orders from above force him to accompany the female agent in an army jeep across the island’s dusty desert. the agent literally leaves no stone unturned in her search for ballots. many a surprise lies along their route, as they find themselves in one absurd situation after another.
so much can happen in a single day, especially when opposites attract. Views can change, hearts can melt. By sunset, a woman’s idealistic notions can come back down to earth. and a lonely man can discover there’s more to voting by secret ballot than he ever imagined. "          (thanks to the official website)

i loved it. during the film there were so many things i thought about that many times i was very grateful that the pace was so slow. i was able to ponder and contemplate and just look and think at all the details.

the setting, the rarely documented desert/sea side on iranian persian gulf coast and its islands is just breath taking. i drank it all in specially because i have never traveled to that part of iran myself and their people, their clothing, their dialect and customs looked so "exotic" to me.

i also liked the story because i have grown a little tired of watching films from iran that are about children or about cheesy love stories or just badly made mystery crime dramas that have become so popular in the last couple of years. the characters are very real. there is no pretension. there is no political correctness. its almost a documentary in its frank portrayal. i was pleasantly surprised to find out from the credits how this was a collaboration between iranians and italians. if you have a chance stay awake for the credits or just have a quick look at them in the official website. there are some interesting surprises like how the original music for the film is done by an italian, how there are two producers one from iran and the other from itally, or how the story is based on an idea from m. makhmalbaf, the renowned iranian director.

you may want to read the rest of this review after you watch the movie. although there is no big surprise ending, still you might want to discover each subtle detail by yourself without me pointing them out to you here first.

my likes:

. how the woman sits at the back and ends up sitting at the front when things begine to smooth out between them
. how their strict opinions are softened ever so gently by each other throughout their journey
. the way they think and then talk about each new situation
. the way the little girl is left by herself while her mother is visiting the cemetery - something completely heart attack inducing in our "modern" civilization
. the subtle hints at female power in iran - the old woman who runs the little village, the woman government official going everywhere and talking to everyone, and riding with a man by herself in his car to the middle of no where ...
. the show of traditional values - no women allowed in the cemetery, no men allowed near the area where a woman is giving birth, ...
. the gentle love story
. how as a show of the couple softening, they both interact with children and become more real and multi dimensional (granted the soldier gives his gun to the kids to play with - eeek!)
. the irony of a legal voting system, of the votes being important in iran's islamic republic
. this one i admit grudgingly: the fact that the woman’s cover, the full hejab, her lack of make up and absence of any show of femininity protects her in her mission, in such a remote area, allowing her to freely interact with everyone from the soldier to the older men, the little girl, the men in the cemetery and even the women who arrive on the truck in their own traditional outfits.
. accents, nationalities and personalities were not really an issue here . the couple were each from different parts of iran and they meet many others with their own dialects and accents. its never an issue, its never a source for a joke ... very refreshing.
. i loved the traffic light segment.
. and ...  the ending.

my dislikes:

. there were two scenes in particular that were simply too long. i felt i was looking at a still photograph taken from so far away that i wasn’t even able to focus on any details in all the long seconds that seem to drag on and on and on. one where the couple were taking the votes on something that looks like a fishing barge and the other at the end where the lady is standing by the sea waiting for the boat to pick her up. the second one i actually didn't mind as the first.
. the details of the woman they pick up with them to bring back to shore (in green) is not very clear. it looks as if that story has been edited without any new scenes added to patch the gap up.

and that’s about it. to summarize, i liked the movie very much. its not a fast paced, action packed, love story, watch it with a bunch of your rowdy friday night friends kind of movie. but if you wish to learn about remote areas of iran, the parts that are hardly shown on mainstream media these days; if you wish to see a movie full of images to think about, if you have a get together with friends who like discussing and pulling apart details of foreign movies, if you like something different,  then i totally recommend this. would love to hear from anyone else who has seen it and has an opinion on it.