Feature | Lights, Camera, Action! – Rosewater (Movie Review)

By Freda Cooper 04.05.2015

Image for Feature | Lights, Camera, Action! – Rosewater (Movie Review)

Rosewater (UK Rating: 15)

The darling of American liberals Jon Stewart - has already announced he's leaving The Daily Show after 19 years in the chair, but well before he revealed that to the world, he had already dipped his toe in the waters of another potential career: movie director, and screenwriter. Released in selected cinemas around the UK on Friday, 8th May, Lights, Camera, Action! takes a look at the intriguing movie, Rosewater.

Rosewater is something of a personal project. He featured the story of how London-based journalist Maziar Bahari went to Tehran to cover the presidential elections of 2009. Born in Iran, he speaks the language, which means it's easy for him not only to interview officials, but also supporters of the opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. When the result is declared in favour of the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - and it's apparently rigged - Bahari (Gael Garcia Bernal) is arrested as a spy, incarcerated for over 100 days and tortured.

Image for Feature | Lights, Camera, Action! – Rosewater (Movie Review)

As a film made by a media personality, it inevitably takes a rather positive view of the media - rosy, even. Recent developments, such as the ability to photograph and film at will and then post it online quickly for the entire world to see, are regarded as wholly positive moves. One of the film's last shots shows a young Iranian, photographing soldiers as they destroy a heap of satellite dishes - a look ahead to the Arab Spring of 2011, and, equally inevitably, the film wears its political heart on its sleeve, most clearly demonstrated by the caption at the end about journalists and bloggers currently imprisoned for speaking out - and not just in Iran. Stewart's heart is in the right place, but he needs to develop a lighter touch.

Satire, although not necessarily of the political variety that made Stewart's name, finds its way into the movie, as well. It even pops up in one of the interrogation sessions where Bahari winds up his tormenter with stories of erotic massage, his supposed reason for all his travelling, and the interrogator is - surprisingly - completely taken in, giving Bahari the upper hand.


 
Rosewater, incidentally, is the name that Bahari gives his tormentor. Why? There are plenty of shots of roses at the start of the film, showing how they are grown to make rosewater, and then the camera switches suddenly to Javadi (Kim Bodnia), the man who will be Bahari's interrogator: he's in a car, spraying himself liberally with the stuff to help him cool down. During the questionings and beatings, Bahari was blindfolded, so he could only identify the man by his personal smell, and he nicknamed him Rosewater.
Image for Feature | Lights, Camera, Action! – Rosewater (Movie Review)

As first films go - Stewart has been a producer on about 40 movies already - Rosewater isn't at all bad and boasts some imaginative camerawork. Contemporary news footage from all around the world is blended seamlessly into the dramatic sequences and some of the real-life journalists play an active part in the story, and when Bahari walks down some recognisable London streets, his thoughts are projected onto the adjacent buildings - his sister's face appears on the windows of Starbucks - making them more realistic and vital.

6/10
Rated 6 out of 10

Good

Rosewater's UK release date can't be a coincidence. A film about a journalist imprisoned for his coverage of a presidential election arrives on the day that the result of the UK General Election is announced. The two political processes couldn't be more different and, despite some heavy handedness and moments where Stewart can't resist playing to the gallery, this is still a moving story about courage and the human spirit. As such, it deserves to be told.

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