In all the discussions about migration and refugees, one country that people have been leaving for political reasons for many decades is often forgotten: Iran. As long as Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ruled, whose notorious secret police suppressed all forms of opposition, many intellectuals left the Western-oriented country. After the fall of the Shah in 1979, there was initially hope for democratic changes. But when Islamist forces came to power, the country quickly transformed into a theocratic republic in which the human rights situation deteriorated again. Freedom of the press, freedom of expression and freedom of religion are now severely restricted, homosexuality, extramarital sex and blasphemy are punishable by death, and women have lost many rights. The result: protests are repeatedly suppressed with violence, and tens of thousands still leave the country every year.
Full of hope and optimism, the Iranian literary scholar Azar Nafisi (Golshifteh Farahani) returns from the USA with her husband, the architect Bijan Naderi (Arash Marandi), shortly after the fall of the Shah to teach English literature at the University of Tehran. “Great literature has to be uncomfortable,” she says in one of her first lectures – but not all students agree with her. Some even argue that The Great Gatsby should be banned because the book promotes adultery. It doesn't help much that Azar defends the novel in a kind of tribunal.
Literary scholar Azar Nafisi (Golshifteh Farahani) teaches at the University of Tehran – but under Islamist rule, her teaching content is not met with much approval…
The atmosphere in the country is increasingly dominated by religious fanaticism and reprisals. Islamist protests also hit the university itself: academic freedom is threatened, some of Azar's students are arrested – some never return. Azar herself is also confronted with a climate of fear, but she remains courageous, even when she is threatened that she will no longer be allowed to teach if she continues to remain uncovered. Because of this, she is ultimately suspended.
A few years later, Azar founded a secret literature circle in her living room, where she and six students discussed banned works of English-language world literature, from “The Great Gatsby” to “Lolita.” In this way, she creates a protected space away from the state-imposed hostility to culture, with which she distracts the young women and herself from the constant threat from Islamist fanatics. But even more important for the six students is the opportunity to open up new worlds of thought – in a quiet rebellion against the regime, guided by the desire for self-assertion and the passion to learn and discover more and more. Reading becomes an immersive encounter with intellectual autonomy and inner freedom.
Despite all the danger, Azar Nafisi remains driven by an almost frightening fearlessness that is not based on naivety, but on her firm conviction that she is doing the right thing. After all, the discourse about texts is just as much a part of their lives as the passing on of knowledge.
Reading Jane Austen or “The Great Gatsby” together is not only for entertainment, but is also an act of resistance.
The Israeli director Eran Riklis, who made his international breakthrough with his satirical political drama “The Syrian Bride” in 2004, filmed Azar Nafisi's autobiographical bestseller in a combative manner, but also with some sensitivity. His attempt to tell the story of Iran and Nafisi's life at the same time – a total period of around 25 years – is not entirely successful, not only because of the break after about a third of the film, which covers almost 15 years. Some things remain on the surface, Nafisi's family is neglected, her husband is mainly the key figure, and a marital crisis is only hinted at. But it's hardly about personal problems, but rather about life under a dictatorship and resistance to it.
The film is divided into four chapters, which have novel titles. The book titles seem a little more tangible than the author names, according to which Naisi structured her bestselling biography, but the drama remains a bit brittle in terms of atmosphere and rarely becomes emotional – but that fits well with a film that deals a lot with fear and less with hope. There are rarely moments of impartiality, perhaps most of all in the few domestic scenes with Azar and Bijan, their children and Azar's mother. Life in Tehran seems to be characterized by everyday oppression in a climate of violence and terror.
Depressing insight into a terror regime
Some of the students are arrested. Their experiences of torture, abuse and rape are not shown explicitly – a flogging is depicted almost discreetly – but the atmosphere in the dark cells where the women wait to be taken in for interrogation is oppressive enough. Eran Riklis shows the oppressive everyday life in a terror regime just as convincingly as the devoted passion of the women who do not want to be banned from reading.
Riklis shows in clear images what Azar Nafisi, who is now living in exile again, is all about: the liberating effect of literature and the general possibility of freeing oneself from the constraints of thought, be they culturally, socially or religiously based. The women in the film really blossom in the discussions, a new openness is noticeable, the secret courses become conspiratorial meetings between friends who reveal more and more about themselves. When they interpret Jane Austen together, they forget everything else, dance with enthusiasm and passion, immerse themselves in the strict rituals of the Regency era and create connections and parallels to their own situation.
Can literature actually change something?
The Iranian exile Golshifteh Farahani (“On the Couch in Tunis”) embodies Azar Nafisi as a likeable, energetic woman with fearless courage. Not only is she smart, but she doesn't let anyone take away her sovereignty. Her suppressed anger becomes just as clear as her grief for the loss of her (spiritual) home. The students in the literature circle are also played by Iranian exiles. But even without this knowledge, their depictions are shockingly credible.
A big question is written in invisible letters above the film: Why is there so much fear of books (as well as films, plays, pictures and music) in dictatorships that they cannot survive without censorship and state patronage? What can literature actually achieve? And what does freedom of art mean? These questions are asked again and again, and they are just as important today as they were 250 or 100 years ago.
Conclusion: An ambitious drama about life in a dictatorship between adaptation and resistance, which takes the side of freedom of art and thought – always slightly distant and without pathos, but with a clear combative message.