The Cow (Mehrjui, 1969): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.05pm
This screening is part of the Censored to Restored season (details here) at BFI and will be preceded by an intro by film curator Ehsan Khoshbakht. There is another screening on July 24th.
Chicago Reader review:
I wrongly assumed that this venerated 1969 film, a founding gesture of
the Iranian new wave, would be humanist and sentimental. In fact,
Dariush Mehrjui’s second feature, written with the late playwright
Gholam-Hossein Saedi and shot in stark black and white, is a cruel
allegory whose meanings are far from obvious. The owner (Ezzatolah
Entezami) of the only cow in a village that’s terrified of potential
invaders goes mad and comes to believe he’s a cow after the animal dies
for unexplained reasons during his brief absence from home. Ultimately
this is a film more about community and scapegoating than about aberrant
individuality—full of dark implications, powerfully acted, and graced
by a striking modernist score.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is an extract.
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