We’ve all been there: In the midst of a relationship-annihilating argument, a mundane matter intrudes — a tissue needing to be handed across a charged physical space, say — and standard rules of etiquette come (briefly, awkwardly) back into effect. Iran found itself in just such a situation after this weekend’s Golden Globes, where Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” won the prize for Best Foreign-Language Film. Iran was forced to take a (brief, awkward) turn away from threatening to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, sentencing former American soldiers that they accuse of spying to death, and just generally acting breakup-crazy (or hilariously petty) in order to acknowledge that the West endorses of one of their movies.
And Javad Shamaghdari, Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance of Iran, didn’t spare the high-falutin’ language in offering his congratulations, either: “Wise judgment has put his movie on the podium of the chosen ones,” he said, giving Farhadi — who has publicly defended Jafar Panahi, a director Iran blacklisted and sent to prison — his propers. We’d like to know what host Ricky Gervais (who on Sunday said, “Tonight you get Britain's biggest comedian, hosting the world's second biggest awards show, on America’s third biggest network … Oh, it’s fourth? It’s fourth”) would have made of all that. Of course, this comes just weeks after the Iranian government decided to shut down the House of Cinema, the country’s only filmmakers guild, for what some of its members are calling political reasons.
Farhadi was himself, well, diplomatic, offering an inoffensive but not unmeaningful sentiment in his acceptance speech: “I just prefer to say something about my people. I think they are a truly peace-loving people.” And as Reuters points out:
Avoiding the faux pas of Iran's best known film maker Abbas Kiarostami who was kissed by Catherine Deneuve when accepting the 1997 Palme d'Or at Cannes, Farhadi did not even shake hands with [presenter] Madonna, conforming with Iranian law that bans contact between unmarried men and women.
While it’s impossible in this situation — maybe any situation — for a film to simply “speak for itself,” Farhadi didn’t use his newfound podium to tweak any of its messages — or tweak any government or culture. (To say that Iranians are a peace-loving people is to point out that they neither back nor invite aggression. Those were no doubt carefully chosen words.) The movie’s themes, of rupture and decay — unlike the theme of the American video game “Assault on Iran,” say — wouldn’t contribute to any escalation of hostilities, but they’re eerily relevant to the situation that Iran and the U.S. now find themselves in. If only it weren’t so damn hard to come up with a decent happy ending.