This is an adaption of Azar Nafisi’s autobiography of her return to Iran after the 1979 revolution in order to teach literature but finding complications and repression from the new Islamic government. She eventually ends up meeting with some her students to secretly read banned books.
I’m not going to get into the minor controversy connected to the film about the director being an Israeli making a movie about Iran at exactly the wrong time (Gaza and the heating up of the situation with Iran). Instead, I am simply going to talk about the film as a film.
As a film READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN is perfectly fine. In a way I think the film is probably going to work best if you haven’t read the book since the film compresses things to fit into a 100 minute movie. It’s a film that tells its story, makes its points, and gets off. That is not a knock, simply a statement that the film leaves things out.
While the film is very good on its own terms it does have one real problem and that it never really connects us to the here and now, or really why Nafisi would return to Iran. We know that there will be issues with the Islamic Revolution. We know there is going to be repression. Unless they are very unaware anyone seeing the film knows that. The trouble is that the film never really makes us forget how things were and are. Since we don’t forget we know how this is going to play out, in generalities if not in details. There is only a limited amount of suspense as a result. Its not fatal but it makes the film less than it should be.
At the same time what is here is good enough that it is worth a look.
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