Crimson Gold

aka: Talaye sorkh
Iran 2003, 93 minutes
Dir. Jafar Panahi
In Farsi with English subtitles
Rating: [M]
Genres: Foreign Cinema, Drama

Aroview: Extraordinary, emotionally-compelling class fable set in contemporary Iran, which begins with a failed jewelery heist in Tehran, then backtracks through the day's varied events which preempted a pizza delivery boy's disastrous turn to crime.

Penned by Abbas Kiarostami, this takes a typically spare and suggestive approach to diagramming the social chasms and deficencies of a country caught between burgeoning affluence and religious fundamentalism, but finding no obvious place for the lead character, an inarticulate, lumpen Iran-Iraq War veteran. A close relative of TAXI DRIVER, this traces with terse poetry a particularly modern narrative of alienation.

NZ International Film Festival 2004