A Moment of Innocence: comedy. Starring Ammar Tafti, Marjam Mohamadamini, Ali Bakshi, Mirhadi Tayebi, and Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Edited, written and directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf. In Farsi with English subtitles. Now playing at Bay Area Theaters.

The Silence and A Moment of Innocence are two wonderful and remarkable films from Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Iran is a nation most Americans seem only to perceive through the twisted mirror of propaganda as our Enemy.  That image does hold some truth (it is governed by a totalitarian theocracy after all, but hopefully not for long), but it we should still take any chance we get to look behind the image of stern autocratic mullahs and explore the rich complex reality underneath; to learn that people in countries like Iran have lives beyond theology.

Both films, which are being shown as a double feature, initially sound like social documents in the neo-realistic tradition of The Bicycle Thief, but amazingly they stretch far past that cliched notion.  They are also lyrical, stylish, fanciful and ambitious.  They tackle such heady themes as the possibilities of being, the transcendent joys that can be found in the simple things of life and even the problems inherent in trying to commit reality to film. And there’s not a dry moment in either of them.

The Silence, the most stylish, lyrical and simple of the two, tells the story of blind ten year old Khorshid (Tahmineh Normativa), a fatherless boy who works as a tuner for a cruel ear-twisting instrument maker. The film opens a week before rent is due and his mother (Golbibi Ziadolahyeva) periodically warns him he needs to earn the rent money or they will face eviction (as a woman in Iran, the film strongly implies her economic options are severely limited. This apparently displeased the Iranian government, because the film was shot in Tajikistan). His only friend is co-worker Nadereh (Naderah Abdelahyeva), a young girl as alive to rhythm as Khorshid is to sound.

Never mind the difficulties.  Khorshid strives to live joyfully in every moment. He is entranced and immersed in the sounds of life swirling around and through him.  His aural sensitivity is so great he can distinguish one species of bee from another by the buzz. He may be headed for life on the streets, but what he’s obsessed with is the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth. All sound is his source of strength, his shelter from cruelty and disappointment and his inspiration to live. The whole world is music, from the splash of water to the hammering on metal bowls. 

On the surface, the cards fail to turn up right for Khorshid, but The Silence ends on a note of victory and perseverance.  In the end he strides through a metal works, leading the factory workers in a spontaneous percussive performance of the Fifth, his arms raised in triumph.  Even though he’s down and out, his future looks bright. It’s a touching and poignant paradox that feels just right.

In spite of its low budget, The Silence is beautifully made, shot with a lyrical elegance uncommon in films from anywhere.  The sound design is especially good, so rich and precise, I was tempted to close my eyes during the screening and let the sounds of life swirl about and through me, like Khorshid.

A Moment of Innocence is the funnier and more complex film.  As a seventeen-year-old revolutionary in1974 pre-Ayatollah Iran writer-director Makhmalbaf was arrested, tortured and imprisoned by the Shah’s government for stabbing a young policeman while attempting to steal the cop’s gun. Twenty years later Makhmalbaf decided to commit his memories to film.  And who should show up to audition but the very policeman (Mirhadi Tayebi) whom he’d stabbed.

This amazing coincidence inspired Makhmalbaf to tear up his script for an entirely different approach.  A Moment of Innocence becomes not a simple biographical rendering, but a quasi-documentary comedy about his and Tayebi’s mutual attempt to capture the events leading up to the incident that changed both men’s lives forever.  Playing themselves, their partnership fractures hilariously as they battle over their individual versions of “the Truth.”  They squabble over everything from casting and costuming to, of course, the actual moment of the stabbing itself.

The young people cast to play the protagonists are endearingly amateurish. The young man cast as Makhmalbaf is so sensitive, he breaks down just before he’s supposed to stab the cop. The actor playing the young Tayebi asks a passerby if he’s “seen a ray of sunlight” in which he’s left a missing flower “The sun doesn’t stay in one place” the man tartly replies. 

And neither of course, does the truth. In the end, Makhmalbaf tells us, we can only hope to approximate facts in film (an idea also considered subversive by the absolutist Mullahs. Makhmalbaf is finding it harder and harder to make films in his country and not solely due to Hollywood imperialism).  We understand from the freeze frame at the end that not only that the stabbing couldn’t have happened as shown, there’s no possible way to truly capture what happened.  The two men were not only innocents at the time of the stabbing, they remain innocents even now in their quest for truth.

What’s also impressive about Makhmalbaf is how he does so much technically with so little.  These truly artful films are as much a pleasure to watch as they are to think about.  He’s as much entranced with filmmaking as he is with the ideas and situations he explores (the marriage of sound and color in The Silence is especially stirring).  The result is a near-perfect and poetic blend of style and content that gives hope to the idea that art and entertainment are not necessarily mutually exclusive.    

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