SMELL OF CAMPHOR, FRAGRANCE OF JASMINE (Booye Kafoor, Atre Yas)
Reviewed by Harvey Karten New Yorker Films Director: Bahman Farmanara Writer: Bahman Farmanara Cast: Bahman Farmanara, Roya Nonahali, Reza Kianian, Valiyollah Shirandarni, Parivash Nazariye, Firouz Behjat, Mohammadi, Hossein Kasbian
Young people believe that they're immortal. They can barely think of tomorrow must less the idea of their own death. Since sixty-five percent of the citizens of Iran--the land which forms the backdrop of Bahman Farmanara's first film in 22 years--are under the age of twenty-five, not too many Farsi-speaking folks are much concerned about their mortality. But Mr. Farmanara--who has not only scripted and directed "Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine" but appears in virtually every scene of this highly personal work-- certainly is...boy is he ever. That's about all he thinks about, dreams of, wonders about. Why? He's only fifty-five years old, but his health is rotten. He has had a couple of heart attacks, he has a pot belly, he smokes like a fiend, and he tosses out his physician's health plan as soon as he exits the man's office.
So aside from the fact that "Smell of Camphor" is about the writer-director's thoughts of his own demise, what recommends this film to us? Not really a heck of a lot, because Bahman Farjami, as Farmanara's alter ego is called in the story, acts out a plot that is second-string Ingmar Bergman. Where the great Swedish director in "The Seventh Seal" deals allegorically and agonizingly with the metaphysics of man's relationship to God and his encounters with the idea of death, the Iranian director--out of shape presumably because he has been away from the camera for two decades--deals in a fairly shallow manner with his anticipated parting from the planet. Where in "Wild Strawberries" Bergman deals with the subject of man's isolation and uses a journey as the plot structure, Farmanara's trip by train across the Iranian countryside pops up suddenly, now and then, as though the film's editor were having some fun with the splicing machine. As for isolation, true enough, Bahman Farjami has lost his wife some years back and is still in mourning, but his loneliness is not of the existential sort favored by Bergman in the far more resonant film.
Perhaps we're being unfair to compare the two: after all nowhere does Farmanara state that he has been influenced by the Swede. Taken on its own, however, "Smell of Camphor" is so talky, so lacking in humor (save for a single gag made by a white-haired funeral director with a neatly trimmed beard) that the gloom-and-doom inclination of the writer serves little transcendent effect.
Death and its foreboding are everywhere. Farjami's mother sits in a wheelchair staring into space, a tear flowing lightly down her right eye, as this victim of Alzheimer's is read a story by her son--whom she does not recognize or react to. Farjami's visits to his wife's grave upsets him, as he discovers that someone is already buried next to the woman in the plot which Farjami purchased for himself. Searching for a lost son-in-law, Farjami questions the mortician in a hospital who informs him that he has only two corpses on ice, one being that of a 15-year-old girl who has committed suicide. "Only the young have the courage to kill themselves: the old hold on to life with both arms," informs an associate, who does not elaborate.
The film is divided self-consciously into three acts as though this were a photographed play, but a drama in which too much of the action is of the inner variety--a meditation by a morose fellow who cracks a smile (without showing his teeth) once during the entire 93-minute drama. From time to time the editor slips in a serialized passage from a holy man who intones the way that the Koran specifies one should deal with a corpse. Early on, Farjami picks up a sullen woman who relates that she is running away from her abusive husband and who deposits an unusual gift for the driver on the back seat when she leaves. There is even a segment devoted to pointlessly abstract political talk by (I believe) Katami, the supposedly liberal president who was recently elected and who has just a modicum of power--but enough, presumably, to allow "Smell of Camphor" to pass censorship even though it does not deal with little children.
There is little substantive symbolism in this effort, though the camphor in the title refers to death and the jasmine alludes to youth--in whose custody lies hope for the future. The picture, which was picked up by the New York Film Festival, is in the Farsi language with English subtitles.
Not Rated. Running time: 93 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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