IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
DAUGHTERS OF THE SUN (Dokhtaran-e-Khorshid)
Written and Directed by Maryam Shahriar
The Screen NR 105 min subtitles
The sun never shines on the "daughters of the sun." In Maryam Shahriar's ironically-titled debut masterpiece, the girls spend most of their time in a dark adobe room, slaving at looms under the saturnine supervision of their brutal boss, creating the hand-woven Persian carpets that may someday wind up commanding enormous sums of money in Western showrooms. Even outdoors, the sun never penetrates the heavy atmosphere of rural Iran. Homayun Payvar's extraordinary camerawork (he shot Kiarostami's A Taste of Cherry) bathes everything in an exquisite melancholy of mist and shadow. Daughters of the Sun is one of the most beautifully photographed films you will ever see.
Not all the daughters of the sun look like daughters. At the film's opening, Amangol (Altinay Ghelich Taghani) has her hair cut off, the camera focusing on the ground as the long dark tresses drop and scatter in the wind. She dresses as a boy and leaves home to work as an apprentice to the carpet master. The disguise is required because only men can be master weavers; the girls are relegated to subordinate work.
Her male disguise is intermittently effective; some see through it, others do not. Perhaps the boss sees through it, but it suits his purposes not to - Amangol is a brilliant weaver. The dark-eyed musician who urges Amangol to run away with him appears to have guessed her secret, but the young weaver Belghies (Sogrha Karimi) who falls in love with her and begs Amangol to ask for her hand has not (though you have the feeling that if she were to reveal her hidden gender, Belghies would say, like Joe E. Brown in Some Like It Hot, "Well, nobody's perfect.") There are times when it seems that even Amangol herself loses track of who and what she really is.
Shahriar's storytelling is contained and minute, like the detail in the delicate carpets woven in the dusty adobe sweatshop. The setting is a small area of remote countryside; Amangol's journey from home is less than a day's walk, yet returning home, even when she learns that her mother is sick, is out of the question. An outsider, an official with the Iranian Social Security department, spends much of the movie searching for the tiny village, though from various clues we know he must be within a few miles of it all the while. Most of the time there is nothing to suggest even a particular century, other than the official's jeep and the anomaly of streetlights along the country road.
One of the girls in the shop gets married, to her cousin. "Do you love him?" Belghies asks. "I don't know," the girl replies. They've been engaged since birth. When the bridal couple arrives at their house, the young groom hesitantly lifts the bride's veil, and a hint of a shy smile crosses his face; and you have the feeling this may be the last moment of tenderness she will know in her life.
The subject matter is melancholy, but Shahriar closes in a spirit of fiery affirmation. Despite its themes of enslavement, exploitation, and perfidy, Daughters of the Sun is not depressing. A movie this beautiful and this engrossing can only leave the viewer exhilarated.
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