I thought I was out of my vampire-human-relationship-Twilight phase when I got out of sixth grade, but this movie may have me fantasizing about the life of blood suckers once again. Set in a worn-down Iranian town, the film follows the story of Arash, a hard-working 20-something whose junkie father is more of a burden than anything, and Shirin, our modern-day hero stalking the streets at night and sucking the blood of men who disrespect women. It is also a love story between the two, but not the same cheesy Bella-Edward love story.
The film is shot completely in black and white allowing the lighting to play a lot with the shadows and adding to the dramatic effect. This use of the shadows emphasized how much thought about composition was put into this movie. Many examples would feature the victim walking down the street at night unaware of Shirin's presence behind them, and when they stopped to look over their shoulder, the camera would always place the subject at the edges of the camera, so when Shirin pops out of the shadows to bite their neck, she is the center attention of the camera. This is a pretty common set up, especially for horror films, to anticipate a pop-up. Another use of composition-foreshadowing occurs as we see a man force a young woman to shoot heroin as his cat watches on. The camera cuts between an extreme close-up of the cat's eye and an extreme close up of the drifting eye of the young woman. We get a scene of the cat's slit-shaped pupil before cutting to a medium shot of the back of Shirin dressed in hooded black cape that mimics the shape of the pupil we saw a second earlier. This placement of Shirin on screen in a similar shape to the pupil of a witness is hinting at the impending death of the man who doped up the young woman. Stanley Kubrick uses the same technique in The Shining when Danny tries to open the twin doors to room 237 and an image of the Grady twins flashes on screen. This split second of the twins foreshadows Danny's own impending horror.
The feelings of our characters on screen weren't always verbalized, but instead shown through the set up of the scene. After a talk by the power plant and Shirin leaves Arash feeling rejected, the camera cuts to a long shot of Arash staring at the ground with his body tensed and Shirin walking away in the other direction just as a dark freight speeds pass him. The way the camera is positioned makes it look as if the freight train hits Arash, mirroring the feeling of rejection.The thing that I liked most about this film was how much of a bad-ass they portray Shirin to be. The first antagonist presented in the film is a drug dealer shown taking Arash's car after he can't pay for his father's "medicine." Arash makes a snide comment, but other than that, won't stand up for himself. Shirin takes care of the drug dealer at night when she catches him throw out and rob a prostitute. She is the tough independent one of the relationship and setting the film in the Middle East, a place where tough independent are a rarity, makes her femme-power even more exciting to watch. Her ruthless view on the men she kills reminds me of another twisted heroine, Beatrice Kiddo in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. Like Shirin, Beatrice didn't allow her emotions to get between her and what she had set out to do.
A key scene in this movie is Shirin catching a young boy out at night and basically scaring him shit-less but she does it to teach him a lesson. This scene is early in the movie and it helps set out Shirin's agenda so we understand that she's picking out her victims and killing with a purpose. The scene begins with the young boy skateboarding down a beaten side road. Musical hints and flashes of Shirin's cape in the back allow us to understand she's following him and when he too picks up on this, he grabs his skateboard and begins to run. The camera follows as he runs down the street and when he snaps his head back from glancing over his shoulder, Shirin surprises him blocking his path with her body. The scene is very dark, only small amount of key light on one side of the boy's face but paired with a high angle shot of him makes him appear to be small and helpless. Shirin is lit so that you can only make out the edges of her face and eyebrows, enough to tell that she is boring a hole into the boy with her eyes. This along with her black cape gives her an intimidating figureless appearance, like she is still apart of the shadows. Shirin speaks in a low voice and asks the boy if he is a good boy. The camera looks up at her and when she leans down to make eye contact with him, it tilts down so it is level with her head. As she leans in closer to the boy the camera gets closer to her face and the shadows around her features become more exaggerated and frightening. That's when the vampire teeth and demon voice come out. She warns the boy of what she can do to him and that she'll be watching him his whole life, so he'd better be a good boy. With that, she stands up cooly as the boy scrambles away, abandoning his skateboard.
Although this is a love story between Arash and Shirin, the love isn't just the focus of the movie, it also contains themes of vigilante justice and gender roles. I'm giving this indie-horror-love flick a 5 flames out of 5 because it took the classic vampire scenario and did it in a whole new way. Give this one a watch on your next Netflix night in.
No comments:
Post a Comment