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The Guardian - Culture: Film | | | Atabai review – cinematic craft undone by an unconvincing narrative | by Peter Bradshaw May 2, 2022 | Anger and pain course through this sincere Iranian film about love and loss, but it fails to deliver the emotional payoff Iranian actor-director Niki Karimi has created a very involved film, clotted with anger and pain, straining towards some emotional meaning or resolution which, for me, never satisfyingly emerges. She has co-written it with the film’s leading man, Hadi Hejazifar who with unsmiling intensity plays Kazem, a respected architect bearing the honorific “atabai”, (meaning roughly “great man”). Kazem returns to his home village near Iran’s Lake Urmia (an important tourist attraction) after some time away, and his homecoming opens old wounds within him. This home village was where his sister took her own life, after abuse from the man to whom she was forced into marriage by their cruel father, while secretly in love with Kazem’s best friend, whom Kazem now despises for not fighting for her. Now Kazem finds that his sister’s hated husband has cynically sold the beautiful orchard which was part of the dowry he received, to cover his debts. But the man who has bought it has two daughters – and Kazem finds himself falling in love with one of them. Continue reading... | | | | |
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