Iran Rocks !!!!

Recently we have seen the movie Nobody Knows About Persian Cats (see trailer below)



My take on the movie is that it is quite interesting and entertaining. The movie is a faux-documentary with a plot based on real situations. Basically the two main actors are a boy-girl sort of band that sound like Belle et Sebastien. They are supposed to reenact situations that they have experienced in real life and to have fled the country as the movie was finished or actually the other way around the movie was completed because they had to go.

The movie is in fact an excuse to present various contemporary bands in a range of genres, the main focus being on indie rock, but it features also more traditional, metal, even rap acts. The interest of the bands vary, and quite frankly most, and especially those mimicking western genres, are nothing special.

Another point is whether this would work better as a documentary as some of the characters look a bit as caricatures (eg the manager) and some situations are a bit cliches. Although, the plot formula vs the documentary has the added interest of describing the everyday life of young people in present day Teheran. This may explain the interest it has generated at the Cannes festival and in Europe more generally.

Here I would like to make a couple of remarks 1) the situations described in the movie affect only some of the most affluent part of the society and 2) if the tribulations that the young characters experience just to have a band and play a concert would appear rather mundane given the present local situation.

In this sense, while the movie has many merits (among other the mere fact of existing at all...), it leave the impression that those young people are interested in change mostly to conform to foreign or mostly western cultural models, that it concern mostly an educated urban middle class and maybe they do not appear very motivated in changing their lot, apart from escaping either abroad or through dreams and other substances.

To some extend they appear quite naive as they are willing to take risks and incur in costs that seem totally disproportionate with what is at stakes.

Another paradox is that the soundtrack is not available anywhere, while Raks Raks Raks, an equivalent of Nuggets has been released last (2009) year concerning Iranian psych and garage scene of the 60's.










see also this article on the same subject here

for additional background, there is a quite detailed article on Wikipedia on rock and alternative music in Iran here