il film è tratto dai racconti di Salinger e dovrebbe essere visto dopo la rilettura di quei racconti.
è successivo a Sara, la protagonista, Niki Karimi, è la stessa attrice, i diversi episodi sono cuciti insieme, per quanto possibile.
è un film non immediato, ma merita,
buona (iraniana-salingeriana) visione - Ismaele
In the mid 1990s Dariush Mehrjui made three
successive films (Sara, 1993, Pari 1995,
and Leila, 1997), each focusing
on an Iranian woman trying to find fulfillment in a society not normally
attentive to a woman’s efforts towards self-realization. The first two films of
this trilogy, Sara and Pari, were based on
well-known works of Western literature and adapted to Iranian
circumstances. In the case of Sara, which was based on
Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the adaptation was straightforward, since
the Iranian social context matched well with the 19th century social
environment described by Ibsen. But Pari, which was based on works
by J. D. Salinger, was a more difficult stretch, and I would say not so
successful. Even so, Pari stands (as does Salinger’s work in
general) as an interesting attempt to deal with philosophical/spiritual
struggles, and it deserves more than passing consideration.
Normally, I concentrate on a film’s own narrative, as it stands, and pay little
attention to its original sources from other media. However, in this case
I will make some explicit comparisons with Salinger’s relevant stories –
“Franny” (1955) [1], “Zooey” (1957) [2], and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”
(1948) [3]. Although there are necessary changes to fit Salinger’s
stories into an appropriate Iranian context, it is surprising just how closely
Mehrjui’s film matches up with Salinger’s work and in some places is almost a
literal transcription. Since Iran had no copyright relations with the
United States, there were no contractual agreements made at the time of
production. Nevertheless, Salinger, who was always litigious about his
intellectual property privileges, managed to have his lawyers block a planned
screening of Pari in the New York in 1998.
As useful background information for this work, it is worth pointing out that
across the relatively sparse literary output over the course of Salinger’s
life, many of his stories concern various experiences of the fictional Glass
family over a period of years in mid-20th century New York City [4]. In
particular, the family focus is on the Glass family’s seven precociously
intellectual children, particularly (in descending orders of age) Seymour,
Buddy, Zooey and Franny, all of whom appear in altered form in the film Pari.
The 1948 suicide of Seymour Glass, the oldest and most charismatically
brilliant of the Glass children, is described in Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for
Bananafish”, the story that launched Salinger to literary stardom. Parts
of this story, though in altered form and set later in time, are depicted
in Pari. But for the most part, Pari reflects
the two stories, “Franny” and “Zooey”, which Salinger set close together in
time in 1955. Together, those two stories relate the development of
Franny’s spiritual crisis, which was occasioned by her reading a 19th century
book, The Way of a Pilgrim, which she found on Seymour’s long
unattended bookshelf. The Way of a Pilgrim and its
sequel, The Pilgrim Continues his Way, describe the spiritual
journey of a wandering mendicant monk in Russia who finds spiritual bliss by
ceaselessly repeating the Jesus Prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on
me") as a mantra. Franny, who is about 21 years old, then has long
discussions in this connection with her brother Zooey, who is four years
older. Although Seymour had died seven years earlier, considerable
reference is made to his strong intellectual influence on both Zooey and Franny
in those two stories.
Transferring a written fictional story into film often presents problems to the
filmmaker, particularly in connection with how to present cinematically the
thoughts of the characters that were described in prose in the original
text. In this respect Salinger’s prose would seem to offer some
advantages, since overt conversations dominate over internal monologues in his
stories. But with Salinger, the long conversations are taken to the limit, and
in his stories occupy almost the entire story space; there is very little
depiction in the way of physical action or movement. Mehrjui does his best
to depict as much of this conversational material as possible in cinematic
action, but there are limits to what can be accomplished in this respect.
Another issue that had to be dealt with was that Salinger’s stories are
anchored in the intellectual New York cultural milieu heavily influenced by its
Jewish population [5]. Translating the wise-cracking New York social culture
banter into an Iranian Islamic context was a real challenge, which turned out
to be only partially met successfully. Despite these difficulties,
though, it is surprising to me to see just how faithful many of the scenes
in Pari are to the Salinger’s original text.
In Pari, the principal characters are
- Pari (Salinger’s Franny) –
played by Niki Karimi, who had the lead role of Sara in Mehrjui’s previous
outing
- Dadashi (Salinger’s Zooey) –
played by Ali Mosaffa
- Safa (Salinger’s Buddy) –
played by Khosro Shakibai
- Assad (Salinger’s Seymour) –
played by Khosro Shakibai
And the film narrative goes through four stages:
- Pari’s Story (essentially
Salinger’s “Franny”)
- Dadashi’s Story (essentially
the first part of Salinger’s “Zooey”)
- Assad’s Story (a modified
portion of Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”)
- Pari and Dadashi
1. Pari’s Story
The film begins with two scenes that are drawn from the story “Zooey” and can
be understood within the conversational context in that story but appear to be
quite mysterious and without explanation in Mehrjui’s film. In the first
such scene, Pari is shown in a swimming pool and being pushed down under the
water by her companions (this was a dream that Franny relates in Salinger’s
story). In the second mysterious scene, Pari is shown entering an empty
college classroom and obsessively filling the blackboard with philosophical
epigrams, after which she erases the entire blackboard. This is also described
in context in “Zooey”, but is totally unmotivated here in the film.
Pari is then shown in her college, expressing intense dissatisfaction with the
arrogance and pedantry of her college philosophy professor, who is lecturing
the class on Khayyam and Rumi. She seems to feel that her teachers are
merely posturing and not penetrating to the ultimate truths of these great
thinkers. Fed up with what is going on around her in Tehran, she decides
to take a bus to Isfahan and visit some family members and her fiancé there.
Her fiancé meets her at the bus station and starts talking about his own
intellectual endeavors at his university, which account Pari also finds boring
and self-serving. They then go to a restaurant, and Pari tells her fiancé
about the Sufi book she has been reading (this book is like The Way of
the Pilgrim, but here it describes a wandering monk in Khorasan and his
repetitive prayer makes reference to God, not Jesus).
The Sufi book that Pari has discovered has pointed her to a new way of
conscious engagement with her surroundings that is entirely different from the
academic detachment that she has found so dissatisfying and pseudointellectual
at the university. In fact the Sufi-inspired mantra-prayer technique is
entirely distinct from any intellectual contemplation of God. You don’t
even have to believe in what you are doing; you are simply instructed to
endlessly continue the repetitive chanting. The argument goes that if one
continues the practice, whether believing in it or not, one will be transformed
into a sublime state of consciousness. The technique has similarities with the
Brahmanic “Om”, Zen “No-Mind”, and Tibetan Buddhist chanting, which suggests
that it has been rediscovered many times and in many places around the
world.
Pari tries to tell her fiancé how important her mantra-prayer has become to
her and how it reflects truths from other religions, such as Buddhism, but her
fiancé is dismissive and merely asks her, “do you really believe this
stuff?” Under increasing emotional stress, Pari rushes out to the
restroom and eventually faints. She is taken back home and after
witnessing the death of an aged relative, decides to go back to Tehran.
2. Dadashi’s Story
The film now cuts to Dadashi in Tehran, who is reading a long letter from his
brother Safa. In this scene there is an account from Safa's
perspective of Assad’s mysterious suicide by self-immolation. Dadashi’s
mother approaches him and asks him to see if he can straighten out Pari, whose
spiritual crisis is now taken to be a nervous breakdown.
Dadashi goes ahead and finds Pari sleeping on the couch, and he launches into a
long conversation with her about the books she has been reading. In this
sequence, Dadashi comes across as rather dogmatically overconfident, as he
insists that Pari should surrender to God (Ali’s teaching), rather than
succumbing to the arrogance of selfishly trying to find her salvation on
her own and make her own judgments. Pari is unconvinced by
Dadashi’s rants and urges him to leave her alone.
3. Assad’s Story
Dadashi now enters Assad’s old study and examines some of his brother’s old
notebooks. The scene then moves to a depiction of Assad’s suicide some years
earlier. Assad in this sequence is shown to be generally benign and
thoughtful, but he has apparently reached some irreversible level of
philosophical despair. He speaks cordially to small child that he meets
and then quietly and deliberately arranges his self-immolation.
4. Pari and Dadashi
Dadashi approaches Pari again, this time by calling her on the phone and
pretending that he is Safa. When Pari sees through that ruse, she runs
away. This sequence of the film then diverges from Salinger’s text, as
Dadashi finds Pari and dramatically challenges her to burn herself alive as
Assad had done. The film closes with Pari acceptance of Dadashi’s
retelling of Safa’s story that if one is dying on a hillside with his throat
cut and a bunch of women walk by carrying jugs on their head, one should still
be able to sit up and see how the women carry their jugs safely over the hill.
On the whole, Pari doesn’t manage to capture the charm of
Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. For one thing, the Dadashi character
is just a bit too pushy and arrogant in this depiction. The New York energy of
Zooey fails to translate into an acceptable Iranian equivalent. Similarly, Niki
Karimi’s Pari character is bit too intense and strained to gain a sympathetic
audience here. And the intellectual repartee of the story doesn’t generally
come across.
The first part of the film, though, which essentially shows Salinger’s
"Franny” story, is more successful. Here the characteristic Salinger
concern about phoniness and authenticity, and the inevitably accompanying
awareness that an obsession about other peoples’ phoniness becomes, itself, an
affectation, is reasonably well portrayed.
Another thing that I liked was Mehrjui’s ending to the film. The film's
closing story about the women jug bearers actually comes earlier in Salinger’s
story “Zooey”, as something of a passing reflection on the part of Buddy (Safa
in this film). In the movie, though, Merhjui has elevated this curious
metaphor to a final image that stands for acceptance of, and ultimately
embracing, life’s eternal mysteries. In this finally enlightening perspective,
Pari’s ceaseless prayer is shown to be simply a way to maintain one’s
meditative immersion in the immediacy and wonder of life, as it happens right
in front of us all the time.
★★½
Notes:
- J. D. Salinger, “Franny”, The
New Yorker, January 1955.
- J. D. Salinger, “Zooey”, The
New Yorker, May 1957.
- J. D. Salinger, "A Perfect
Day for a Bananafish," The New Yorker, January 1948.
- “Glass Family”, Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_family (accessed May 17, 2013).
- “History of Jews in New York
City”, Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_New_York_City
(accessed May 16, 2013).
- J. D. Salinger, Franny
and Zooey, Penguin Books, 1964
…It’s possible
that Salinger might actually have liked Pari had he watched
it. The Iranian film industry is decidedly not Hollywood, and Mehrjui’s
sensibilities are subtle and self-aware. But Salinger never did. He was
oblivious to the film’s existence until 1998, when Lincoln Center planned to
screen the film during a three-week festival celebrating Iranian cinema.
Publicity around the event brought the film to Salinger’s attention.
Representatives of Salinger responded immediately with a letter, stating that
the screening would constitute a copyright breach. Though Lincoln Center might
have contested the warning, they decided instead to cancel the screening,
perhaps wary of the legal track record of past Salinger adaptations.
In a New
York Times article published in response to the controversy, the
Iranian director expressed bewilderment over the decision. “I don’t want to
distribute the film commercially,” Mehrjui said. “It’s kind of a cultural
exchange. I just want to let the film be seen for the critics and the people
that follow my work.”
He added, too,
that he had written the reclusive author seeking permission to use the material
for his movie and, when he hadn’t heard back, decided to move forward with the
project. “In our country, we don’t have copyrights,” he said. “We feel free to
read and do whatever we want.”
This is, of
course, not entirely true. Iran does indeed have domestic copyright laws in
place, though they are nearly half a century old, and in many ways, they have
failed to provide artists and businesses with the protections they require.
These laws, however, do not extend to any work produced outside the country,
and Iran boasts a bustling market of pirated films. In busy corridors of
Tehran, young boys sell stacks of pirated DVDs in plastic sleeves, their cover
art badly photocopied, for less than a dollar. Truth be told, I’ve probably
seen more Hollywood blockbusters during my stints in Iran than I have in my
lifetime in the United States…
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