Women Without Men at Quad Cinema

For many Americans, Iran is defined by the Islamic Revolution and all that followed. Whether through shame or plain old ignorance, we tend to forget the events of 1953, when the CIA helped to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh, setting in motion the string of deceptions, covert actions, hostage-takings, and saber-rattlings that continue to constitute American-Iranian relations. Shirin Neshat's beautiful, lyrical Women Without Men reconstructs those dark days though the intersecting stories of four women variously imperiled and empowered by the storms of history, and the resonances between their lives and those being lived in contemporary Iran are striking. (The film, banned in the Islamic Republic, is selling out in pirated copies.) In a Q&A afterward, Neshat noted that the movie, which combines starkly realist with beguilingly magical moments, speaks in the language of Persian poetry, where allegory and imagery allow for subversive ideas otherwise impossible to articulate, especially when so boldly independent: "Iranians aren't losers," she said, "we've been betrayed."

Photo: thanks