VFF Double Feature – Wednesday, May 9 and Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

October 23rd, 2015 | POSTED BY Allen Almachar

Wednesday, May 9

Vahid Jalilvand’s Iranian film Wednesday, May 9 (2015) delves into what it truly means to be compassionate to your fellow neighbor. If you have one piece of bread in your hands, but hundreds of starving people asking for your generosity, whom would you choose to give the bread to? What makes one person more important than another? By fulfilling the needs of one person, you would be turning down the pleas of countless other people. It’s a moral dilemma that calls into question our very nature as human beings.

That’s exactly the issue that faces Jalal (Jalilvand) after he places an advertisement in a Tehran newspaper offering 30 million tomans (or around $10,000) to a needy person. Before he realizes the extent of his offer, hundreds of people turn up at his office building, each with a heartbreaking story that deserves empathy. Jalal’s reasoning for such an unusual act of kindness gets to the heart of central theme, but it also places him in a tough predicament. Each application and interview is worthy of his financial help, but two in particular catch his attention. Setareh (Sahar Ahmadpour) is a young girl who has been exiled from her family for marrying in secret, and needs money to bail her newlywed husband out of prison. She also needs the money to support herself – she ends up squatting at an apartment complex Jalal just happens to own. The other is Leila (Niki Karimi), whose husband’s condition has left him near paralyzed and in constant need of supervision. The money would help Leila pay for her husband’s medical treatment. To make matters more interesting: Leila and Jalal used to be engaged.

The screenplay (Ali Zarnegar, Vahid Jalilvand, Hussain Mahkam) flirts with contrivance as the stories of Jalal, Setareh, and Leila coalesce the further the narrative goes along. How all three plot threads conveniently intersect does require us to have a certain suspension of disbelief. It also doesn’t help Jalal’s cause that his focus has turned to the two people who have direct ties with him, essentially brushing away the hundreds of strangers that came by his door. But Jalilvand’s grounded direction keeps all the elements believable. The circumstances that bring these people together are not important. Rather, it’s Jalal’s inner conflict that acts as the main point of tension. How could he possibly make this decision, and should he even make it to begin with?

Wednesday, May 9 is a fascinating observation of humanity. While the plot structure may have been a little too clever for its own good, the execution of the premise along with the superb naturalistic performances (especially by Karimi and Jalilvand) make this a character study that has universal appeal.

Final Grade: B

Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

I’ve been writing reviews for this site for some time now, but in all the years and all the films I’ve come across, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me? (2015) belongs in a category all its own. Israeli filmmaker Hadar Morag’s debut feature as writer/director tackles heady issues with such minimalism that a single viewing may not be enough to take in everything she’s trying to say. This is not for anyone looking for an experience where they can sit back and relax. Audience members will require active involvement to stay connected here.

Off the title alone, we can gather that Morag’s narrative features a heavily religious theme. This is amplified in the opening scene, where a young Palestinian boy named Muhammad (Muhammad Daas) is asked if he has done his prayers. Over the course of the film, we follow Muhammad around the streets of Tel Aviv on his bicycle. Utilizing non-actors and very little dialogue, Morag shows us how Muhammad lives on the edges of society. He is picked on by neighborhood kids, works a number of side jobs (including at a bakery and as a money runner for local criminals), and mostly spends his days riding around on his bike. It’s not until he meets Gurevich (Yuval Gurevich) that Muhammad’s focus starts to narrow. Gurevich is an older man whose job is to visit butcher shops and restaurants to sharpen their knives. This process intrigues Muhammad, and creates a wordless connection between the characters.

Story development doesn’t interest Morag so much as the symbolic imagery. Combined with the religious tone and the obvious phallic suggestions from Gurevich’s work with knives, Morag hints toward the struggle between spiritual purity and the temptations of the flesh. While Muhammad never says it, the performance by Daas tells us that he has a lot of built up frustration and energy needing to be released. Often this is done with masturbation (Morag includes a handful of these scenes), but it never has the kind of fulfillment Muhammad seeks. His search for contentment between spirituality and sexuality drives his journey, not necessarily to a happy ending.

This is tough material to work through, and Morag’s writing and direction does little to help guide us along. There is a philosophical element that is intriguing: the way that Muhammad struggles with his strict religious upbringing going up against the sexual awakening of his own puberty. But it doesn’t go anywhere significant. Just as Muhammad has difficulty with himself, Morag appears unwilling to lend her own perspective. It’s as though she is sitting back and letting events unfold without adding comment. If this is done to let us make up our own minds about it, the minimalist approach doesn’t give us enough information to make a decision either way. Why should we be interested in these characters? What is it about their turmoil that made Morag want to tell this story? Those answers are not easily deciphered from the screen. Morag then flips the narrative around with a brutally graphic finale that left me confused and dejected instead of intellectually stimulated. What are we to make of these last moments? Are they there to simply provoke?

I’ll be the first to admit any shortcomings Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me? has may be due to my observations as a viewer rather than Morag’s skill as a filmmaker. She sets a consistent tone, and deserves praise for examining such difficult subject matter. But the sparseness of the technique left me struggling to keep engaged. I can see how some people will see this and find a lot to take away and ponder about. Unfortunately for this reviewer, that was not the case.

Final Grade: C

Ali Zarnegar, Chaharshanbeh 19 Ordibehesht, EZ Films, Hadar Morag, Hussain Mahkam, Lama Azavtani, Muhammad Daas, Niki Karimi, Sahar Ahmadpour, Vahid Jalilvand, Wednesday May 9, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?, Yuval Gurevich