Thoughts on the movie 'Rosewater'

One afternoon we went to see 'Rosewater', the movie written and directed by Jon Stewart based on Maziar Bahari's memoir 'Then They Came for Me'.

Movie poster for 'Rosewater'

Being a fan of 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart' on Comedy Central, I had seen the interview that Jason Jones did with Maziar Bahari in Tehran in the days leading up to the Iranian presidential elections in 2009.  It is still amazing to me that the Iranian authorities allowed The Daily Show to film that segment inside Iran.

The movie, which stars Gael Garcia Bernal as Bahari, starts with Bahari bidding goodbye to his pregnant fiancee in London and heading to Tehran to cover the elections for Newsweek.  In Iran, Bahari is shown reporting on the fervor of the opposition 'green' movement, which felt that they would defeat the conservative incumbent, Ahmadinejad.  In what most felt was a rigged vote count, Ahmadinejad instead won over 64% of the vote.  The 'green' movement refused to accept the official vote tally and demonstrated against the government.  Bahari's film coverage of the demonstrations was aired on the BBC.

Using the pretext that the satirical Jason Jones interview portrayed Bahari as a spy, he was arrested and held in Evin prison for 118 days.  During his imprisonment, Bahari was held in solitary confinement and subjected to harsh interrogations about his connections to Newsweek, to the CIA, to MI6 and to Mossad.  Since he was usually kept blindfolded, he came to recognize his chief interrogator by the scent of rosewater that he used.

The best part of the movie is the heady days immediately before and after the Iranian election when Bahari is moving among members of the opposition with his 'driver' -- actually a guy on a motor scooter.  Once Bahari is imprisoned the movie tends to lose impetus and focus as he succumbs to the effects of solitary confinement and interrogation.  He has hallucinatory encounters with his father and sister, both of whom were imprisoned -- his father by the Shah and his sister by the Ayatollah.  It's never completely clear if he confesses to espionage or what leads to his release.

The performers are uniformly invested in their characters, but the writing and especially the editing could be better.  It's clear why Jon Stewart was drawn to this material, but it's less certain that he has done it full justice with this film.