On Hamid Nematollah's Subdued: Until Your Harvest Burns, You Won't Know Our State...

 Subdued is a 2016 film directed and produced by Hamid Nematollah and written by Masoumeh Bayat.

On Subdued

Until your harvest burns, you won't know our state...*

Ali Varamini — Etemad newspaper / Saturday, 23 Bahman 1395 / Issue 3743

Attar has spoken the final word on love: "You ask me what it is to be a lover? / The day you become like me, you will know." Love is one of those singular events that each person experiences alone—an experience that cannot be recounted to another. It is that of which they say, until your harvest burns, you won't know its state. It is that before which reason, in describing it, lies down like a donkey in the mud. Yet despite all this incapacity to recount the event, it seems the heart's condition longs to be told to another. It is as if the lover wants, at every moment, to pour out that pure experience and speak of the fire within, even knowing the act is futile. This is why, if you were to take love out of our literature, especially our classical literature, very little would remain. The same holds true for modern literature. Yet it is strange that in our cinema, few filmmakers take up love as the central narrative and story. If it does appear in a subplot, it is treated as if it were a secondary matter. Perhaps this is because addressing love is "simple yet impossible." Simple, in that if you were to randomly select a hundred people right now and ask each one, "What is love?" you can be certain all hundred would have an answer for you. On the other hand, it is impossible, in that from Plato's Symposium to the latest psychology books, they seek to elucidate this concept. Everyone has analyzed it in their own way. Some have considered love, alongside death and loneliness, to be among the most important existential issues for human beings; some see changes in biological states as the cause of love's onset; and there have been those who define love as a sacred matter. This is why the treatment of love is both so easy and, of course, so terribly difficult. For we are dealing with a phenomenon that we know what it is (or at least the one entangled in it knows what it is), yet at the same time we do not know why or how it occurs. Hamid Nematollah has taken this risk and addressed the story of love—a story where love is the axis, not the plot. Subdued is the story of Mina's love (played superbly by Leila Hatami). The Mina of Subdued is an ordinary woman, like so many other women. A woman who has torn herself away from a life devoid of meaning and reeking of addiction, who has come to start anew: to work, to get a home, and to have a life like everyone else. But suddenly, that other event emerges, a double-edged sword that pushes her once again to the brink of collapse. This time, the event occurs not through meaninglessness, but through the mediation of "love"—a love that can itself be life's greatest bestower of meaning, yet is a double-edged sword. In such a way that on its other side, without the beloved, it can take away the joy of living and drive the lover toward complete annihilation. Mina, who never had a mother to experience that pure love, nor a successful, affectionate married life, suddenly encounters Kamran (played by Kourosh Tahami), who seems to know better than anyone how to love. Anyone else in Mina's place would have fallen in love with this man, especially since Mina is in a situation where she is disillusioned, frustrated, and without refuge. More importantly, she lacks the necessary self-confidence to solve her problems alone. Subdued is that simple and difficult event that has happened to many of us. We have either been Kamran or Mina, and perhaps we have experienced both characters in different periods of our lives. Subdued is the story of the disintegration caused by love. The story of thousands of Minas, where one cannot discern whether this is love or a dependency born of having no refuge. The story of thousands of Kamrans who think they are busy serving and helping Mina, but do not see the other side: Mina's destruction after the day he is no longer there. Kamrans who do not know that saying "I love you" carries a moral responsibility. Subdued is the story of love's affection and, of course, love's violence as well. Hamid Nematollah has handled this paradoxical element very well through a good screenplay and the brilliant performances of his actors (especially Leila Hatami). Everything serves the easy narration of this difficult story, from the lighting and color of the film to the intelligent decoupage. Homayoun Shajarian's ballad also greatly aids in conveying the character's emotional weight. In the wasteland of this year's festival, Subdued was a point of hope, both in terms of its choice of subject (as if everyone, by decree of duty, had only pursued social melodramas) and in terms of its treatment of the subject. When the time comes for this film's release, it deserves to be addressed thoroughly.

* A line from Saadi