Less than a week ago, Scott Avett, The Avett Brothers’ resident tortured artist and unwitting hipster-chic folk icon, did an interview with RollingStone magazine, in which, characteristically frequent philosophical meditations about death, life, pain, art and self-reflection aside, he promised unconventional song structures, intensely personal lyrics and a louder, bolder sound on The Avett Brothers’ new album, The Carpenter — which is due to be released later this year. Their new Seth-led single, “Live And Die”, while boasting characteristically effortless poetry and some delectably bold melodic hooks, however, just feels like a step backwards to the naked acoustic sound and lyrical content of their more reflective tracks from The Gleam and The Second Gleam EPs.
The Avett Brothers have this special gift of being able to transform the mundane and/or obvious into something poetic and sublime even. Here, the “where do you reside/when you hide/how can I find you?” and “can you tell that I am alive?/let me prove it” laments are particularly breathtaking. Unfortunately, not all their songs (as it is with this one) have the lyrical precision of standouts like “Paranoia in B-Flat Major” or “Murder In The City”, and hit-and-miss lines here like “we bloom like roses/lead like Moses” feel particularly exploitative and aimless.
Some of The Avett Brothers’ most touching songs (“Bella Donna”, “Shame”) songs are led by Seth Avett, and they succeed mostly because their quiet acoustics and melodies are as gentle as Seth’s voice, and this allows for the natural fragility and vulnerability in his voice to pack more emotional punch. The chorus here is easily the song’s catchiest, most joyous moment, but it has too much Scott Avett-esque boldness, and as a result it just feels awkward to hear Seth sing it.
Another problem with this song is that its climactic crescendo and production values in general are too polished, too deliberate — which is exactly what made the studio version of “Laundry Room” so horrifically lackluster compared to its electrifying live renditions. Ultimately, this song feels too familiar and too impersonal to match up to the band’s best songs, but at least it doesn’t feel like a filler track, and it is pretty damn catchy.
My opinion: get rid of Rick Rubin, follow up this single with a Scott-led explosive folk ballad, and all will be forgiven.
(Naturally, Kevin returns to indie-ness with nothing less than an obscure Iranian film)
Directed By: Marzieh Meshkini
Written By: Marzieh Meshkini and Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Starring: Fatemeh Cherag Akhar as Hava, Shabnam Toloui as Ahoo and Azizeh Sedighi as Hoora
Marzieh Meshkini, primary creative force behind The Day I Became A Woman, one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time, is incidentally the wife of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the notorious Iranian filmmaker/dissident/resident-of-Paris. In an ironic exercise of the very sexual inequality that Meshkini explores here, I will, of course, compare her work (although, in my defense, I do so favorably!) to her husband’s most visible work among film connoisseurs in the West: 2001’s Kandahar. For me, the most frustrating thing about Kandahar is that it unwisely ignores the centrality of the love between Nafas and her sister (which ultimately is what should ground the film) and instead too frequently descends into an ugly, in-your-face and occasionally even awkward tirade of social injustice in Afghanistan. Again, I refer to Slumdog Millionaire, the perennially overrated Danny Boyle film in which the devastations of poverty and inequality are but sidenotes to a bigger picture (NO PUN INTENDED LOLZ) that celebrates life and beauty: ultimately, what makes the film so fiercely poignant is not its unapologetic depiction of Indian slums but its tenderness and optimism. Kandahar, on the other hand, is so very utterly depressing. Nafas is constantly offered cul-de-sacs masquerading as false illusions of help, visions of handicapped mine victims begging profusely for plastic limbs from UN medical officials and obstructed by oppressive patriarchal structures; eventually, her journey is truncated and her sister presumably dies. There is no redemption, no salvation, no characteristic poetry, no momentary happiness even. Even Nafas’ friend and the film’s only beacon of humanity, Tabib Sahid, is ironically an African-American exile who lives a life of falsity.
In The Day I Became A Woman, the female protagonists are too victims of the same devastating realities presented in Kandahar, except Meshkini makes their bitterness a tangential, if palpable, sidenote; ultimately, the stories here are about their triumphs, however small, and however insignificant — and that’s what makes this film a more powerful political statement than Kandahar can ever dream of being. We live in an age where few people are unaware of the plight of mine victims in Afghanistan and Cambodia, of emaciated, malaria-stricken babies in Africa and abused child labour in China; these are inarguably open secrets. What we are seemingly unaware of, however, is how such people deal with circumstances so inhumane. What we are unaware of, paradoxically, is the reality of the situation, because the cultural context of these plights are often so very different and so very inconceivable to us who read about them from iPhones and iPads. As such, how Meshkini humanizes and fleshes out her characters, how she maps out their reactions and symbolic protests in the face of an unyielding authority (which is best illustrated in the Ahoo segment) is, I contend, of even more importance than the elucidation-of-plight stylings of Kandahar.
But what makesthis anthology much more than an instrument of humanization is Meshkini’s towering ability to weave continuous streams of symbolism into her prose, her quietly effusive respect for the female enigma and her taste for subversive undercurrents. Her plots are deceptively sparse, her characters deceptively simple, her films deceptively static; for all her self-effacing pseudo-unremarkability, her distaste for Kandahar-esque in-your-faceness, Meshkini is in many ways just as critical and even as ambitious as her husband. Ultimately, it is this illusion of simplicity is what makes this film, like Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, a great one.
Hava, the first segment, is unquestionably the best. The title of the anthology automatically suggests plots involving puberty (specifically, menstruation), marriage (and in extension, sex, because Muslims are cultured that way), and motherhood, so it is extremely refreshing to find that Meshkini cleverly chooses to open her film with a segment that employs an unfamiliar, presumably Middle Eastern notion of womanhood (Hava is told at 9 years old that she is a ‘woman’), and that immediately erodes conventional/Western expectations of what ‘womanhood’ entails. Tellingly enough, none of the aforementioned platitudes are employed in any of the films 3 segments; Ahoo is about divorce and Hoora is about hedonism. But let’s talk about Hava, which is, first and foremost, utterly unexpected and subversive in its depiction of a nine year-old heroine who graciously accepts the realities of gender segregation despite her best friend being a boy, especially since the Makhmalbafs are notorious for their bitter protests against the oppressiveness of Middle Eastern society. Naturally, though, Meshkini doesn’t actually have Hava wholeheartedly embrace her fate, and subtly allows her the room to symbolically repudiate her new role as a ‘woman’. What was most subversive, for me, however, was not how Hava symbolically traded her chador for a rubber duck (an obvious denial of her womanhood and proof of the illusion of ‘womanhood’ as a social construct), but of the quasi-sexual exchange that she has with her best friend Hassan. He gives her money, she comes back with candy, and they suck frantically from the same lollipop as Hava has to return to her house before noon. On a deeper level, this exchange immediately mimics a pre-marital affair fervently anticipating marriage and thus wanting to squeeze in as much “candy-sucking” as possible, which speaks to a deeply hedonistic desire running contrary to Islamic traditionalism and eloquently elucidates the independence of Islamic society/culture from the Islamic people — which are often inaccurately conflated by the Western media. Meshkini here exposes the myth of difference between different peoples, and reveals the universality of needs and desires — a notion that is seemingly self-evident but that is constantly debunked by unwitting racists like Lukas Moodysson (Swedish lesbianism advocate in his career low-point Mammoth). Of course, there are many other wonderful symbols, like the symbolic prison that Hassan is forced to enter once he defies Hava’s grandmother, an ironic symbol of patriarchal authority, and (my personal favourite) the phallic shadow that represents Hava’s fast-depleting authority in her transition into a woman, but I’d like to think that this film is more than a masturbatory exercise in symbolism so I won’t get into it.
Ahoo, the second segment,is easily the least problematic, albeit simplest, one — although it is no less politically-charged or symbol-packed than its neighbours. What I love about this film is how the obvious political implications of Ahoo’s marriage/divorce and her husband’s/tribal member’s ramblings (“You broke his pride!”, “You have broken your tribe’s pride!”, “Our tribe does not tolerate divorce!”) are simply sidenotes to Ahoo’s wicked cycling chops, her ferocious sense of determination and most importantly, her glorious chador billowing magnificently, gorgeously, in the relentless wind. Her iPod-wielding male rival is one of the most fascinating symbols here, because he seems to be a representation of the technologically-advanced West who surpasses the Middle East but only because the latter is held back by a relentlessly oppressive patriarchy (represented by Ahoo’s eventual confrontation with her tribal members and thus detainment),and who passively, sadistically looks on as the Middle East continues to be rampaged by injustice and perversity. It is perhaps also pertinent to think about why Meshkini portrays the West as a black boy, a politically-charged figure that recalls marginalization and injustice and thus that suggests hypocrisy and inhumanity; again, I don’t want to get into it, but I think this is inarguably an important point to consider when critically interpreting this segment. In any case, can we just take a moment to swoon over Meshkini’s ingenuity? K.
Hoora, the third and final segment, is the funniest and, some would claim, the most Fellini-esque one. Here, an impoverished old woman, through unknown means, gains a ridiculous amount of money, goes to the city, and buys everything she’s ever wanted. It’s a gloriously wacky Bollywood-esque rags-to-riches fantasy, a gratuitous exercise in hedonistic excess, and a triumphant declaration of freedom. The story is, at first viewing, a straightforward fable that reinforces the mythic pervasiveness of Islamic traditionalism: Hoora only spends her money on domestic furniture and household gadgets, asks repetitively for random boys to be her son, and at one point acts out the role of the matriarch entertaining house guests. In truth, this film is much more subversive. Hoora doesn’t seem to even care about her purchases: when she decides on buying another teapot, she simply leaves everything on the beach as though she doesn’t care if people steal or abuse them; when she sets sail for her ship, she doesn’t bring any symbolic ‘son’ with her; when it is time for her to leave her ‘guests’, she never expresses disappointment or guilt at eschewing her matriarchal role. What this means is that while she genuinely understands the necessity of fulfilling traditional notions of womanhood, neither motherhood nor matriarchy is fulfilling to Hoora in any way. What ultimately completes Hoora’s journey to womanhood is neither her age nor her silly dreams about ‘cold water’, but the reclamation of her freedom, which is explained adroitly by incorporating Hava’s chador into the segment. Hava’s chador, a symbol of femininity and therefore, in an extension, womanhood, is used as a mast for one of Hoora’s numerous rafts, which reflects Hoora’s hedonism as a reclamation of her (long-lost) womanhood. This symbolism is perhaps the most important of all, because in Islamic culture, womanhood represents a journey to male acquisition, and Meshkini defies this by reclaiming ‘womanhood’ as, paradoxically perhaps, a journey to male independence (which is symbolized by the Hoora’s ship). Of course, one could argue that the ship is simply another patriarchal device (Meshkini, in true spirit of Kiarostami-esque ambiguity, doesn’t clarify), but then again this film, as said before, is very much about celebrating the small triumphs, the momentary freedoms, so such a reading would only heighten both the themes of patriarchal oppression and female triumph.
There are only two problems with this film, and both stem from Meshkini’s weak and, honestly, just plain unconvincing attempt to link the three segments together. The Ahoo link is exceptionally ridiculous. It also seems terribly unlikely that Moora and Hava are set remotely close to each other — Hava’s village is just too awfully run-down to be in close proximity to the modern metropolis that Hoora patrons. As such, I think I speak for everyone when I say that it would’ve been so much better if the three characters’ lives didn’t intersect at all. Besides, Meshkini’s thoughtful, culture-specific exploration of the feminist plight, her pensive simplicity, her preternatural understanding of mood and her knack for incisive, punchy dialogue already provide enough thematic and stylistic consistency to effectively connect the dots between the three segments.
therein, Therin. 