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DVD The Hunter
 Run time: 90 min Rating: 6.2 Genres: Thriller Director: Rafi Pitts Writers: Rafi Pitts Stars: Rafi Pitts, Mitra Hajjar, Malek Jahan Khazai |
| Storyline In an act of vengeance, a young man, randomly kills two police officers. He escapes to the forest, where he is arrested by two other officers. The three men are surrounded by trees, the woods. They are lost in a maze, a desolate landscape, where the boundaries between the hunter and the hunted are difficult to perceive. Written by Anthony Ray |
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| Plot Keywords: forest, death, murder, written and directed by cast member, prison escape | |
| Details: Country: Iran, Germany Release Date: 29 October 2010 (UK) |
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DVD The Hunter
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This movie played at the International Film Festival in Berlin this year and it was in the official program/selection! A drama about a family living in a very disturbing time and regime. But don't expect the movie to give you some easy answers or an easy plot to follow. This is a difficult film, but that's the way they should be (with a theme like that).
Of course you could argue, that the ending isn't the one you would imagine, but hopefully the movie has gotten to you until this point, so that you can identify with the persons at some basic level. I liked it and I think it has some very interesting questions (that again won't be answered in the movie). Not an easy movie then, but if that's your cup of tea, you will be very pleased here
Rafi Pitts directs himself in a portrayal of a man left with a very compromised life after serving time in jail. All he has/cares about is his girlfriend and their daughter, but because of the past he is locked in a situation that gives them few chances to meet. As he works and lives in chaotic and overpopulated Teheran feeling chained to circumstances he finds some outlet in hunting, or rather just walking around with his rifle in the forest. While driving there's speeches from the supreme priest Ali Khamenei.
Then things takes for the worse as the only thing he held onto was taken away from him. First he looks for answers and help, but gets neither. What is then left? This is a grim and well-crafted thriller. The chase through foggy landscapes kept me on the edge of the seat. Look elsewhere if you want a optimistic sunshine story though. Recommended to people who have been to Iran and has a balanced view of the situation there. Don't come here for a first-impression of an amazing country.
As this film opens we see protagonist Ali, a hunter, loading his rifle in a forest; we then learn that he works as a night watchman at a factory in Tehran. He is married with a young daughter. His life is fairly mundane until one day he gets a phone call from the police; it turns out his wife have been killed in the crossfire in a shootout between the police and insurgents; they have no idea what happened to his daughter though. Ali then sets about looking for his young daughter without any luck; eventually he learns that she too has died. Sitting on a hill above a busy dual-carriageway he takes out his rifle and fires at a police car; it swerves and comes to a halt, then he shoots and kills the policeman who gets out. He flees the city but is caught by two cops in the forest. By the time they have caught up with him though they are well and truly lost; one of them wants to kill Ali for what he has done but the other won't let him; as tensions rise it looks as though the two policemen are a danger to each other as well as Ali… inevitably it will end in tragedy.
Inevitably much of this films interest comes not from its contents but from the fact that it was made in the Islamic Republic of Iran; not a country most westerners would associate with film making. I suspect the biggest surprise for most viewers will be the fact that the characters don't seem that much different to those who might appear in a film made in the west. That isn't to say the film looks like something that came out of Hollywood; it certainly doesn't. The pace is much, much slower, there is almost no music and there is little explanation… for example we aren't told how the two policemen realised Ali was the man they were after and we don't see the moment they catch him; one moment they are chasing him the next he has his hands tied behind his back. Rafi Pitts does a fine job as Ali; a man who is clearly broken by what happened to his family and barely cares what will happen to him once he is caught. Overall I'd say that while this isn't the most exciting thriller it is worth watching if only for the glimpse it provides into a country that rarely gets positive coverage.
This review was made following a screening at Cambridge Film Festival (September 2010):
This film runs to 92 minutes, and, for me, achieves much more than it has been given credit for here without squandering resources, the main one being the enigmatic lead portrayal of hunter.
Ignoring whether this is mere photography (a dissatisfaction better founded, say, as a response to Jarman's experimental films?), it is a moody film, and it takes time, deliberately, to establish moods. Although I several times predicted where it was going, it still disrupts and undermines our notions of where it fits into our typology of films (as the festival write-up indicated).
Say that there is no plot overlooks the significance of the whole trajectory, and fails to relate later events to earlier ones: obviously, I cannot spell it out, but, to understand it, it is important to pay attention to what is said to the hunter in the woods. That information explains his earlier actions, which seemed motiveless (or arising from some nihilistic and sleep-depriving reactive despair), but which turn out to build on events that we have not been shown.
Knowing, at this point, what he has done, we can maybe guess why: we were given detail earlier about his daughter that had been kept from him, but which he might have uncovered, and could have made him see his family life differently. Or he might have had some extreme and pathological reaction to the conditions of his existence.
We already knew something about his past, and can soon see that he has something of the stamp of a loner that is seen in TAXI-DRIVER, content to drive around in his car and wait for first light to hunt. These are important elements in both films, and I was soon reminded of this one's older brother.
Dialogue is sparing in both films, and they share the desire for revenge that comes over characters at what cannot be tolerated in someone else's behaviour. That, coupled with the recurrent impulse here to implicate others, is at the heart of this film.
It is one of quiet scenes into which sudden loud noises tear and where threat and intimidation inject, by the nature of their origin, onward twists that lead to the final scene and complete what, for me, is a very definite structure. That being said, if one expected this film to spill its explanation into one's lap, it will remain tightly closed as a story-book, and seem to have taken the viewer nowhere.
I rate this film highly, but there is one niggle to do with how the ending is set up, with our three figures in isolation (and a good misdirection that others will be on the scene): the hunter is given something by one man, but, irrespective of whether it was his own, it would not only have been traceable to him, but his fingerprints would also have been inexplicably all over it. In those terms, unless I have misunderstood the closing shot, I do not see that it worked as intended.