Here's a brief description from Wikipedia:
[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewater_%28film%29 ]
In 2009, London-based Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari (Gael Garcia Bernal) was detained in Iran for 118 days because of a satirical interview he gave regarding the country's presidential election. Bahari was arrested and, while his pregnant fiancee waited for him, spent four months at Evin Prison being brutally interrogated. The film suggests his video evidence of the protests he provided to the BBC was the actual reason for his incarceration.
Bahari was usually blindfolded when being interrogated, and the sole distintuishing feature of his interrogator was that the interrogator smelled of rosewater.
:UNQUOTE.
I didn't read the book upon which this movie was based. But the main thing to keep in mind is, we only have Bahari's account of what went on in that prison. So I can only comment on what I saw on the silver screen.
There were two elements in particular that gave me pause. Several times during the movie, white lettering would appear on screen mentioning his solitary confinement: For instance, "Day 18 of solitary confinement." But then I would see him with his interrogator. In an interview with the Huffington Post, he said he was in solitary confinement for 107 days [out of his 118 day total). The movie did not convey that at all, unless the filmmakers decided "solitary confinement" meant no contact with the general prison population and no visitors (except his interrogators). My bottom line? If the prisoner is seeing anyone, even if only to be tortured, then that's not solitary confinement.
There was also no invocation of Islam by Bahari's interrogator in an attempt to make Barhari more sympathetic to the Islamic state. And Barhari in the movie said nothing at all about religion, though the Huffington post interview quoted him as saying, "For me because I'm not a believer, I am not a spiritual person..." I take great exception to that: One can be an unbeliever but we're all spiritual people. By that I mean, we all have spirit within us that has its ups and downs - sometimes feeling buoyant, other times down in the dumps.
Some might argue that what I'm calling "spirit" is really nothing more than "mere and transient" feelings. Just because some people can't connect their feelings to any formal theological system doesn't mean those feelings - or spiritual expressions - are any less valid. But, who knows? Sometimes these people do eventually connect to a formal system or even create one after having had a personal revelation or an "Ah ha" moment. For others, their spirituality will always remain vague and outside the realm of a brick-and-mortar church/mosque/synagogue. Perhaps so, but that doesn't doesn't make their feelings any less profound - especially if they base their lives on these and act on them.
Even if Bahari wasn't a believer, I'm sure he wasn't ignorant of the tenets of Shite Islam. But I saw no sign that he tried to appeal to the interrogators on any kind of religious basis. For instance, by trying to claim that it's anti-Islamic to torture prisoners.
There was one part in the movie when Bahari spoke of having gone to New Jersey in order to get massages. His middle-aged interrogator seemed piqued by this, looking more like a young man who'd never gotten laid and wanted to hear more. [sigh] Why is it that we in the West like making our enemies look childish and buffoonish?
I think it's entirely possible that Western media, including Bahari, went to Iran to cover the election in an attempt to make the local regime look bad and to foment disorder. Let's just say, I wouldn't have put it past us. There were massive demonstrations to protest a feeling that the election was being stolen, but the movie didn't present much to suggest this was actually the case. Yes, there could have been voting irregularities, but Ahmadinejad's claim to victory wasn't without plausible merit.
The official Iranian news agency announced that Ahmadinejad won the election by 62% over the 34% garnered by nearest opponent, even though only two-thirds of the votes had been counted. My question is: Even though the official news agency made that announcement, did the officials responsible for counting the votes say, "We're going to stop counting votes now because there's no way Ahmadinejad can lose at this point?" Or did they quietly continue to count all the votes anyway?
In short, what was Iranian law governing this matter?
One of the goals of any nation is to assure domestic tranquility. Perhaps that is why Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at one point, had urged Iranians to unite behind Ahmadinejad, saying his victory was a "divine assessment." Mighty strong words from a virtual pope.
I tend to view movies like "Rosewater" with great skepticism. And I tend to be very suspicious of the posturings of people like Hillary Rodham Clinton who swear up and down that Iran will never be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons. But more than that, her real goal is to prevent Iran from prospering to a point that could challenge Israel as the Middle East's greatest power. Her mantra is, "We must do everything in our power to keep them down, while I keep raking in millions." Sorry, but I don't buy into her having the moral high ground.
Of course Clinton, like all of the other naysayers, know that Iran has a right to build a nuclear weapons arsenal by invoking Article X of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But they won't admit this and our lapdog media never breathes a word about this option. ["Come on, Steve Kroft," I dare you."
I think about that whenever anyone talks about what a police state Iran is and that they have such a tightly-controlled media. Our own media in the USA is pretty tightly controlled. As for a US police state? Our two-party system's monopoly, our corporate power, our unconstitutional filibuster, and routine gerrymandering practices exert such great practical control over our population that ordering cops to shoot down citizens in the street isn't necessary.
But make no mistake about this. If the powers that be would ever decide that shooting us down in cold blood had to be done, they would so order.
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Steven Searle, just another member of the
Virtual Samgha of the Lotus and
former candidate for USA president (in 2008 & 2012)
Contact me at bpa_cinc@yahoo.com
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