Rosewater (2014) (English Language)

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Review

103min

Cast: Gael García Bernal, Kim Bodnia, Shohreh Aghdashloo…and more

Writers: Jon Stewart, Maziar Bahari & Aimee Molloy

Drama based on the memoirs of Iranian “Newsweek” journalist Maziar Bahari who was imprisoned and abused by Iranian authorities on charges of espionage following the highly disputed Iranian presidential elections of 2009 and subsequent protests, directed by “king of political satire” Jon Stewart whose “Daily Show” was used as evidence against Bahari after he appeared in a comedy segment about Iran and the West.

Stewart makes his writing and directorial film debut with a straight dramatic adaptation of Bahari’s memoirs which mixes archive news footage and human drama.

The result is a film that dramatically changes gears from a factual representation of true events and an interesting lesson in USA-influenced Iranian history, to a straight and rather idealistic human drama that comes from Bahari’s account of his harrowing personal experiences in captivity.

At least 2 thirds of the film is spent on the minutiae of Bahari’s captivity, the long drawn-out depiction is intended to portray a sense of hopelessness but aside from the solid character performances it does not result in a compelling cinematic experience, when you add the constant convenient plot-driving hallucinations and flashback sequences, it actually starts to get irritating.

Perhaps Stewart took this project due to a misplaced sense of guilt over Bahari’s plight, but ‘Rosewater’ is also clearly his Ode to “real” journalism and its integrity, after all, true-story or not the hero is a journalist with an unshakable conscience and unbreakable integrity who is ultimately saved by other journalists.

We don’t question the nobility of the project and the power of the real human drama it depicts, but the way it’s framed is often idealistic and borderline naive which sometimes feels like a very well produced TV movie, we can’t help thinking that Stewart’s considerable talents would be better placed making political satire along the lines of Armando Iannucci’s ‘In the Loop’, or raging against the media like the classic ‘Network’.

The Bottom Line…

Idealistic and not always compelling, ‘Rosewater’ is nevertheless an interesting dramatic account of a troubling but fascinating piece of recent Geo-political history and harrowing a personal drama “Indie”, a solid if unspectacular directorial debut from John Stewart.

Rosewater is out on a limited UK release Friday the 8th of May

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