Terrestrial Verses

Channelling the spirit of Abbas Kiarostami, Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami’s deliciously dark satire Terrestrial Verses undertakes a rigorous formal inquiry into the nature of authority. This is a film that succinctly illustrates the heritable connection between Iranian filmmakers’ creative use of suggestive minimalism and their need to evade state control.

In nine simple vignettes, filmed indoors with a static camera, civilians in Tehran come face to face with individuals vested with power – parents, teachers, functionaries, businessmen – in delicate dialogues that broach taboos, minor and major. These range from hijab to hair colour, from baby naming to dog ownership. Each of the vignettes unfolds as an interview between a visible subject and an offscreen authority who grills them, at times with a sadistic relish.

In relegating figures of authority offscreen, Terrestrial Verses foregrounds both the Islamic Republic’s interdictions against representation and the invisible nature of the control that Iranian citizens are subject to from birth to death. Despite the Kafkaesque absurdity of the situations, the film reveals points of resistance – moments when power is challenged or subverted, either by recalcitrant characters or the filmmakers themselves, who flout taboos even as they demonstrate the near impossibility of doing so.

– Srikanth Srinivasan