Review of The Seed of the Sacred Fig / دانه‌ی انجیر معابد, directed by Mohammad Rasoulof

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

Because I had such a limited budget though, I really had to cut down on the subscriptions and spending when it comes to what I was doing in my free time. Subscriptions and movie rentals can really add up when it comes to expenses, especially when you’re unemployed and don’t have a steady stream of money coming your way.

I relied a lot on our local library because not only do they offer free books to everyone with a library card, but they also have DVDs, telescopes, first aid kits if you’re learning CPR, and so much more. I was going every week for movies and books so I didn’t have to spend money. One day, I aim to donate back to the library when I do have a proper income.

I requested a DVD copy of The Seed of the Sacred Fig because I had been meaning to watch the movie for a long time, ever since I knew it coming out, and I knew that my parents had wanted to watch it too. On a Sunday afternoon I popped the DVD into the DVD player and we all watched it. We’re Iranian, so this hits home for us.

Let’s get into the review!

The story of the Mahsa Amini protests, but told through a family whose patriarch is involved with executing people in the legal system.

We begin this movie introduced to the patriarch of the family we see in the film, as he goes back to his hometown to pray. His name is Iman, he is a lawyer in the Islamic Republic, and he lives in Tehran with his wife Najmeh and daughters Rezvan and Sana. He has just been promoted to the Tehran Revolutionary Court, and now he is in charge of very important cases in the eyes of the government.

With the money from this job he is now able to afford a bigger and nicer apartment in Tehran, allowing his family to live in comfort. However, Iman quickly realizes the government wants to use him to just sign off on execution orders, whether the victim is innocent or not. The last guy in the job was fired because he refused to kill people so openly, and Iman is given a gun and told he needs to remain anonymous, even to his own family members.

He stores the gun in his apartment, where Najmeh wearily sees it and where he hides in his drawers. Things escalate when Mahsa Amini is killed by the morality police and people begin rioting on the streets throughout Iran. Najmeh drops Rezvan and her friend off at their college (her friend, who was waiting to move into the dorm, was staying in the house, much to Najmeh’s dismay), but then the protests escalate dramatically.

Najmeh and Sana head home, but then Sana pretends to need pads so Rezvan, who was missing, can bring Sadaf inside their home. Although we see Najmeh insisting that the rioters are not moral people, she helps when she comes home and sees Sadaf has been shot in the face while they were at the college. They all realize they cannot tell Iman what had happened, and Sadaf is sent back to her dorm.

She is arrested when she goes back to the dorms, and Najmeh tells her daughters they need to be good and avoid drawing attention to their family because of Iman’s job. She does agree to use her connections to find Sadaf in the jails, but Rezvan and Sana watch what’s happening in the world outside with bated breath. They agree with the protests, which continue to grow bigger and more violent.

Iman becomes paranoid because of this, and he has been signing death warrants for the protestors at his job. Things reach a boiling point at home when Rezvan openly disagrees with her father about what’s going on in Iran, and he tells her she has consumed propaganda from outside Iran. When his gun goes missing, he becomes openly hostile and suspicious of his family members.

He forces his wife and daughters to an interrogation, as he insists he no longer feels safe in his home or can trust the people in his life. At the same time, people who’ve been leaking information of those involved with the government leak his details and address, leading him to take all of the family members’ phones and drive them to his hometown. His coworker gives him a spare gun, which he brings with him.

But on the drive, a couple recognizes him at a gas station, leading Iman to violently run them off the road and threaten them. He takes their phone, which they were using to record what was happening, and leaves them tied up on the side of the road. While that happens, Sana reveals she has the gun and the daughters try to use their phones to call their uncle, but there’s no service.

They arrive at Iman’s childhood home, and he begins his own trial. He sets up a camcorder and tries to force out who had the gun, and Najmeh confesses falsely to protect her girls. Then Rezvan says it was her, but when she goes to the car, where the gun was hidden, it’s gone. Iman locks the two of them up in the basement as Sana runs into the woods with the gun.

Sana lures him out with recordings and speakers, then locks Iman in a shed. She then frees her mother and sister, and they run into the ruined, abandoned town. Iman chases after them, but when he catches Najmeh, she starts screaming. The sisters find their mother on the ground with their father in front of them, and Sana pulls out the gun.

Iman pulls his gun as well, taunting her that she would never shoot him. She panics and shoots the ground beneath his feet, leaving it to crumble and killing him. The film then ends with more footage from the Mahsa Amini protests and acts of defiance against the government.

Overall Thoughts

Even though this movie was three hours and I was stiff after watching it, I was awed by what I saw on the screen. This went by so quickly and was such an incredibly watching experience. Implementing the footage from the actual protests, albeit out of necessity because the filmmaker was not allowed to shoot this film to begin with (it was done secretly), was a brilliant move.

And, as an Iranian American myself, I understood inherently what was happening on the screen. I understood Najmeh and her shifting perspective throughout the movie—she was a woman who comes from a different, more conservative time in Iran, and towards the end we learn how she was trying to protect them all in her own way. It was the only way she knew how.

The daughters belong to a new generation, and I understood their struggle as well as a daughter. I grew up under similar circumstances, and I can see the cognitive dissonance with the older Iranian men in my life. They say women, life, freedom and hope that the government changes, but they don’t actually care about women’s rights. I also have experienced those forms of gaslighting before too.

The problem goes beyond people like Iman, and the fact this film grounds itself in the women’s perspectives, and I think that’s why it appealed to me so much. It’s also just a great movie.

Go watch this one if you have a free Sunday night and are in need of a movie to watch. I think it’s very much worth watching at least once in your life!

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