Rosewater

Synopsis: The story of Maziar Bahari (Gael Garcia Bernal) an Iranian-born journalist living in London who was arrested in Iran while covering the 2009 elections for Newsweek. Accused of being a spy, he was thrown into jail and interrogated over a four month period.

Adapted from Maziar Bahari’s 2011 memoir, “Then They Came for Me”, Rosewater is the directorial debut of Jon Stewart, the well-known anchor of the long-running satirical alt-news TV programme, The Daily Show, which is the actual show that Bahari appeared on referenced in this film and that the Iranians authorities (like many Americans) failed to recognize as a comedy show (albeit with deadly serious intents) and took it to be evidence of Bahari’s hand-in-glove relationship with the American imperialist running dogs.

Over and above the personal connection to Bahari, Rosewater is evidently a heartfelt project for Stewart who is a vocal agitator for civil liberties but it is also a deadly earnest, even too obviously programmatic, one.  The fundamental problem with it is however that, without wanting to seem churlish about the reality of Bahari’s ordeal, Stewart has not found a way to effectively dramatize the story and it comes off as a very minor, even inconsequential, incident in the long history of political-motivated injustice.  We get an awful lot of information including the pregnancy of his girlfriend back in London, Bahari's memories of his dead father and sister, both political activists, and along with these personal aspects a potted political history of Iran from the days of the Shah to the present-day (i.e. 2009) activities of the Iranian anti-fundamentalist Green Movement but Stewart never manages to rise above the diligent (and some heavy-handed post-production FX) in laying out this material.

The casting of Bernal in the lead is a head-scratcher.  It is not that the actor is not adequate to the role but why get a Mexican to play an Iranian?  Perhaps it was to inject some star-power to the production but I can’t say I felt much different about the relatively unknown Danish actor Kim Bodnia who plays the “specialist” assigned to extract a confession from Bahari. The difference when real Iranians appear on screen is palpable.

The result is a kind of neither-fish-nor-fowl drabness. We mercifully don’t get the Argo style of Hollywood makeover but we don’t get dramatic realism either.  Bernal’s Bahari seems little affected physically or psychologically by his prolonged incarceration and brow-beating but frankly that doesn’t seem all that bad anyway.

Although at times the film shows a glimmer of insight, such as into the fear that lies in the hearts of oppressors, little else about Rosewater strikes us as needing telling, particularly as so many films have told us the important stuff already and with much greater immediacy and finesse.

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