A Dragon Arrives!

Let's get one thing out of the way first: it's an art-house fare that shifts between different genres (not even trying to be seamless) and is comfortable with it and it also definitely should be avoided by all people who are not fans of narrative structures that aren't, well, exactly straight-forward. If you're more open to experiments and weirdities that festival cinema offers, you might be in for a treat.

The movie starts out as a detective with hints of something supernatural to come. Supernatural does indeed come quickly but then -Bam!, movie starts to present itself as mockumentary with director and various other people, some of whom are directly related to the main characters, talking about the events that happened in the past. And then it shifts back to the fictional action that starts to lean towards something vaguely resembling a spy thriller while at the same time continuing the first story-line. But then mockumentary kicks back and so it continues towards the end, with characters in the present explaining some of the events and back-stories of the fiction (or not fiction?) we see in between. There's some scary suspense thrown in as well as our main characters try to uncover the mysteries in the desert. One of the "real" real characters turns out to be playing himself in the "movie" part. Objects from the "movie" part begin to appear in the future part that is the mockumentary.

At times it is a bit complicated to follow but compared to some surrealistic movies like last year's "Reality" it's easy. The pace is patient and not everything gets explained completely but the main story-line wraps up nicely and in the end. The film does wander quite a bit between all the different sub-plots and at times you might just wish that it would stop switching to the documentary-mode but patience is rewarded.

Besides, acting is on point, even if there are no stand-out performances here, cinematography is gorgeous and gets complimented nicely by the stylish period costumes, some of which look totally surreal in the desert landscapes.

The soundtrack deserves a special mention, with the Arabic motives overridden by western-style thumping electronic rhythms. Yes, it's been done before but it's nevertheless done great here again.

I fear that us western viewers might miss some (if there are any) metaphors or allusions but it doesn't take away from the fact that the movie is totally hypnotic, intriguing, beautiful and never predictable. In the end, I loved it.

Dragons are from legends, from myths, from superstition, and in Mani Haghighi's new film the title sets the stage for the story we will try to follow as challenged art-film enthusiasts. The plot—a concoction of genres—requires utter attention to the dialogue, which comes to us in speedy subtitles that flash unfamiliar names like Babak Hafizi, Behnam Shokouhi, Keyvan Haddad, Saeed Jahangiri, and Shahrzad Besharat. The names flash as either first or last names depending on the scene, so it's difficult to remember who is who. The plot unravels via the dialogue, some of it reportage in a fake documentary style, with the director Haghighi being interviewed about how he discovered the story and made the movie. The film's opening credits poke fun at the currently popular trend of "Based on a true story." Those who thrive on mind-bender plots like Inception will be thrilled to take on this movie.

Qualities in Dragon mirror qualities in other Iranian films of a mythical character, White Meadows (Rasoulof 2009) coming to mind, though in Dragon the contemporary world integrates thoroughly with the primitive, superstitious, cult-following villagers on the island of Qeshm, where political exiles are sent. The three protagonists from Tehran—Babak, Keyvan, and Behnam—who investigate the island's haunted cemetery prone to geologically impossible earthquakes, dress in Western garb in contrast to the turbaned, scarfed, robed villagers. Charaki, the island's government agent originally from Tehran, dresses like Babak in a tie and Homburg hat. But he's lived so long among the villagers that he keeps their secrets from the regime. Suits and Homburgs on the island's barren landscape of tawny, cavernous mountains clash with the primitive environment, but they also symbolize the vast chasm between the modern world and the island's tribal rituals, superstition, and magic.

The movie's predominant plot conundrum needles the mind to work out its puzzle, which is more difficult for non-Iranian audiences because of nods to cultural traditions and the Farsi language translated in fleeting subtitles. In fact, the plot is simple, but it's ingeniously woven into politics, hallucinations, flashbacks and flash forwards, changing genres, and an overarching atmosphere of a fantasy quest. And that legend or fairy tale quality—mixed with eerie horror motifs and evil characters (Charaki and Almas)—creates suspense. The haunted cemetery in the nowhere land of ghostly mountains, dominated by a fantastical shipwreck littered with vestiges of former dwellers, transports us to the imaginary realm where bizarre phenomena occur.

The modern world intrudes to solve a crime: a young political prisoner (Samei) hanging from the rafters of the shipwreck only days before his release. Charaki tells Babak, sent by the intelligence agency to investigate, that it was a suicide, but Babak can see from the neck wounds that it was a murder. He tells Charaki he'll spend the night in the shipwreck to read the dead prisoner's books and scrawled gibberish on the walls. He also insists that the body be buried in the cemetery just outside the ship, despite Charaki's warning that any body buried there causes an earthquake. The place is considered haunted and villagers won't go near it. No one has been buried there for one hundred years. Babak asserts he isn't afraid and orders the body to buried. As the night descends over the deserted eerie shipwreck, Babak settles on his cot to read and moments later an earthquake shatters the walls above his head.

Babak returns to Tehran to enlist the help of two experts—geologist Benham and sound engineer Keyvan—to solve the earthquake mystery. These two specialists first want assurance that Babak is not working for the intelligence agency. Here, with the subtitles telling the whole story in a shifting, patchwork way, audiences may lose the thread of who Babak, and his boss Saeed Jahanjiri, really are, for on the surface they appear as agents of the secret police. But dialogue and documentary reportage tell us they are actually members of a counterintelligence group known as Hozvaresh, led by Jahanjiri.

The plot further entangles itself through its documentary genre. The film's director, Mani Haghighi, tells his interviewer how he first found out about the cemetery story through the contents of a metal box that showed up in his grandfather's closet. We then watch black-and- white footage from his grandfather Ebrahim Golestan's movie, Brick and the Mirror, which shows Keyvan working as sound engineer. Haghighi tells us that Keyvan disappeared during the shoot in 1964. It is the myriad plot detours like this—executed through shifting voices under interrogation, documentary interviews, live action, and mystery tapes turning up—that the simplicity of the plot becomes obscured. At the same time, it is all these clever accouterments and genre layering that make the movie compelling.

No dragon ever arrives—the one supposedly living under the cemetery and causing the quakes. But a camel appears twice and symbolizes Babak's hallucinogenic clairvoyance related to the disappearance of the murdered prisoner's lover, Halimeh. In both cases, Babak's encounter with the vision of a camel (who represents Halimeh's mother) leads to the rescue of Halimeh's infant daughter Valileh, who then appears twenty years later in the documentary part of the movie, adding a fresh piece of evidence to the story—the last puzzle piece. At the end of the movie, when music clashes and clangs loudly like the primitive village colliding with modern Tehran, we hear the baying of a camel mixed in. His voice was part of bringing truth to the fore.

The Dragon's plot can only be understood through words, but the film's visual aura, its fantastical, spooky setting and atmosphere keep us mesmerized: the Arabian Nights interior of the shipwreck—lit by a thousand candles—the crackling campfires in the cemetery at night, the tribal rituals with a skinned goat, the ghost-story music permeated with evil, and the supernatural noises and occurrences that mix with hallucinogenic experiences. Although films should be understood through their visual content, and Dragon cannot be understood without its language, the movie is a grand visual work of masterly filmmaking.

It's challenging to craft a review without expressing my disappointment; however, as it's crucial for me that those unfamiliar with this movie gain insights, I maintain a spoiler-free approach. I believe directors should uphold an ethical standard to honor their audience, cinema, and themselves. Unfortunately, Mr. Haghighi, the director of this film, seems to lack such boundaries. Whether he is unaware of the potential insult to the audience or simply indifferent remains unclear. I aim to alert prospective viewers with this review.

While I would have given "A Dragon Arrives!" a one-star rating, the commendable aspects include cinematography, the location, acting, the score, and even the plot, ranging from good to very good. My recommendation is to move on from this movie and avoid investing your time and energy, as I did.

Maani Haghighi is trying to do something "different" here and he's not afraid of the critics. That's admirable to me, especially best movies ever made by Iranians are mostly good "drama", and do not have the innovation factor to them. Yes, I personally love a good drama, but I would LOVE to see something different from time to time and I loved that Haghighi tried to do such a thing. May it change something in our cinema.

Some people don't like narrative films (I've heard that a lot about many movies and series like Modern Family), which I thought was perfect for this movie.

It is a bit hard to follow at first, because you don't know what you should be expecting and you don't get what is happening. But when you get used to it, you get more comfortable with the movie itself and will start enjoying it.

It is important to know that the point was not finding the answer to their question, but to get what happened to the characters, how it happened and how they ended up where they ended up at last. If you keep thinking about "the question", you will find the movie disappointing.

Mani Haghighi is royalty in the Iran's so-called Intellectual community. By being related to a handful of eminent artists, he has acquired a sense of confidence with which he delivers a stew of clumsy story-telling and amateur symbolism, with awkward pandering to Iranian intellects' nostalgia and a stuffy sense of humor. In my humble opinion, this movie is yet another fix for Mr. Haghighi's wounded ego; there, I've said it.

As for the story: days after 1965's assassination of Prime Minister Hassan Ali Mansour, an exiled Marxist revolutionary hangs himself. The secret police (SAVAK) suspects a link between the two and sends Agent Bobak Hafezi to investigate. Bobak finds himself in a horror-movie cemetery and shipwreck remains of 16-century Irano- Portuguese wars, where he experiences a "macguffin" earthquake, goes rough and employs a sound designer(?) with silence-fetish (who of course works for Director Mani Haghighi's folks) and a stiffly acted seismologist-ish civil engineer to uncover the truth(?) without the agency's knowledge(?). The plot makes no sense, and it's still not the worst thing about the movie. Countless cringe-worthy cameos by politicians and flaunt intellectuals is nothing but embarrassing. They do make the movie look like a documentary; a bluffing, unintelligible documentary.

The movie fails, even as a parody, even in the surrealist context of "anything goes". I give it two stars for its decent cinematography and two for Christophe Rezai's mind-sweeping music. The rest deserves nothing.