Vote with your feet

An interview with director Babak Payami.

By Robert Avila

Secret Ballot

Iranian filmmaker Babak Payami's second feature film, Secret Ballot, opens this week in San Francisco. I spoke with him while he was in town last April for the San Francisco International Film Festival where Secret Ballot had its U.S. debut.

Bay Guardian: The film's comic and dramatic potential is derived largely from the competing realms of authority represented by the main characters as well as others they meet along the way.

Babak Payami: I'm hoping that the film works on different layers of meaning. You have the human, emotional level of meaning, much in the style of romantic comedies of the '40s, where two opposing characters of the opposite sex, confined to a certain time and space, have a task at hand for the fulfillment of which they need each other, and, in their persistence and antagonism, some kind of affection and understanding transpires between the two. On the other end of the spectrum is the iconoclastic layer of meaning, where you have all these icons with significance: the rigid, militant character who is justifying his own existence and his ability to kill people through this notion of the nonexistent smuggler-enemy; and then you have this naïve idealist who thrives on change, and she confronts the soldier and needs him, as much as she stands for everything he stands against, but they need each other to fulfill the task at hand. And then you have all these icons of the box and the gun and the bed and the post and the tent and the lightbulb, all these things. That's in the thematic structure of the film. It's a very sensitive and touchy topic, especially in the context of countries like Iran, and one feels like a tightrope acrobat treading on a very thin line at a dangerously high altitude and without a safety net. And the elements of the comic and the absurd were like that balancing stick in the acrobat's hand, to keep the balance, to not be judgmental and not wave political flags but to portray the absurd contradictions in the situation that hopefully seem as much global as it is specific and particular to the situation in Iran and countries like Iran.

BG: Is comedy a necessary ingredient for getting your message across? Is it easier when it's comedy?

BP: I don't know if it easier or not, but it was an interesting way to keep the balance, to not be offensive to people, because again in those countries, in places like Iran – even here [in the U.S.], where "you're either with us or against us" – it's very difficult to try to get into a debate and get into an exchange of opinion, because you're getting very hard-line with this kind of mentality. And that's where the comic and the absurd help alleviate yet not undermine the sharpness of the argument.

BG: Though even comedians can have a hard time talking today.

BP: Oh, very much. I was shocked when I heard Bill Maher was put out of a job, at least temporarily, and it's amazing how the establishment that propagates freedom and so on ... I remember my first chosen title for this film was Necessary Illusions, as an homage to Mr. Chomsky, and I think it's a very appropriate title to this film. But I decided for obvious reasons not to go for that title. But again, it touches on the global and more universal aspects of this film. A lot of the issues of this film are right here in our own backyard in North America.

BG: Taking one of the taboos broached in your film, the inequality between men and women, was that something you found particularly difficult to approach in Iran today, or is it easier?

BP: You know, I don't look at it this way. Those who quit should. I try to say what I have to say as best as I can given the circumstances, but I never think of how difficult it is. What was really important for me was to go against was this typical portrayal of women as passive victims of oppression, because I think that's far from the truth. In reality, women in Iran and other societies like Iran are very proactive. As a matter of fact, if you look at the net effect of their proactive engagement in social issues, they're more successful than feminist movements and women's rights movements in the West, where they're sitting in very posh liberal environments and they're free to do, relatively speaking, whatever they want to do. This is not to undermine the efforts of the feminist and women's rights movements in the West, but I'm saying that they're not passive victims. They are very much engaged in society. They don't have to be right or wrong, and we don't even look at it from that perspective. What we're saying is despite the oppression, despite the limitations that have been imposed upon the women in Iran and societies like Iran, they're very active, and they're very engaged in finding, maintaining, and expanding their position and influencing society, and, I think, they are very successful in doing so. This is not to say there are no problems for women in Iran, and this is not to neglect the fact that there is oppression against women, but they're doing something about it.

BG: Your main character seems to fit that description.

BP: Absolutely. She licked the soldier despite his gun, and despite the fact that she's proven wrong in many instances.

BG: How did you cast the film?

BP: They're all nonprofessionals. They have nothing to do with the film industry; all of them are normal people off the street. And contrary to the improvisational freedom that most Iranian films of the past are known for, in which the use of nonprofessional actors is potentially more accommodating and more possible, with these kinds of films – my two films, One More Day and this one – they're very much stylized. Everything is done in advance and choreographed in advance. And with this film having the comic undertone, you need the syntax and the rhythm for the comic aspects of the film to work for the audience. Therefore it was a bit of an extra challenge for me, but it was an interesting learning experience, because when you use nonprofessional actors you're completely disarmed. With professional actors you have this arsenal of technicality that you can engage with the actors and try to work out a scene. But when you use nonprofessional actors, all of that goes out the window. You have to relate to these characters on a purely human level in order to bring them to the right mentality and also to be consistent because we live with them. You can potentially do that in one sitting in one day, but if you have to keep that consistency throughout two months it becomes a life, in which somehow occasionally the camera is also rolling. It doesn't stop when the camera stops. It's a very rewarding, challenging, and also very interesting experience that taught me a lot. I found it contributing to the potential richness of the film.

BG: So even though you had it very well scripted before hand, there was some give and take with the performers.

BP: Well, you know, they can't do the dialogue exactly as you put it down. We usually don't put dialogue down specifically. We have the general elements of the dialogue that has to take place, and the confrontation and the conflict that has to take place. It was really a psychological game to engage them intellectually into every scene and get the kind of reaction and responses that was required for the film.

BG: You must have spent a lot of time with the actors.

BP: We had very little time, and I spent a lot of energy. [Laughs] That's why these films take two months to make.

BG: You also spent a lot of time with the composition of each shot. I noticed there were a lot of long shots.

BP: And very few close-ups.

BG: This was obviously intentional. What did you have in mind?

BP: Well, the film is about distances. The film is about alienation. The film is about lack of communication. The film is about not having a close-up impression of what you are getting into. The only close-ups that you see are the relatively emotional scenes between the soldier and the girl. The rest of it is very much distance and very much consistent with the argument of the film. That is, the alienated mentality of people who are taking a self-righteous attitude of importing and injecting democracy and progress into a society they know nothing of. And also the alienation on the iconoclastic level between the character of the soldier and the character of the girl. And also the remoteness and the isolated entity of this environment that we're looking at. I mean, you can sit down and look and realize that a lot of the arguments and concepts are as valid in the United States as they are in Iran, yet it feels so remote, it feels so "out of my backyard," it feels so away from here. And hopefully, through the style of engagement of this film, I could get the audience to emotionally grasp this kind of sense of distance and alienation that I wanted to convey.

BG: You decided to return to Iran in 1998 having left it when you very young. Did it seem to have changed very much?

BP: That's the constant about the world, that there is no constant. Especially so with Iran because it's a very vibrant and dynamic society, continuously changing and evolving. I mean, I go on a festival tour, come back after three weeks, and Iran is a different country. So obviously, yes it changed. Not necessarily always for the better, but I believe whenever any society becomes static, that's the danger, that's the problem. As long as there's change, that's good, because with change and upheaval and evolution, there's the potential for progress. It's not an automatic given that any society that changes and evolves, evolves for the better. I mean, look what happened in Germany, and so on. But it's good to keep the potential for improvement and progress. And that's what's encouraging about Iran; that it's continuously changing and it's evolving within itself and in its relation to the outside world. Not always for the better, mind you, but at least it's in motion. And that's something that's very noteworthy. Probably the rate of change and evolution in Iran is slightly more rapid than elsewhere in the world because of some of the unique aspects of the country itself and because of the extraordinary circumstances that that region is facing. Iran is a multinational, multicultural society by heritage. From 3,000 years ago, from the original conception of the Persian Empire, it was a coming together of different religions and nationalities. Even today, from any given point in Iran, if you travel 200 miles in either direction you will run into people with completely different languages and customs and ethnic and cultural backgrounds. That's one of the beautiful aspects of that country. It's a very beautiful, dynamic country.

BG: How are constants counterproductive?

BP: What has happened in the West is that we think we've figured it out. We figured out the democratic system. We have a monopoly over it. Just like Coca-Cola, we have a patent over it, we've registered it, it's our trademark, and that's it. This is democracy. And now with a self-righteous attitude we have the right to inject that into everybody else. The minute that constant appears that's the start of danger and failure. And that's why the Western democratic system has somehow failed in the last several decades throughout the world, as well as within itself. And because of this notion that it doesn't need to change, that we've got it all figured out, that's where this arrogance comes from. I myself have been brought up and trained and I've lived in the West. My first academic language is English, and I've lived in the West and with Westerners, though I've never lost touch with the East, so in a way I have the right material for bridging the two. I see the strengths and flaws of both sides. And this static approach to the concept of democracy and progress is really troublesome and possibly one of the key reasons for the problems that we're facing in the world today.

BG: Is the static tendency you just described applicable to Western cinema versus, for example, cinema from Iran?

BP: A fundamental difference is that mainstream commercial cinema, the West being best known for having refined that or perfected that, holds the audience as passive recipients of information and stimulus. We don't need you to have much more energy than to just drink up your pop and eat up your popcorn, and the rest we'll handle for you. The cinematic machinery imposes itself upon the subject matter and is always in a position of power towards the subject. Whereas this kind of alternative cinema, Iran having contributed to it, necessitates the participation of the audience into the realm of the film for it to become whole, otherwise it's missing something. In its relation to its subject matter, it's completely at the mercy of its subject matter, as opposed to the huge machinery that imposes itself on it. It is constantly at the mercy of the subject matter in giving it material, so that it can become something. So you have this cinematic machinery that is not very sophisticated from a technical standpoint, and it's in between its audience and its subject matter, and it's bringing them together in a way. And that's the beauty of that kind of filmmaking and that kind of film industry. It's the respect for the subject matter and the respect for the audience that makes it what it is and makes it such a different and rewarding experience for the audience once they kick into that wavelength.

BG: Did you have the United States in mind at all while making this film?

BP: We started shooting the film in November [2000], and that was during the election in the United States, and at night during the shoot I was checking my e-mails and CNN and so on. And when push came to shove here, I wrote a scene, and I added it to the film, dedicated to the Florida election fiasco. I'm not going to disclose which scene. That is for the public to find out. But one scene is dedicated to the Florida election.