‘Cutting Through Rocks’ Review: An Iranian Woman Tries to Change Her Village in a Conflicted Documentary
Directors Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni bring a measured hand to “Cutting Through Rocks,” their debut documentary about the first councilwoman in a rural Iranian village. The film’s irascible but deeply principled subject — thirty-something divorcee Sara Shahverdi — gives the film its energy, though its lulls aren’t quite as purposeful. However, despite feeling drawn-out, the doc features occasional bursts of visual panache that help emphasize its underlying story.
Shahverdi is introduced trying to pry open a locked gate — both a literal chore, and a focused metaphor for the Herculean tasks before her as she runs for local office. Her town in the country’s northwest holds deeply patriarchal beliefs, which result in most of its girls being married off young. Shahverdi hopes to push for them to continue their studies. A fierce advocate for equality, she also ruffles the feathers of the men she grew up with, whose wives she now tries to uplift.
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One delightful segment involves Shahverdi helping her male constituents in exchange for them sharing their property with their spouses, which sends amusing shockwaves through the village. However, the opposition she faces is just as forceful, thanks to disgruntled male elders who begins attacking her image. All the while, she wears a wide smile and puts on sneakers beneath her lengthy abaya, which take her swiftly from one place to the next, investigating local infrastructure problems that no one else has bothered to fix.
“Cutting Through Rocks” has the advantage of a lively protagonist. The camera mostly captures her from a safe proximity, rather than emphasizing the events or emotions on screen. It is, first and foremost, an observational piece, and its fly-on-the-wall quality works wonders when the filmmakers happen to be in the vicinity of something cinematically exciting — like when Shahverdi righteously gets into a physical altercation.
Khaki and Eyni notably depend on Shahverdi’s actions as much as the village does. During moments of downtime or introspection, the film becomes languid in form, taking on a passive visual quality that even the most judicious editing can’t overcome. However, there are also a handful of scenes that depart from the film’s naturalistic texture in ways that draw attention to themselves. A closed judicial hearing over a young girl’s arranged betrothal clearly stands out as a re-enactment, given its traditionally dramatic over-the-shoulder coverage. The “who’s-who” and “how” of these scenes are never expounded upon (Is the judge in question an actor? Is a real judge delivering multiple takes?), and yet the story becomes uniquely propulsive in these moments.
When “Cutting Through Rocks” pulls back, as if to let its cinéma vérité become self-evident, its observations depend entirely on what happens to be unfolding before its lens, like its subjects were dictating the frame. There is a certain conceptual power in this, as though Shahverdi were shaping the filmmaking itself, though this approach has its limits. However, when the reverse becomes true, and Khaki and Eyni finally take charge of how Shahverdi is seen, the result is practically magical: women kick up dirt causing a political stir on liberating bike rides, and tableaus of the film’s magnanimous subject, silhouetted by sunlight, make her look heroic.
The film is often in lacking in such purposeful compositions. However, as a dance between a camera that projects the filmmakers’ intent, and one that acts as a canvas for Shahverdi’s, the result is interesting enough. It may not always be rousing, but it certainly piques, and satiates, curiosity.
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