It’s Winter (Zemastan) (12A)

It’s Winter is a poetically melancholy portrait of life in contemporary Iran. It’s centered around the struggle of the Iranian working classes as they fight for the most basic of human needs. Pitts merges quasi documentary and working life realism in a story that whilst focusing on the poetics of everyday life, illustrates wider themes relating to the dissipation of the family unit and the fragmentation of a society who’s members see no other option for survival than to leave their homes and families in search of work.

For those that know little of Iranian filmmaking or Iranian culture It’s Winter offers a foothold into the ever growing aesthetic of Iranian cinema, and Iran itself. Seeming forever demonized in the minds of Westerners through an association with conflict and threat (which some may ague has been unavoidable for Iran due to its geographical positioning) Iran is one of the world’s oldest existing civilizations. It’s Winter like the ever growing oeuvre of Iranian cinema gives voice to the country, in this case the lower echelons of society struggling to survive, far removed from many people’s perceptions of Iranian life. Thematically it has much in common with Nick Broomfield’s new film Ghosts about the immigration and exploitation of the poor in China. Whilst the theme is regrettably shared, It’s Winter communicates through a unique aesthetic, an Iranian humanist language voicing both individual and national identity, which has been inspiring non Iranian filmmakers for some time.

Pitts opens the film with its central character, the baron and desolate landscape, as the words of a poem ‘Winter’ are spoken. The aesthetic of the dead landscaped blanketed by snow in a seemingly eternal winter, offering no hope of respite effectively sets up the theme of struggle, lack and isolation which is relentless throughout the film. For many of the characters such as Mokater and his wife, their surroundings and this poem speak more about their feelings than they themselves verbalize.

Mokater leaves his family to seek work, leaving his wife to care for his daughter and mother. A worn figure, defeated by the lack of any means of supporting his family in his hometown, his departure is tinged with a feeling of despair; he is a man almost devoid of hope. As he departs Marhab arrives in town. A traveler, moving to where the work is, Marhab shares many traits with the anti hero’s of the French New Wave. He has the arrogance of youth and is unafraid to question the structures that surround him – both mocking his friend’s belief in the sanctity of family duty, and also voicing his desire for more from life; not just to subsist but to have the opportunity to fully experience that which his class and poverty is preventing. He is also a figure of action and when he sees Mokater’s abandoned wife at the market he pursues her with relentless gall until they marry, free to do so as Mokater is now presumed dead. Yet for all his rhetoric Marhab reveals himself as open to defeat as his predecessor. Although he tries to cloak his eventual abandonment of the family unit in a cloud of opportunism, with rather more savoir fair than Mokater managed, it’s the same process and the same pressures have defeated him.

Within all this Mokaters wife says little, her daughter even less, observing her second father leaving with an almost resigned look in her eye, the future for Mokaters daughter looks bleak. And it’s this that left me in somewhat of a quandary. It’s Winter is poetic, beautifully composed, impeccably acted and unrelenting to the point of claustrophobia in its persistent pounding of the aesthetic of lost hope and despair. As such, it’s bloody hard to enjoy it. I appreciated it, but it’s so successful at what it sets out to achieve that I was desperate for it to finish. This is not flippant, I am aware that any work that explores themes of this nature are not going to be a ‘barrel of larfs’ but It’s Winter was so good it left me completely depressed, so much so that I became numb, unable to fully appreciate what I suspect is an even more beautiful formal style and depth of meaning than I can express here. So good film, but be prepared for a battering. I’m off to turn the heating up.