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A Cinema of Ecstatic Vision can be the title of the book on director Amir Naderi. No other director outside of Martin Scorsese seems to be as totally in love with cinema and as fascinated by the kinetic potential of the medium as Naderi. He is a true original. He was a significant contributor to the talent boom known as the Iranian New Wave and was Iranian-born (1969-1979). Although he relocated to the United States in the 1980s and later produced films there as well as in Italy and Japan, “The Runner,” the first masterpiece of post-Revolutionary Iran, and one of the most thrilling movies ever filmed, was created by him before he left his home country.
A buddy recently said, “Everyone who sees this movie falls in love with it.” That’s probably true, but sadly not many Americans have had the opportunity to do so until recently. The explanation for why is simple. Although the post-Revolutionary revival of Iranian cinema accelerated from the mid-1980s on and resulted in some extraordinary films, it wasn’t until 1995, when Jafar Panahi’s “The White Balloon,” which won the Camera d’Or at Cannes, that distributors started to pay attention and Iranian films became a global art-house phenomenon.
Even if “The Runner” was one of the movies that came out too soon to take advantage of that attention, cineastes and fans of Iranian cinema nevertheless hold it in high regard. And now, thanks to Bruce Goldstein’s Rialto Pictures, which specializes in the reissue of well-known film classics, it will finally receive a theatrical premiere in the United States.
Although the movie is a natural for the Film Forum in New York, where it will premiere on Friday, I would want to issue a special alert urging any production or cinema studies student in the New York region to attend “The Runner.” If anything, it would be an understatement to suggest that the 1984 film doesn’t look at all antiquated. There isn’t a 2022 movie that comes to mind that exudes as much delight in the creative process or that can inspire young artists in such a powerful way.
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A youngster seeing tankers out in the dazzling Persian Gulf lets out a yell of awe and desperation at first. This is 11-year-old Amiro, a ragamuffin who lives on his wits in coastal Abadan (wonderful Madjid Niroumand). (Naderi had to shoot outside of the city because the Iran-Iraq war was occurring there at the time the movie was shot.)
The story is based on my own life. The story’s impressionistic torrent reveals bits and pieces of the boy’s haphazard existence, like memories drifting up from a dream: earning money by selling water, shining shoes, or fishing for empty bottles in the sea; having fun with some kids while dealing with others’ intense rivalries; establishing his lone residence on the upper deck of a massive abandoned tanker; and observing the comings and goings, the attire, and the music of exotic foreigners who pass through the busy port city.
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In “The Runner,” which captures one of childhood’s central paradoxes, Amiro is depicted as having both freedom and restriction in his life. The youngster is free to roam exuberantly across a gorgeous panorama of sea, grasslands, and city because he has no adult dictating what he should do. He is however intelligent enough to see that poverty is the ultimate trap and that this area does not offer him a future. He keeps returning to the escape routes—trains, ships, and, most alluringly, airplanes.
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What Naderi depicts of Amiro’s life is never as interesting as how he depicts it. Amiro’s surroundings are beautifully portrayed in Firooz Malekzadeh’s stunning color cinematography, with the sharp edges of a hyperrealist painting. However, Naderi’s most distinguishing style is his use of motion (again, Scorsese comes to mind), particularly quick lateral tracking shots and pictures from inside a moving train as a group of youths race after it. Although the title clearly refers to the roving Amiro, the same word might also be used to describe the film’s frenetic breakneck pace (the editing is by Bahram Beyzai, one of Iran’s greatest filmmakers).
To dispel any misconceptions that Naderi developed this arresting visual language on his own, it’s important to note that among the important pre-Revolutionary directors, he was regarded as the most ardent cinephile. I once heard a tale about his driving a VW bug from Tehran to London to get a front-row seat for the premiere of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” in Iran. In the 1980s, when Iranian films started to show up at foreign film festivals, critics frequently noted a strong influence from the French New Wave and Italian Neorealism, the two most important movements in post-World War II cinema. “The Runner” provides evidence of both effects. Similar to De Sica’s “Shoeshine,” it was filmed in actual locales and features untrained children in a story about social outcasts. Its plot is drawn from the director’s personal life, similar to Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” in that regard. (The visuals of the movie may have been influenced by “Pierrot le Fou” and other Godard movies.)
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Naderi directed blockbusters with cinematic stars during the Iranian New Wave era, but he also pioneered the autobiographical vein in his work with the movie “Harmonica,” which also includes the character Amiro. (In “Experience,” which he wrote the script for and Abbas Kiarostami directed, his adolescent years were dramatized.) There were some who questioned if Iranian film would survive the Islamic Republic after it was essentially decimated after the 1979 Revolution. The New Wave veterans Naderi, Kiarostami, Beyzai, and others published an open letter encouraging the authorities to rebuild the cinema industry in May 1981. Their counsel was taken two years later, and Iranian cinema production picked back up.
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But then the question arose: what sorts of movies should be produced? In separate interviews, Naderi, Kiarostami, and Beyzai recalled to me their decision to make films about kids since dramatizing adult lives was too difficult under the regime’s new content limitations (such as requiring women to wear hijabs even though they wouldn’t in real life). Three masterpieces were produced as a result of this strategy, and they were the first international calling cards of post-Revolutionary cinema. The first film was “The Runner,” followed by Beyzai’s “Bashu, the Little Stranger” and Kiarostami’s “Where Is the Friend’s House?”
Despite the fact that all three pictures are about children living in difficult circumstances, there is an air of exhilaration about them, as if the directors were not only happy to be making movies again but also felt they were establishing a new cinema. However, there are references to Iranian art from the past, particularly poetry, throughout their original artistic work. Watching “The Runner” always makes me think of Rumi, whose poetry is frequently said to as ecstatic. Similar spiritual force and a conviction in the transformational power of art can be found in Naderi’s work. It is a cinematic vision that never fails to astound and motivate.
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