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Amir Naderi is a filmmaker who is so original that if someone were to write a book about him, it would probably be called ‘A Cinema of Ecstatic Vision’ because no one apart from Martin Scorsese seems to love movies and the potential technology has to offer as much as him. Naderi was born in Iran, and he was a notable person in the Iranian New Wave explosion of talent that happened between 1969 and 1979. He immigrated to the US in the 1980s and made movies in America, Italy, and Japan, but before he left Iran, he directed what is considered the first masterpiece of Post-Revolutionary Iran ‘The Runner’ which is considered one of the most thrilling films of all time.
“People who saw the film loved it” is what a friend told me a while back. While this could be fairly accurate, the truth is that only a handful of Americans have witnessed it, until now. Most Iranians and even foreigners appreciated this work, however, it is an undeniable fact that the lines people have carved around it give little hint or insight into the language used. The reason for this is self-explanatory but it requires a little context. From the mid-’80s on, the Iranian cinema’s revival progressed steadily and produced some phenomenal films. Nevertheless, it was not until Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 1995 that gets started. Consequently, distributors started paying attention, and Iranian movies became an international spectacle.
If The Runner was one of the films that suffered because of attention, then it definitely is one of the films that has retained its reputation for its legendary status among Iranian film admirers and cinephiles. The rest is history and now it is finally getting its chance for prime-time viewing in the U.S. courtesy of Bruce Goldstein’s Rialto Pictures which deals in cinema’s classic highlights.
The movie is perfectly suited for the viewers of Film Forum located in New York, where it is being premiered this coming Friday. However, special attention must be drawn to the fact that all film students of the region, whether studying cinema production or cinema studies, make a point to watch The Runner. To claim that the 1984 movie feels as if it never aged would be an understatement. I find it hard to think of any movie made in 2022 that inspires the younger generation of filmmakers as much, or brings as much joy to the craft as this film does.
It starts with a scream of both awe and agony coming from a boy staring at the tankers in the distance on the sparkling Persian Gulf. This is 11-year-old Amiro (wonderfully played by Madjid Niroumand), a scruffy and orphaned child who survives in the city of Abadan. (Since the Iran-Iraq war was brewing in the region where the film was shot, Naderi had to shoot in different locations.)
The story is self telling. Like the images of a surreal world, the boy’s random life is depicted as a dream filled with memories: battling kids, fetching empty bottles from the ocean, shining shoes or selling water, and even fishing, building his own makeshift town on the top of a gigantic abandoned tank, and watching the strange foreigners who stroll through the bustling port city (the film gives a deliciously cinematic portrayal of pre-revolution Iran), trying to learn the English alphabet just so he could finally read those astonishing aviation magazines.
“The Runner” captures one of the most competent paradoxes of childhood by portraying Amiro’s life as full of both freedom and constraints. A boy without an adult to dictate his actions can roam freely across breathtaking oceans, plains, and cities. However, he is wise enough to understand that this land provides no possibilities for him and that sheer poverty is the greatest snare. His focus constantly goes back to ways of escaping the ultimate trap through trains, ships, and most importantly, airplanes.
The most captivating thing about Amiro’s life was not so much what Naderi shows us, but how he shows it. Firooz Malekzadeh’s stunning color cinematography is what makes Amri’s surroundings the precise mixture of glowing light and colors, alongside vivid edges of a hyperrealistic painting. But, as with any great motion picture, Naderi’s most unique technique was in swift tracking and lateral motions which in this case were just as distinct as Scorsese. A memorable example is the shot from inside a speeding train as it wheels past a throng of boys who gallop wildly after it. It is clear that the aimless boy Amiri is, quite literally, the runner that the title references, but he often feels like the film itself. The movement is so dizzying (the film was edited by breathless Bahram Beyzai, who was one of if not the, greatest filmmakers in Iran).
As far back as I recall, “A Space Odyssey” was always a cinematic masterpiece. Naderi journeyed from Tehran to London in a VW bug, all just to be the first in line to watch Kubrick’s highly acclaimed science fiction film. Later in the 80s during the rise of Iranian cinema, everyone saw the impact of post-WWII Italian neorealism and French New Wave. “The Runner” is a perfect example of those two movements in Iranian cinema. It also reminds me of De Sica’s “Shoeshine” because it uses the stunning Italian landscape and tells a story with children as sociopathic characters. His films, while compassionate, feel heavily inspired by Godard in the sense that they are substantiated with reckless creatively unique visuals.
Although he did create big blockbuster films during the Iranian New Wave, Naderi also began to shift focus towards the more personal side of filmmaking. We can see that shift with his project “Harmonica.”
His teenage years were dramatized in a film titled “Experience” that he wrote and which was directed by Abbas Kiarostami. After the Iranian cinema suffered near-total destruction during the 1979 Revolution, there were questions about whether or not it would be revived during the rule of the Islamic Republic. In May 1981, Naderi, Kiarostami, Beyzai, and other New Wave veterans wrote an open letter to the regime asking for the reconstruction of the film industry. Within two years, their recommendations were implemented, and filmmaking commenced once again in Iran.
But then came the question: what kinds of films to create? When I asked Naderi, Kiarostami, and Beyzai about this during the interviews, they remembered that particular mutual agreement, which was to focus on children, as there was a new regime in place with draconian content guidelines such as women being required to wear a hijab even when they did not want to. Through this logic, these three filmmakers were able to accomplish and create three masterpieces that served as the first international calling cards of post-Revolutionary cinema. These were, by release date, “The Runner” and “Where Is The Friend’s House?” By Kiarostami, and “Bashu, The Little Stranger” by Beyzai.
All three films feature children from broken homes, but there is something about these films that has a positive ring to them as if the directors were not just excited to make films, but felt that they were making a new kind of cinema. In every creation, there are pieces of Iranian art history’s most impactful works, especially poetry. Watching The Runner reminds me of the Rumi due to his verse being called ecstatic. I suppose that’s where Naderi comes in. He shares that unshakable belief of transformation through art and the energy surrounding spirituality. Cinema can be magical and inspiring, it doesn’t have to cease.
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