Vancity Theatre
1181 Seymour Street
Vancouver.

Monday, May 12, 2008
Time: 9.30 pm
Price: $9.50

Iran, 2007, 106 min, 35mm
In Farsi with English subtitles

Directed By: Dariush Mehrjui
Cast: Bahram Radan, Golshifteh Farahani

Following a fine series of mostly conventionally made films about women, Dariush Mehrjui’s latest, Santouri (The Music Man), shows that he’s absorbed the influences of the youngsters in its story about Ali (Bahram Radan), a popular singer-songwriter and player of the santoor (an ancient stringed instrument played with two small mallets) and the emotional and physical price he pays for his heroin addiction. There’s a loose, fluid rhythm that courses through the film like an elixir, especially in the freeform way Mehrjui shifts between Ali's devastating downward course—set off when he is banned by authorities from playing in public—and his happier past…Far from serving as some sort of screed against the excesses of a younger generation of artists, Santouri suggests that Iran’s current cultural repression and rampant drug addiction are no mere coincidence.—Robert Koehler, LA Weekly