Rosewater **** (2014, Gael García Bernal, Kim Bodnia, Dimitri Leonidas) – Movie Review

In his courageous directorial debut, Jon Stewart writes and directs this real-life story about Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, who is detained by Iranian forces who brutally interrogate him under suspicion that he might be a spy.

Gael García Bernal is compelling and convincing as Maziar Bahari, who is held in Evin prison in Iran for 118 days, blindfolded, interrogated and forced to confess and apologise. The one distinguishing feature about his captor-interrogator-torturer is the smell of rosewater. Kim Bodnia is suitably chilling as Javadi (Rosewater).

An interview and sketch that Maziar did with a journalist on Stewart’s TV series The Daily Show was used as supposed evidence that Maziar was a spy and in communication with the American Government and the CIA.

After about a quarter of the way, the whole film is virtually confined to the hero’s prison cell, and it’s a great tribute to Stewart’s ingenuity and imagination that this stays uber-gripping. The film and its story are gruelling, but fortunately more uplifting than depressing and upsetting, unless you look at the overall picture, which the film does, and then the situation is truly depressing and upsetting.

This is a story that needs to be told on screen, and Stewart does it extremely well, with some imaginative film-making touches to flesh out his warm, sincere heart.

Stewart’s screenplay is based on the book Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival by Maziar and Aimee Molloy.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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