Tehran. Lawyer Iman is at first happy to hear of his promotion to an investigating judge at the country's Revolutionary Court, but just then nationwide protests erupt after the death of a girl, Mahsa Amini, in police custody for not wearing a hijab, and he is shocked to find out his superiors expect him to simply sign any verdict sentencing accused people to death, before he can even research a case. Iman thus clashes badly with his wife, Najmeh, and their two teenage daughters, Rezvan and Sana. Rezvan's friend, Sadaf, joins the protests and is injured. When Iman's gun, given to him by the government for protection, cannot be found, and his personal info is leaked on the Internet, he drives off with his family to a secluded house in the countryside. He locks up Najmeh and Rezvan in two rooms to force them to confess taking the gun, but Sana has the weapon and hides outside. She locks up Iman in a basement, and releases Najmeh and Rezvan. Iman escapes and chases them around an abandoned ancient city. He approaches Sana, she shoots with the gun at the ground, which collapses and Iman falls down to his death.
A rare inside look at the Mahsa Amini protests, otherwise banned from being depicted in Iran's cinema, Mohammad Rasoulof's political drama "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" is a brave, noble, humanistic, ambitious and intelligent contemplation on gender apartheid in Ayatollah's Iran. It shows this clash through a family—on the one side, there is the female perspective, the wife Najmeh and the two teenage daughters, Rezvan and Sana (excellent Setareh Maleki), and on the other side, there is the male perspective, Iman, who on top of that works for the government court, signing death penalties assigned to him by the superiors. This way, the story presents the cyclic farce of the people who work for the system that suppresses the people, selling away their ethics in order to get a career promotion and climb up the hierarchy (Iman is promised a bigger apartment, which would be welcomed so that each of his two daughters has their own room), and explores their bad conscience. Remarkably, even the three female protagonists spend most of the film without wearing a hijab, at home, contrary to the dogma of Ayatollah's Iran's cinema.
The mother at first advises the daughters to avoid the protests, and has excuses for the death of Amini in police custody ("She died of a stroke. Is the government now to be blamed for anyone having a stroke?"), betraying her own gender, but with time has a character change and starts supporting the movement when Rezvan and Sana secretly bring their friend Sadaf, who joined the protests, to their home, and it is revealed half of Sadaf's face is badly injured because the police fired a shotgun at her. This leads to the best frame of the film, a close up shot of Sadaf's face as they are cleaning it and removing shrapnel from her skin, as later on the mother drops a dozen extracted metal shrapnel on the bathroom sink, with blood dripping from them. The movie is very good up to the last third, when it makes a disputable, questionable de-tour and becomes a thriller. The movie should have stayed with the injured friend, Sadaf. Instead, this finale disrupts the structure and tone established up to it, turning into a rather heavy-handed allegory on the idea that every man who works for the Iranian government eventually becomes radicalized and turns against his own family, which loses that subtlety from the first two thirds.
Grade:+++
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