Atomic Heart is a road movie without any particular destination in mind, drifting idly through Tehran's twilight streets, through conversations about atomic mothers and dormant dictators. There are good moments scattered throughout the film, and the wonderful "elevator scene" towards the end of it, where Nobahar's desiring look and gesture facing Arine create a touching atmosphere. That's exactly what the film required as a whole entity instead of all the tongue-in-cheek dialogues and symbolism!
5 Reviews
Unsound movie
nimaasafaei3 July 2020
Two cool Iranian party girls run into a larger control threat.
maurice_yacowar9 January 2016
Warning: Spoilers
Atomic Heart flies in the face of everything we know about Iranian cinema. It's a surrealistic version of Taxi, with two 20-something dyed-hair party girls navigating the wild night streets of Tehran in place of that film's earnest driver.
The girls begin as most un-Iranian heroines: self-indulgent, tipsy, indecorous, flashy, stylish, keen proponents of Western culture, as they sing "We Are the World" and cite Celine Dion. They're brassy when they talk to their male friend and a cop. In short, they appear to be two young women exercising a power we're astonished to see Iranian women have.
That passes. A couple of elevator scenes frame their change in attitude. In the first the redhead stops and starts the elevator doors from the outside, mischievously playing the machine. Later the elevator will run out of her control, with her friend first inside then magically transported to the high-rise's roof where her life is endangered.
Two things jolt the girls out of their sense of power. The first is a traffic accident. Driving the wrong way up a one-way street, they hit another car. The second is the mysterious stranger Toofan who crops up there and continues magically to till the end.
Toofan explains the history of Western toilets and their debt to Iran and China. After this humorous scholarship toilets become a pressing need for the girls. Toofan pays the man's car damages and disappears when the police come.
The police are surprisingly considerate, given what we hear of Iran. They're not alarmed by the girls' breath tests. The one escorting them to the police station asks for some intelligent criticism of the film Argo, so he can pretend he's seen it. The girls properly criticize it for its inaccuracies and for its insulting over-generalized representation of Iranians. Satisfied, he lets the girls off in order to question their male friend.
Toofan's reappearance shifts the film to surrealism. He brings Saddam Hussein into the car and has the girls drive him to a meeting in a limo. From then on Toofan takes control of the girls' lives and possibly their minds. If the girls began by being cocky about their freedom and power, Toofan subdues them, bending them to his will to the point of tempting them to a suicidal plunge putatively into another dimension. Of course their destiny is resolved by a game of paper, rock, scissors. (That could be a better course to world peace than the UN.)
To Toofan Tehran is paradise but he dresses Western cool. Without a clue about how this film would be read by its home audience, I'm wary about any interpretation. But I'd offer this: It extends its heroines an extravagant freedom in character and power but only to rein them in to serve a larger power beyond their normal ken. If the girls feel liberated from one level of control there's always another.
The girls begin as most un-Iranian heroines: self-indulgent, tipsy, indecorous, flashy, stylish, keen proponents of Western culture, as they sing "We Are the World" and cite Celine Dion. They're brassy when they talk to their male friend and a cop. In short, they appear to be two young women exercising a power we're astonished to see Iranian women have.
That passes. A couple of elevator scenes frame their change in attitude. In the first the redhead stops and starts the elevator doors from the outside, mischievously playing the machine. Later the elevator will run out of her control, with her friend first inside then magically transported to the high-rise's roof where her life is endangered.
Two things jolt the girls out of their sense of power. The first is a traffic accident. Driving the wrong way up a one-way street, they hit another car. The second is the mysterious stranger Toofan who crops up there and continues magically to till the end.
Toofan explains the history of Western toilets and their debt to Iran and China. After this humorous scholarship toilets become a pressing need for the girls. Toofan pays the man's car damages and disappears when the police come.
The police are surprisingly considerate, given what we hear of Iran. They're not alarmed by the girls' breath tests. The one escorting them to the police station asks for some intelligent criticism of the film Argo, so he can pretend he's seen it. The girls properly criticize it for its inaccuracies and for its insulting over-generalized representation of Iranians. Satisfied, he lets the girls off in order to question their male friend.
Toofan's reappearance shifts the film to surrealism. He brings Saddam Hussein into the car and has the girls drive him to a meeting in a limo. From then on Toofan takes control of the girls' lives and possibly their minds. If the girls began by being cocky about their freedom and power, Toofan subdues them, bending them to his will to the point of tempting them to a suicidal plunge putatively into another dimension. Of course their destiny is resolved by a game of paper, rock, scissors. (That could be a better course to world peace than the UN.)
To Toofan Tehran is paradise but he dresses Western cool. Without a clue about how this film would be read by its home audience, I'm wary about any interpretation. But I'd offer this: It extends its heroines an extravagant freedom in character and power but only to rein them in to serve a larger power beyond their normal ken. If the girls feel liberated from one level of control there's always another.
Illustration of a vastly misunderstood movie.( as far as I could read the reviews)
javidojaroudi22 June 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Starting from the initiation point,some people acknowledged the movie as the story of two girls meeting with the devil or some others as an effort of the writer to address many problems of society in one picture, which are all wrong!!!
The movie tries to tell the story of just one person, one person who in a surreal condition or under the influence of chemical reactions has unleashed a wide imagination of his/hers to be a stage for many sides of his/her characters in order to interact and even probably fight different thoughts on his/her mind; in some ways I like the way the writer borrowed this technique of story making from sadegh hedayat (I quess, a vastly known writer of iran).
Starting from the beginning: the character:"arineh" represents the more logical and influencial part of the person's character whence the character "nobahar" represents the artistic and impressionable side of the person's character, then comes "kami" which is the more carefree side to the person; throughout the story the writer tries to address the problems and issues that the person is having in his/her life in the environment of tehran and cultural issues relating to it, the writer also tries to address the controversy inside person's mind regarding his/her decision about migrating temporarily or permanently, where in the scene of crash,some minor side of her character (the guy with other car) tries to bring in the more adventurous and mysterious side of the person's character into the battle which would be :"toofan", and the rest of the rest of the story is the interactions of these different sides of one person's character in the story, trying to reach a finality.
Throughout the story the director adds some scenes to give hints to watchers , like the same electric smokes that both "nobahar" and "kami" smoke; or the sounds and dialogues of the character "toofan".
And in the ending how person tries to save parts of his/hers character and in order to do so he/she has to let some parts of his/her character go.
And I would like to point out that I liked how the writer gives different sexualities to different sides of one person which can be subject to a lot of discussions.
A Postmodern Iranian Movie
RosaGreen5520 September 2018
You have to watch this movie more than once if you want to understand the different levels of the film. It makes you think deeply about your surroundings specially when you watch the surreal part. I loved this movie and I recommend it to all to watch. Golzar has a great NEGATIVE role in this movie and I think it was one of his best roles among all the roles he's already have.
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