A Man of Integrity (2017) User Reviews

Corruption-criticizing film smuggled out of Iran

[OJT · 7/10 · 15 November 2017]

I attended this film at a packed theater at the Films From the South Festival (FFSF) in Oslo in November 2017, and this s the first of the films Mohammad Rasoulof has made that i've seen. this film was awarded at the Cannes Festival, and participated in the main program in FFSF, and was smuggled out of Iran. The director was to present the film at the festival, as well as doing a Q&A afterwards, but couldn't show due to his passport was taken away from him just before he was to leave.

The film is about a family of three trying to get by by using his land to produce fish, but is challenged by a mysterious company which corrupts the entire society, even the police and justice system. A film about the little man not ready to bow for the suppression. he actually has to join to get by.

This is a well made film, and not a very happy one. The story telling is quiet and quite slow, but has it's dramatic parts. A good and important film, from a re-known film maker in a country which needs this kind of films. Still the film had a little trouble in engaging me.

Absolute Corruption?

[ThurstonHunger · 7/10 · 18 November 2023]

As per my title for this review, it feels like a film where absolute corruption just consumes everything - the police, local religious and community leaders and even the one man of integrity left.

The film does a fine job from plot to cinematography to casting. IF a man glowers better than Reza Akhlaghirad in any country or any language, I'd like to know. We know shades of him, but his piety (not necessarily denominational) is as prominent a feature on his face as his permanent 5 o'clock shadow.

His partner, the beautiful Soudabeh Beizaee, offers devotion and grace, but introduces the idea of maybe there being some gray space between the ideal and the real.

But make no mistake, this film points out the gigantic gap between the two. So the film does not surprise on that main arc, and we side in prison cells and elsewhere with our stubborn hero.

The film could have been didactic, but the actors certainly embrace their roles. The subplot of the daughter for the local "boss" interacting with the wife/teacher - and Reza (the actor and character share the same name, perhaps casting was not just based on jawline but deeper than skin?) has a journey to Tehran as part of his awakening on how pervasive the corruption is, and what it does to "good people."

Will he fight the power to a bitter end, or will it be a "you can't beat them so join them" - even if you may guess, the film is eminently watchable.

Add in a sort of Soprano's in Iran feel, and a possible homage to Tarkovsky (a house in flames), and definitely the symbolic nature of water. Are there really such underwater hot spring cave confessionals, Reza's body language - and direction - changes on the last shot from there.

All well done.

But to me the minor miracle - this was filmed *in Iran* where the director's films have been banned afaik. While this is well off the screen, it offered me some small solace and hope - perhaps like here in the US, graft and corruption are pervasive, but in Iran may be there are ways for a more complicated and civilized man, farmer or film director to exist.

Not flourish per se, but corruption while dominant may not be as absolute as we fear?

One step short

[Dr_Coulardeau · 9/10 · 27 February 2018]

This film will not be a masterpiece of creative cinematographic fiction. It is closer to a documentary. It is a big bang on the table of political and religious fundamentalism anywhere in the world. The problem is that it stops just before reaching the real cause of this situation in Iran.

It shows in great detail how a man and his family can become ostracized because they are confronted to a company that we understand is a private company, though it could just as well be a state company, and this company wants to buy their land - they have a fish farm - for a reason and a project that are not specified because their activities are not presented. The means this company uses to impose their control and solution is called corruption in any country in the world. They just buy with bribes all those who have some piece of authority in the police, in the administration, in justice, in the prison, and thus they can victimize those they want to get rid of. Any means is possible.

Cut the water to the fish farm. Poison the fish. Bribe the insurance company. Bribe the real estate agency that could buy the farm. Bribe the police and justice including with fake certificates. The man, Reza, ends up in prison. His wife is confronted with problems as the principal of the girl secondary school of the town. His son is provoked by the younger son of the main representative of the company, a certain Abbas. And they will go as far as burning his house down.

In this situation, some like Reza's wife's brother tells him to just play the system, play their game. He tries but any approach is taken as a sign of weakness and capitulation. Then he decides to really fight. So he has Abbas arrested on some drug charges for drugs he planted himself in his car and then tipped the police. And since he is going to go through it because it is a first offense he bribes a prison warden and has a special piece of candy delivered to the man, a piece of candy that is supposed to unsettle his stomach till death ensues.

And since everything is known anyway, he becomes a hero but he has to transform the point and that becomes possible. The company suggests he becomes their representative in the area and the political opposition to this corruption suggests he could become the mayor. But what a man of integrity who forces his wife to "borrow" a big sum from the school, under the blanket of course, who plants drugs in the car of a corrupted man for him to be arrested, and who has a poisonous piece of candy delivered to the man in prison!

Peter used to say that "Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely." Here you have a strange case of that Peter's Principle. "Since Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, to defeat that Corrupted Power you have to use Absolute Corruption."

But the film never shows the articulation between the cause of this situation which is the absolute theocracy of this Republic, not to speak of the constant provocation and isolation the USA impose onto this country with the first opium grower next door, Afghanistan, and some obvious "leaks" of opium into the country thanks to some more corruption. That's a little bit regrettable.

Thus this film is a courageous pamphlet but at the same time, it is a little bit short on the analysis of a situation it exposes perfectly.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

Probably best Iranian movie ever made.

[kia_irandoost · 10/10 · 9 October 2019]

Most of critics attend to political weight of the movie and political messages which it delivers. But apart from politics, the movie is a masterpiece in form and narration style. Each scene has been worked on and made with obsessive precision and all these finesse and details are what make it big big work. Actors & actresses are also top notch, although they're mostly rookie and some even first time acting in a movie. Atmosphere of the movie is also well designed and truly synchronizes and delivers with the narration. Only problem i saw in the movie was that in some points Director goes so far and makes unnecessary endeavors to delivers his thoughts to viewer, like he doesn't assume to viewer be intelligent enough to take the message by him/herself. But this small deficiency doesn't make me to hesitate to give the movie an absolute 10 rating. Well done Mr Director.

Man vs.

[axapvov · 9/10 · 26 August 2021]

Excellent Man vs. Society vs. Man vs. Self. Elegant, understated, it keeps its cool and steadily adds up to the finale. What can a man do? What can a man of integrity do?

Maddening at first, as corruption and neglect accumulate and people "follow orders", but the story-telling is smart, gentle, it shows just enough, never more than necessary, so most of the tension happens in the viewers mind.

The leading couple is awesome. Maybe too perfect, even. Such a serious film, brave and important, and surprising and fascinating, if a bit fatalist too, about the future, and present, maybe.