Shaadi Iris Ghorbani
Forugh Farrokhzad’s The House is Black begins with a statement of purpose. Preceding its 22- minute runtime, viewers are faced with black opacity and a warning that they are about to witness “An image of ugliness. A vision of pain no caring human being should ignore” (The House is Black). The darkness then lifts to reveal a woman with leprosy gazing into a floral mirror, partially blind and unblinking. The camera zooms in for what feels like a second too long.
The House is Black was released in 1963 and directed by poet Forugh Farrokhzad as a look into the often dehumanised and desolate lifestyles of those living in a leprosy colony near Tabriz, Iran. Its transcript cuts over shots from the colony and involves quotations from the Old Testament, the Quran, and Farrokhzad’s own poetry to match its themes of daily survival and resilience (Roxanne 12). The video cuts showcase scenes ranging from fights to classroom conversations, and their mundanity acts as a testament to reveal the humanity of the shunned even through adversity and sickness. The House is Black is widely regarded as a precursor for the Iranian New Wave Movement, a cinematic category of Persian films known for social commentary and often simple subject lines cut by deeper themes (Henderson).
It would be impossible to review the below film without first delving into the remarkable life of Forugh Farrokhzad herself, who upon the film’s release adopted a child from the colony and has a continued legacy as one of the most influential poets in Iran’s history. Born in 1934 in Tehran, Farrokhzad’s life was tragically cut short by a car accident three years after the release of her film, to a period of national mourning for her immense impact on Iranian poetry, film, and thought (Wolpe). Her life as a fourth child of seven and student in a girl’s school for manual arts was a foil of the legacy she would later have as a feminist figure and iconoclast, and many of her works delve into the life she was thrust into through the oppressive social norms of patriarchal love and losing her child in the antiquated divorce proceedings that exist in Iran to this day.
IAt the time of The House is Black’s release, typical audiences were more accustomed to the “Farsifilm” genre in cinema, making Farrokhzad’s film especially important at a time when the silver screen was often used to portray a more shallow and archetypal narrative about prince-and-damsel stories (Mirbahktyar). Upon its reception in the mid- 1960s, television was well on its way to colour and most broadcasts were switched to non-black and white (Richard). While this transition certainly took longer in Iran, the absence of colour only adds to the somewhat antiquated feel of the film and is— whether intentionally or unintentionally—an accessory to the landscape documented by Farrokhzad.
See, when watching the film, it’s easy to forget that it was released in 1966 and not 1946. Farrokhzad’s crew slowly zooms on the dilapidated conditions of the hospital and nearby school. Wooden structures and obsolete medical technology distract from the fact that many of the children videotaped would be just above middle-aged today.
Despite this, one of the film’s loudest messages is assuredly one of humanization; Farrokzad’s poetry is cut by clips of refreshingly mundane activities of residents. The film isn’t a charity case: children are seen running and playing just as adults are seen fighting, and women are pictured putting on makeup and talking about their marriages. The narrative of the film as a documentary was new and political despite its seemingly humble thematics. I believe that Farrokzad did an incredible job doing this, and did so using a subversion gained through being female; she spread a strong message through innocuous scenes of daily life. Her voice-over of poetry spans the duration of the film and is only cut by a male voice —her film partner Ebrahim Golestan— who provides the occasional objective analyses of medical condition or prognosis. This furthers a message of the introspective and loving voice of the female interrupted by a masculine voice of reason.
At the time, criticisms of Reza Shah Pahlavi were deeply looked down upon and the film at its core is a critique despite the film receiving funding from the Shah (Salemy). In a period where it was of utmost importance to tout westernisation as a sign of progress, the Shah had commissioned Golestan’s film company to produce films on technological advancements, contributing to Farrokhzad’s prior experiences filming oil wells and car machinery.
This made it an especially bold move when the film is opaquely a critique, and begins with the lines “There is no short of ugliness in the world. If man closes his eyes to the world, they would be even more” (The House is Black). Viewers open their eyes to the archaic nature of the colony, and through its mundanity, Farrokzad reveals the often heartbreaking lives of residents. When asked to name beautiful things in a classroom, the children name games, moon, and sun— then when asked to list ugly things, they name hands and feet. Even children are shown to recognize and learn to see leprosy as undesirable, yet are pictured experiencing childhood under a semblance of normality. In this, Farrokzad maintains the dignity of the children while remaining critical of the situation outside of their control that they exist in, a situation exacerbated by the ornate banquets of the Shah overshadowing the lives of his constituents. While it is worth mentioning that Farah Pahlavi built the first semi-autonomous leprosy community one year before the film’s release, most hospitals and villages including the ones filmed at the time were either run or ran by Christian missionaries due to Jesus Christ’s compassionate treatment of those with leprosy in Luke 1:14 (Salemy). When meeting after a live screening with the Shah and Farah Pahlavi, their tears of sympathy was later considered by Farrokzad as “A most pathetic scene” (Salemy).
As a viewer, it was a pleasure to read and reflect on Farrokzad’s words as the film progressed, and while the videos were simple in content to allow better comprehension of prose, their simple nature could be a whiplash-inducing foil to her often dark messaging.
There is a greater meaning portrayed in the film than that of the resilience of those with leprosy. The community in many ways depicts Iran- an Iran reflected but met with hope and perseverance of citizens. Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian studies and Comparative history at Columbia University states that the firm shows a “brutalized history” of Iran, saving metaphorical scars for physical ones and using a cast of those physically showing effects of the regime (Bekhzad). The only time Golestan’s signature objectivity is broken is when he repeats that “leprosy is not incurable”, emphasizing the hope left for many of the colony’s residents (The House is Black). Despite this, the hardship faced by the Iranian people is constantly alluded to throughout the film- “our being, like a cage full of birds, is filled with the moans of captivity. And none among us knows how long he will ask….like doves we cry for justice and there is none” (The House is Black). The very act of these words being uttered through montages of children playing and mothers feeding their children shows the mundanity of suffering through daily life and injustice. Preceding a scene where a boy plays ball with his friends and showcases a very real smile, one is asked by a teacher why he must thank God for having a mother and father. He responds with “I don’t know, I do not have any” (The House is Black).
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The film ends with a somewhat cautionary message, likely pointed at the Shah. A man on crutches moves toward the camera, with Farrokhzad saying that “we wait for light and darkness reigns” (The House is Black). The man continues walking towards the camera, eventually reducing the film to blackness. A gate is closed against a deluge of people with leprosy, covered with the message “Leper Colony”. The jovial students are asked to make a sentence with the word “house” in it, and they come up with “The house is black” (The House is Black). The “blackness” alluded to in the film is a genius allusion in the way that it too mirrors the blackness of leprosy scars.
Blackness appears to be the lives of those living in the colony, and yet they still find mundanity and joy in its consistency.
Forough Farrokzad’s The House is Black earns its legacy as a film ahead of its time by showcasing an environment far behind its time. It relies equally on sound and vision to get its compelling message across, and viewers accurately feel as if they are watching a message to the Shah. Its subject matter hides behind a cloak of apolitical, but this could not be further from the truth as it reveals a ceaseless resilience despite equally ceaseless suffering. Just how leprosy is stated as curable, however, is the suffering of the Iranian people, not a sentencing.
The house, as the film states, may be black— but perhaps the home is not.
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