By Sheri Linden - Los Angeles Times - Los Angeles, CA, USAFriday, February 22, 2008
Like strange desert creatures, a little girl and her blind grandfather emerge from storm-shifted sands, dust themselves off and set out on a journey with no map or timetable in "Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul," a film steeped in Sufi mysticism and as transcendent as that opening sequence.
Unlike the movie's wanderers, Los Angeles filmgoers must move quickly: They have but a week to experience the lyrical imagery on the big screen.
That imagery includes footage of Iran's carved adobe city of Bam, filmed months before its destruction in an earthquake.
Tunisian visual artist/writer/filmmaker Nacer Khemir intends his third feature as a tribute to Islam at a time when extreme fundamentalism provokes denigration.
The film was shot in the deserts of Iran and Tunisia, and cinematographer Mahmoud Kalari infuses the screen with sumptuous yet unemphatic colors, filtered through sun and wind and sand.
There's nothing forced about "Bab'Aziz"; its ideas resonate quietly, building to a breathtaking climax.
The film owes its impact in large part to octogenarian Parviz Shahinkhou, who plays Bab'Aziz with gentle authority. Gnarled walking stick in hand, he's headed for a gathering of fellow dervishes, the Sufi ascetics whose ecstatic worship involves whirling dances. Their get-together happens once every 30 years, its location unknown to everyone involved.
"Those who are invited will find the way," Bab'Aziz assures Ishtar (Maryam Hamid), who's about 10 but has an old soul.
To keep his granddaughter entertained as they cross the desert, Bab'Aziz tells her, in daily installments, the story of a young prince who disappears. The journey spirals into stories within stories as Ishtar and Bab'Aziz encounter other travelers, among them a singer (Nessim Kahloul) looking for his lost love and a man, half-mad or visionary (Mohamed Grayaa), who is fished out of a well.
With the collaboration of screenwriter Tonino Guerra, Khemir has created a fresh variation on the somewhat tired subgenre of the crisscross, in which the paths of strangers intersect and converge.
The setting is metaphysical rather than metropolitan, and in place of neurotic urbanites we find a red-haired dervish and a gazelle.
"Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul." MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes. In Arabic and Farsi with English subtitles. Exclusively at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223.
There's nothing forced about "Bab'Aziz"; its ideas resonate quietly, building to a breathtaking climax.
The film owes its impact in large part to octogenarian Parviz Shahinkhou, who plays Bab'Aziz with gentle authority. Gnarled walking stick in hand, he's headed for a gathering of fellow dervishes, the Sufi ascetics whose ecstatic worship involves whirling dances. Their get-together happens once every 30 years, its location unknown to everyone involved.
"Those who are invited will find the way," Bab'Aziz assures Ishtar (Maryam Hamid), who's about 10 but has an old soul.
To keep his granddaughter entertained as they cross the desert, Bab'Aziz tells her, in daily installments, the story of a young prince who disappears. The journey spirals into stories within stories as Ishtar and Bab'Aziz encounter other travelers, among them a singer (Nessim Kahloul) looking for his lost love and a man, half-mad or visionary (Mohamed Grayaa), who is fished out of a well.
With the collaboration of screenwriter Tonino Guerra, Khemir has created a fresh variation on the somewhat tired subgenre of the crisscross, in which the paths of strangers intersect and converge.
The setting is metaphysical rather than metropolitan, and in place of neurotic urbanites we find a red-haired dervish and a gazelle.
"Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul." MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes. In Arabic and Farsi with English subtitles. Exclusively at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223.
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