The President (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)

Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s latest film is absorbing and gripping. The director discloses a unsuspected gift for satire and suspense, in an old-fashioned storytelling manner. Makhmalbaf and the co-screenwriter, Marziyeh Meshkiny created a drama and a parable. 

An allegorical lesson about dictatorships and the cycle of violence they breed, the movie unfolds in an unnamed country. The story concerns an ageing dictator, known only as the President, played by Georgian actor Misha Gomiashvilli. When his regime’s sadism, cynicism and brutality become too much to bear, there is a coup.

His Majesty (as everyone calls the President) gathers up his spoilt wife (Eka Kakhiani) and two daughters (Nuki Koshkelishvili, Elene Bezarashvili) along with his grandson and takes them to a waiting plane. The little boy refuses to go since his grandpa is staying. The President is left behind with his grandson (Dachi  Orvelashvilli), whose parents have been killed in the revolution. On the way back to the palace, street battles block their car. The President switches clothes with a barber (Zura Begalishvili), and grandfather and grandson flee to a prostitute (la Sukhitashvili) whom the dictator knew in younger days.

The scene that follows is designed to show the tyrant getting in touch with the better man he was before he was corrupted by power, as well as to allow the prostitute  as a stand-in for a society brutalized by violence. Anarchy descends on the country, the military rape and steal, and the ex-President and his grandson wind up traveling with a group of just-sprung political prisoners who represent a range of opinions.

Though the action of the film arguably does not address the situation of the Arab spring, Makhmalbaf’s satire gestures to both eastern Europe and the fallout of it. His President could be one of any leader once bolstered by the US and the against communism and Islamism, and then trnsformed as puppets to cow public opinion at home. In fact, the brutal ending of this film reminisces the last days of Saddam Hussein.

The film has power and punch and conviction. The opening scenes are exciting as the President’s Zil- style car is surrounded by the mob.

The film is designed as allegory of how tyranny corrupts not just the tyrant but his subjects. It depicts that violence is an almost inevitable product of revolution.

The rapport between Gomiashvili, a leading stage star in Georgia, and newcomer tyke Orvelashvili, is one of the most developed aspects of the film. Their relationship takes on the affecting character of a protective grandfather and frightened child witnessing far more than any kid should see. It is this quality that offers something grounded in real emotion. Certain striking visuals, such as a phalanx of footmen preventing the boy from re-entering the palace, and shots of the harsh, undeveloped landscape, offer intermittent rewards.