Holy Spider
The title sequence of Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider is one of the films stand out moment from the start, I thought, but also captures what quite a lot if the criticism I have seen for the film has been. A drone shot follows the murderer of a prostitute as his scooter whirrs through a 2 lane road that appears to lead directly to the centre of Mashhad tinted green and majestic, the shot remains stable and omniscient and cloaked in a crescendo of Martin Dhirkovs’ other worldly score. The murder preceding this moment is shown in similar terms with Saeed shrouded in shadow throughout and the intense moment of the killing shown in its full horror.
The murders are highly dramatic and stylised throughout the film, the music by Martin Dhirkov is visceral and Saeed is shown in these moments in angular, green lit frames to make it clear this is the dramatic centre of the film and where the director’s focus seems to lie. But this has drawn criticism, as dramatization of the villain and a focus on these violent peaks throughout the film are sharply contrasted to the naturally lit, handheld (almost) realist portrayals of Rahimi and Saeed’s daytime endeavours, it feels like the director’s interest lies not in the victims and their family, but the act of the murders. This is usually the case with films, that the dramatic bits are shown using dramatic techniques but the contrast in Holy spide feels much sharper and stylised.
Ali Abbasi said this film about the treatment of women in Iran doesn’t aim to ‘to highlight women’s conditions in Iran, we didn’t do it as an activist work, but it does take up this theme’. This isn’t necessarily a surprise given the focus on the violence and the lack of sympathy or representation offered to the victims, but the film was made in a very volatile period for Iran.
There were huge protests at the end of 2019 and the current protests that were catalysed by the murder of Mahsa Amini have underpinned a cultural shift in attitudes towards women that must’ve been brewing for a number of years (I can’t lie, I haven’t really been keeping up with it until now). Surely the choice to make a film about murders that happened so long ago and had already been portrayed twice was an intentional and deliberate decision. It just seems like an odd one when you look at it at surface level, especially considering the huge, fictionalised storylines and characters.
We are encouraged to relate to the fictional Rahimi, we are with her through phone calls with her mother, her reaction to the body of a prostitute she’d met before and her encounter with the very threatening police chief. She wears her hijab loose to show her hair, she’s career focused and content to sacrifice her own safety to catch Saeed. In Iran right now there must be an incredible amount of brave Rahimi’s protesting for change and she clearly represents the shifting attitudes.
However, I wouldn’t say the film is a contrast or fight between good or bad, we don’t get judgement of Saeed and there are also attempts to personalise him. It seems more of a focus of the contrast between masculine and famine treatment and attitudes in Iran. Attitudes that come to a point in these visceral murder scenes that highlight the suppression on women’s’ sexuality in Iran in a very brutal tone.
Abbasi emigrated from Iran at 21, 20 years later and he’s now based in Denmark, he showed solidarity for the protests in Iran at London Film Festival. The disturbing sequences may be how he sees Iran, made more sinister by citizenship and ties there. It is interesting to note that Saeed’s son is called Ali in Holy Spider – shaped by his dad and this environment and certainly affected by them but far enough to not be directly involved.
This distance I have always thought to be essential when dealing with political work – he is clearly politically motivated as an individual but refrains from creating the ‘political film’ that regurgitates significant events with a sentimental slant. However, while not emotional, if you compare the visceral and mighty cinematic murder scenes to the handheld, daylit scenes of Rahimi, you get an idea of the mountain she is trying to climb and the mountain that every woman in Iran is forced to climb. The narrative and his excited focus towards the subject matter conveys Iran’s situation in a much more interesting and affecting way than to just pass clear judgement on the villain and the hero.