No, “But there is no evil” is not a film about the death penalty in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, himself a dissident, has more likely made a film about the death penalty itself; a little essay on the banality of evil. The film, a German-Czech co-production, won at the Berlinale last year, and the fact that there is the death penalty elsewhere and much of what Rasoulof shows here also applies there was deliberately ignored.
However, according to Amnesty International, nowhere is the death penalty carried out as frequently as in Iran. So all around there has to be a bureaucracy, a job description – as a succinct expression of all those collaborators who keep an autocracy going, and it is precisely these people that Mohammad Rasoulof talks about. How do you live with it? Does it matter whether you at least believe that the convicts deserve their sentence? The starting point, according to Rasoulof, was an unexpected encounter with a man who once interrogated him, he recognized him from afar and then followed him for a while, and then suddenly he was a completely normal man who went about his everyday life. One could say that he is only bad by profession.
“But there is no evil” begins with such a completely normal man. In the first scene you see Heshmat (Ehsan Mirhosseini) driving through winding corridors from the shallows of a garage into the day, home, running errands with his wife and child, looking after his old mother, coloring his wife’s hair . A long day. She covers him up when he falls asleep, exhausted. Heshmat has to get out early, back to prison, the gloomy labyrinth. Whatever it is during the day – at dawn it becomes a monster.
As a bonus there is a sack of rice so heavy that a colleague has to help him heave it into the trunk. Why, Rasoulof wants to know, do people do things that are not in them, that make them unhappy, and why is it even more likely that they will do them in an autocracy? For example, because they provide for their families in this way, because they have gotten into a system that they then do not question. Heshmat’s family is better off than many in Iran. As someone who is attacked by this system himself, Rasoulof shows an astonishing amount of understanding for Heshmat, this quiet executor. Once you see him on his way to work, it’s still night and it’s raining and the streets are empty, standing motionless in his car in front of a green traffic light, as if he himself couldn’t bear what has become of him.
Only the dissident in the last episode is a man of great words
This is the first episode of “But there is no evil” – Rasoulof declines the death penalty, explores those who carry it out and those who refuse. The danger of such a topic with a film is always that in the end it turns out to be a kind of filmed editorial, but he has circumvented the cliff. Heshmat, for example, is a silent man, he does not explain himself, one can only guess his thoughts, the stoicism he deals with can be read from his facial features.
Only the dissident in the last episode is a man of great words – Bahram (Mohammad Seddighimehr) was once a doctor, but many years ago he hid in the wilderness and turned away from society. He lives in the mountains with his wife. Daria comes to visit, a young relative from Germany, played by Baran Rasoulof, the director’s daughter, who actually lives in Hamburg. Bahram tries to make the girl understand why he chose this poor outsider life, which also affects his family – why he couldn’t help it. They used to have chickens, the fox fetched them; and his relationship with this fox, who is still prowling around the house, will be his argument for the uniqueness of the human being, who has free will and can choose not to kill. Only man will plan and justify the killing; only he can refuse.
The barren beauty of this landscape, the fox, that Bahram is always right because he is one with nature, these are the means of cinema, and there is nothing to be said against scenes that are heavy with dialogue, the meaning of which does not result from the images. Mohammad Rasoulof did not reinvent the cinema with “But there is no evil”. But you can never completely separate your films from their political significance and, above all, from the willingness to make sacrifices with which they are made.
Instead of congratulating them on winning the Berlinale, the regime wanted to enforce an outstanding prison sentence
Rasoulof has been persona non grata in Iran for a long time, arrested and convicted several times for insubordinate statements and determined to just carry on as before. His films are not shown at home. He has not been allowed to leave the country for years, but thanks to live video he can now occasionally take part in festivals virtually. In 2013 his thriller “Manuscripts don’t Burn” was shown in Cannes, which is about two contract killers – but not just any, it was the rhyme that Rasoulof made of a real series of murders of journalists and writers in Iran at the end of the 1980s. Rasoulof lived in Germany for a while, but went back to Tehran. Only a few weeks after receiving the Golden Bear for “But there is no evil” last year, he made headlines again that the regime wanted to enforce an outstanding prison sentence instead of congratulating it on the Berlinale victory, so to speak.
The form of the film – four self-contained episodes – results from the production conditions. The shooting of “But Evil Doesn’t Exist” took place in secret, there were shooting permits for four short films, submitted by other filmmakers who agreed to act as the front man for Rasoulof – he himself sometimes even acted in disguise on the set.
Someone like Pouya (Kaveh Ahangar), the hero of the second episode, would perhaps be dismissed as a hopeful fantasy if another director had invented him. But as it is, he acts in the spirit of his Creator when he runs away with his girlfriend. On their escape, the two hear the partisan song “Bella Ciao” and sing along loudly, which could almost be mistaken for a cheerful moment. Last you see them in the mountains. Bury me up on the mountain, Bella ciao, ciao, ciao – the Resistancea is a part of it, the fight against fascism. The young soldier in the episode that follows is the grim reflection of Pouya – he chose exactly the other way around, but his life is still gone. Just in a different way.
That is what Rasoulof believes – that professional killing also destroys from within whoever kills. This is an image of man that leaves little room for unscrupulousness, vindictiveness and coldness. That is why Rasoulof’s four portraits are universally valid, something an executioner in Tehran has in common with one anywhere else in the world: Hardly anyone sees himself as evil personified. This is what distinguishes humans from foxes, they can give reasons for everything. No matter how false they are.
Sheytan vojud nadarad, Germany / Czech Republic 2020 – written and directed by Mohammad Rasoulof. Camera: Ashkan Ashkani. Editing: Mohammadreza Muini, Meysam Muini. With: Ehsan Mirhosseini, Shaghayegh Shourian, Kaveh Ahangar, Salar Khamseh, Mohammad Seddighimehr, Jila Shahi, Baran Rasoulof. Distribution: Grandfilm, 150 minutes.