Mohammad Rasoulof‘s 2020 film ‘Sheytan vojood nadarad‘ (‘There is No Evil‘ is the English title) confirms once again that great cinema can be made even under dictatorship. It is not always possible and many stars have to line up for this. A genius director must have the courage and find funding. He needs to assemble a team of quality actors and technicians with enough courage to enlist in the project. They must assume the risk that their film will not be screened for a long time for audiences in their countries or that it will be distributed in a controlled and limited manner. Censorship is expected to pressure for changes or the elimination of scenes considered subversive. If they do not submit to the political dictates, the risks for filmmakers range from venomous criticism and the impossibility of making another film in their country to accusations of treason, police investigations, political persecution and prison sentences. And yet, despite all this, there were Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrzej Wajda, Lucian Pintilie. And there is today Wang Xiaoshuai and Mohammad Rasoulof. The courage of their attitudes was and is supported by cinematic mastery. This is how masterpieces are born. This film is one of them.
‘Sheytan vojood nadarad‘ is composed of four films of 30-40 minutes each. They comprise independent stories that have as a common element the fact that their heroes are executioners of the death penalty. None of them does it out of pleasure or conviction. Two of them resist and the personal consequences are tragic. One is an executioner by profession. He seems like an ordinary man, a clerk who takes care of his family’s problems, he has a mother, a wife, a daughter. An example of the banality of evil, would have written Hannah Arendt. Even in his case, the burden of the ‘profession’ is obvious. The heroes in two other segments are conscripts. One receives the mission of an execution, but does not feel capable of carrying it out. He seeks to get rid of it through all kinds of tricks and when the inevitable approaches he resorts to an extreme solution. The other volunteered to earn a few days of leave with his girlfriend, but the consequences will be devastating for his romantic relationship. Finally, the hero of the last segment had been forced to desert many years ago to avoid becoming a criminal accomplice of the system. The consequences are painful not only for him but also for everyone around him. In a society where free communication is impossible for many reasons, from tradition to political terror, traumas are transmitted with few words from one generation to the next.
For films of this kind to have a chance to meet their audiences, their screenwriters must moderate their criticisms and package them in life situations that are acceptable to the censors. Dissident filmmakers have always turned these constraints into virtues. Double-meaning language and indirect allusions add subtlety to the cinematic approach. So did Mohammad Rasoulof, who in this case also wrote the script. Each of the four stories proposes a consistent narrative and a different approach to a common theme – how can humanity be preserved in a system that tries to corrupt its subjects and make them accomplices in crime? Helped by a team of exceptional actors, he manages to give life and human authenticity to each of the characters. None of them is a criminal and, as the film’s title suggests, there is no born Evil in them. The situations they find themselves in are humanly impossible, and this is due to a system that makes the death penalty a judicial tool combined with an instrument of political terror. Great cinema is simple cinema. ‘Sheytan vojood nadarad‘ is a beautiful, courageous and sad film. At the end of the screening, we, the viewers, are left with some sense of optimism. The human landscape depicted by the four films is diverse. Humanity has not been completely suppressed, it remains present in the way some of the heroes behave and act. The cry for freedom and justice cannot be completely silenced and the art of film is one of its means of expression.