Etamad Cinema, Mohsen Azmoudeh wrote in Etemad newspaper: Dariush Mehrjoui (1318-1402) is one of the few Iranian filmmakers who studied western philosophy, perhaps the only Iranian filmmaker, and that too in a western university (UCLA University). In the 1340s, that is, when there was a wave of opposition or criticism of modernism.
At that time, postmodernism and its prominent representatives such as Derrida, Foucault and Baudrillard were not yet known, at least in Iran as a third world country. The era was the era of existentialism and the return to spirituality and criticism of modern ideas. In Iran, among philosophers who were not very interested in the left and Russian Marxism, Sartre, Camus, Dostoyevsky, Hermann Hesse and a kind of conventional spiritualism were the first. Heidegger was still not well known, although the people of Bekhiye recognized Heidegger as the most important figure of existential philosophies, and Farid was just making noise in private circles. As an intellectual from literature and French, Mehrjooi was familiar with these ideas from his origins, and like many intellectuals and intellectuals of Iran’s post-colonial society, he was a critic of the West and modernism. This tendency is evident in the small treatise he wrote as a thesis and later published under the title of “Rogue Intellectuals and Great Inspector”.
In his first important films such as Gao (1348) and Mr. Hollow (1349), Postchi (1351) and Mina Circle (1353), one can see the tendency to criticize modernity and especially the imported and hijacked modernity of the Pahlavi political system. In these works, he appears as an intellectual from literature and against the corrupt social system, who at the same time criticizes traditional superstitions and views them with suspicion.
In the early years after the revolution, he created the not-so-seen film “The School We Went To” (1359) and after that he did not make a film in the cinema field for several years until the acclaimed and very important work “The Tenants” (1365). It was released in 1366). “Renants”, in the midst of war and rocket rain and the special social and political atmosphere of the sixties, although it was considered a comedy work, but from that time everyone emphasized its political, social, cultural and even philosophical hints and aspects and They read various symbolic and hidden and obvious meanings. For example, a group considered the shaky and half-ruined building of the tenants as a symbol of Iran’s “modern curve” society, with people from different social classes. The main absentee among the people in the film was a group of beneficiaries of the revolution who were associated with the ruling ideology and were considered the main beneficiaries of the revolution. His absence from the film in the political and social atmosphere of the 1360s was, of course, predictable and acceptable.
A year later, at the age of forty-nine, Mehrjooi made Hamoun (released in 1367), a work that is considered to be his most important, controversial and influential work, a film that has been the subject of many reviews and interpretations since then. and together with the cow (1348) is considered one of the masterpieces in the history of Iranian cinema.
At the time of its release, along with praises, Hamon was negatively criticized by two groups, firstly by a group of secular intellectuals as they considered it an anti-intellectual and even anti-modern work and said that Mehrjooi in this film created several characters. Next, Hamid Hamon has presented a negative and contradictory image of Iranian intellectuals, a man in every sense of the word Hamon, Vale, Wanderer, Paradoxical, Misogynistic, Uncertain, who ultimately Existentialism calls to mysticism and isolation and Ali Abedini and is not compatible with modernity and its manifestations. An anti-intellectual who finally calls intellectuals scoundrels. The second group of Hamon’s critics was from a different group, from the same social group that was absent in the movie Tenants, and their main representative was Seyed Morteza Avini. Unlike the first group, he considered Hamon’s invitation to esotericism, mysticism and Sufism as fake, secular, disconnected from the roots of authentic spirituality and ultimately westernized, and he attacked Hamon from this point of view.
After Hamon, Mehrjooi made 15 more films, some of which are considered among the best works of Iranian cinema, films such as Banu (1369), Sara (1371), Perry (1373), Leila (1375), and The Pear Tree (1376). and Mix (1378) and Mom’s Guest (1382). Today’s view of Hamon has also changed and they no longer evaluate this film in the context of the specific time and place of its production in line with or in intellectual criticism. At the same time as this change, today’s critics consider Hamid Hamoun to be the symbol of the Iranian educated middle class (not necessarily an intellectual), with all its contradictions, darkness and lightness. But which view is correct and which approach can be accepted? Is Hamoun an anti-intellectual film, as the intellectuals said in the late sixties, or is it a film that promotes a kind of obscenity and sanctified spirituality, as Avini said? Perhaps he is a representative of an educated Iranian man who struggles between tradition and modernity. Can’t say for sure. By the way, one of the advantages of the film, which has made it a lasting work, is its openness to different interpretations. More importantly, Hamoun is a well-made work and beautifully narrates the fascinating story of Hamid Hamoun’s adventurous life, a film that can be watched and enjoyed after thirty-five years and salutes the memory and soul of its creator, the late Dariush Mehrjooi. with hope