According to Cinema Etemad, Fatemeh Karimkhan wrote in Etemad newspaper:
A girl who is supposed to be at the airport in five, six hours to study for a doctorate in philosophy in Toronto for the next two, three or maybe three, four years is invited to an unexpected farewell party. The story of the movie 6 in the morning, which is Mehran Madiri’s second film as a director after the movie “5 o’clock in the evening”, begins with this one simple line, and although the teaser of the movie is attractive enough to make you curious, the movie itself may meet your expectations. not fulfill
Mehran Madiri is a writer, director, stage designer and actor in the film “6 o’clock in the morning”, a film that starts from Neil Simon’s play “Rumors” and reaches Sidney Lumet’s “Dog Afternoon”, tries to be everything. ! Both family, incident, mystery and social, and by the way, it has a little benefit from everything. A reference to immigration, a fingernail to poverty, two corners and an allusion to failed love, a little protest, a tip of a spoon at night on a wet pavement, a fingernail from an endless night that is similar to Yalda night and… images and stories that each one alone It could have been a stand-alone film, but together it’s more of a chaos with a slow rhythm and ended up with unanswered questions.
6 am can be divided into three parts: before the party, after the party and after the party. Probably, this issue is both the crisis and the strength of the film. Like a party who changes his style of clothes when the time changes, at 6 in the morning he sheds skin when the time changes. In the beginning it’s a dramatic family situation, then there’s a half-baked love story, then it’s a party with discordant music that makes you wonder what you’re missing by not understanding the sound and visuals of the scene. Then there is some dialogue that you expect to go somewhere, but it doesn’t, and then the movie changes clothes again and it becomes an accident! And… in the first two parts, there is so much information and characters in the story that you say to yourself that maybe the movie is really three hours long and they wrote an hour and a half by mistake. After midnight, of course, it becomes clear that there was no mistake. And without creating a noticeable change or at least helping to create atmosphere and advance the story of the movie, they entered the scene after some inappropriate music and meaningless jokes, clapping and yelling, “Pay attention, guys” and they are led out of the movie at once with a broom!
You might think that the space will be opened to get close to some key characters of the story, which of course is not part of this news either. In the third part of the story, a bunch of other characters enter, and they gradually become one with the wall, in accordance with the situation, in the blurred background. In the end, there remains a crying girl, a boy who has been hit on the head, and a special officer who is supposed to “fix things”, but his presence is not strong enough to carry the rest of the film.
Although the story of the film is based on a true story and although many Iranian people were witnesses, listeners or were involved in situations similar to the story of the film, the film, especially in the very long first part, does not have much power to accompany the viewer, the loss of the main character in Among the unfamiliar faces and a lot of slow and unrelated music, it makes you forget about the “time limit” that the story is supposed to be more suspenseful based on. When the movie ends, you ask yourself once again, where did all these people and events that entered the story go? And there is no answer to this question. You may also ask yourself where was the problem with the movie? which is a difficult question to answer, especially because the final minutes of the film, where the stage is occupied by the writer, director and actor, have charms that you do not expect from the usual Iranian police films, although it is not far from the character of Mehran Moderi, but these minutes Finally, it does not solve the important challenges of the film, including incomplete characterizations, abandoned subplots, weak story logic, and pointless crowding of the scene.
The set design of the film, which was also done by Mehran Modiri, tells us a lot about the film itself. Almost the whole story is told in a seventy-five meter apartment, except for the living room, kitchen and a view of the warehouse and the rest of the bathroom. However, in this very small space, you can see everything from an old door to a large picture of Madonna and a collection of famous paintings on the wall. In addition, there is a violin attached to the wall and a piano lying in the corner of the house, which is completely forgotten after the party scenes. The candles in the house miraculously burn for about eight hours and are extinguished in the early morning by the character of the senior officer who entered the house. Games that are filmed with light and closed shots of the actors’ faces also have charms, but it still leaves the question of where all these signs are supposed to lead the viewer and why it doesn’t end anywhere? The same question exists in the case of short stories, about the characters of the party, and also about the family of the two main characters of the story.
Like most other stories that can be found in Iranian cinema, the logic and background of the actions of most of the characters in the film are not clear to the viewer. Despite the presence of many women in the images of the film, all the female characters in the story are passive and subordinate to the situation and the male characters in the story, and the viewer is asked whether there is any purpose and intention and lived experience in this emphasis on the image of the “scared woman”. Or is it only the “logic of the story” that prescribes and justifies all this inaction?
Of course, the film does not end here. The film clearly follows a common syndrome in Iranian police cinema, which may be called the “two-ending film syndrome”. It seems that the movie “6 o’clock in the morning” had to change its ending just like the movie “Innocents” before the release. Begnahan was released in the festival with an ending a few years ago, and when it had problems for public broadcasting, the creators recorded another ending for it and attached it to the bottom of the film so that the accusations against the police were cleared and allowed to be broadcast, while The final sequence questions the entire story of the film! It seems that the same thing happened in Mehran Madiri’s film. While the ending of the film with a suitable dialogue and an acceptable view, the camera goes out of the house and a few seconds of new image are added to the film. The final sequence was probably attached to the film with paper tape, and the dignity of descent is the last question that is not only before 6 o’clock in the morning, but before the entire Iranian cinema, and that is how long Iranian filmmakers are going to have the right to end police films. Do others leave?