Dir: Mohammad Reza Aslani
The story of how Chess of the Wind came to be seen in this new restored version should be a movie in itself. Completed in 1976 and apparently screened only twice; once to hostile critics and once to an empty room, it was banned in 1979 when the Islamic government came to power in Iran. Years later, while Aslani's daughter was researching Iranian auteur cinema, the director's son discovered a complete print of the film in a junk shop. Smuggled out of the country and restored, it can now be seen in its original form.
Set almost entirely within the confines of the ornate home of a rich family where the matriarch has recently died, the film is about the machinations of the remaining members of the household, chiefly a paraplegic daughter who hates her stepfather and schemes with her maid (Oscar nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo in her film debut), to get the inheritance. The opening part of the film is perhaps the hardest for a Western audience to find its way in to, as it seems reliant on tradition and on knowledge of the dynamics of a large family at this point in Iranian history, however, we are drawn in by Aslani's composition and by the web of double and triple crosses he begins to weave.
Fakhri Khorvash is a striking presence as the malevolent wheelchair-bound daughter, calculating every move even though she needs help to make them. A handheld flail is her equivalent of the dagger that might be the weapon of choice in a Western gothic horror. Beyond the violence, and the fact that is largely a strong and scheming female who is meting it out, it is easy to see why this film was banned by Iran's Islamic regime. A frisson exists between Khorvash and Aghdashloo's characters throughout, but one scene takes it further, suggesting a lesbian encounter between the two. Aghdashloo is the film's standout performer, immediately her presence—which vacillates between demure, luminous, and menacing—leaps off the screen. Her shifting loyalties are compelling to watch, and she's mesmerizing in the film's closing sequence (see still above), rising from a pool like some thing coming for her mistress.
The last twenty minutes of the film are remarkable. It's noted in the opening captions explaining the restoration that the sequence is influenced by silent cinema, and the orange tint, vividly restored in this version not only looks to the teens and twenties, Aslani makes it his own. A hothouse atmosphere has been building for some time at this point; a growing sense of paranoia and questions of who is out to get whom and whether there have been supernatural goings on. The fiery look of this sequence gives it the feel that everything may literally be going to hell.
Chess of the Wind is great example of exactly why festivals need archive sections. I had never even heard of this film, but I found something that drew me in more with each minute, that made me want to explore more about the culture it was made in to get more out of it (not just the traditional aspects, but the sort of Greek chorus formed by women washing clothes in a fountain outside the home, and the final shot which appears to recontextualise much of the film). The restoration brings out not just the precision of Aslani's shot choices but of the colour and texture of his film. I've not seen much quite like this before, and I hope this new version will enable a lot of people to be as transported by it as I was.
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