Viewing “Forgetting” Not Merely as a Condition, but as a Metaphor for Today's Human Suffering, Loneliness and Broken Emotional Bonds / Raised at a Screening of “Father” at the House of Cinema

The first session of “Screenwriting Era” was held yesterday, Sunday, 19 Mehr, with Mahmoud Arbabi, Farhad Tohidi and Saeed Ghotbizadeh, organized by the Screenplay Bank in cooperation with the House of Cinema.

According to Ambassador Arjan, citing the public relations of Cinema House, Farhad Tawhidi said at the beginning of this program before the screening of the film: "I hope the script evening program that started today at Cinema House will continue because this program will be dedicated to the screening of selected films." Films that are important mainly from the perspective of discussing the script and can be learned from them.

Then the movie "Father" directed by Florian Zeller was screened in Seif Elah Dad Khane cinema hall, and after the screening of the film, Mahmoud Arbabi, the head of the Screenplay Bank, said: "The Screenplay Bank has been formed for many years by the screenwriters association, and we decided to have cultural programs for it, and today we started the first meeting of the screenplay evening."

He continued: "Today's discussion is dedicated to the movie "Father" and we are trying to choose movies that are selected in terms of screenwriting and have something to say."

Arbabi said: "Zeller's narration in this film is such that he takes the audience in a direction so that people narrate a situation for us. He has chosen a narrative that is related to the times. "Dementia is a disease, but we are slowly facing dementia that is related to the times."

He continued: "All the narration of the film happens from the father's side and he wants to escape from the challenging situation, but as he goes on, he sinks more and more, and in fact, all the stories that have been narrated are narrated by Hopkins."

Arbabi noted: "The film tells the story of the attempt of Anthony Hopkins, who finally accepts the failure of the attempt, and this is natural because dementia is mostly an illusion."

The structure is formed within the narrative

Further, Farhad Tawhidi also said: "This script written by Zeller is a play that has another double meaning. The plays "Mother", "Father" and "Son" were staged and "Father" and "Son" became movies.

He continued: "All three are plays and movies that are least affected by external events, everything takes place in the family atmosphere, the main discussion is the storm in the family, which may be due to psychosomatic illness, depression, etc. Among these three plays, "Father" has been the most successful in terms of structure and international success. "Father" is important in three aspects; Narration, adaptation and characterization."

Stating that linguists to theorists have similar definitions about narration in cinema, Tawhidi said: "Narrative is the description of events that have a causal relationship with each other. In the beginning, there is a situation, and events that have a cause and effect relationship lead to the creation of a new situation. Some believe that a narrative consists of only one event (for example: I went to the cinema today) and some believe that there must be at least two events (real or fictional) in order to call them a narrative. The problem is that it doesn't specify that the two events need to be thematically related."

Saeed Qutbizadeh: If we see forgetfulness in the movie "Father" not just as a complication, but as a metaphor for human suffering today, loneliness and the breaking of emotional bonds, then the movie will be a mirror in front of us.

Stating that chronological sequence is important in narration, but cinema theorists do not believe in it, he stated: "Narrative is an organized description of events and it should be defined in such a way that it has the greatest impact on the audience and the greatest pleasure for the audience in terms of aesthetics. In fact, it can be said that narration is the intermediary between the audience and the narration.

Tawhidi noted: "They ask Hitchcock how to make a good film?" He says with a good script. In my opinion, the movie "Father" has a good script.

He explained the difference between structure and narrative: "Structure means putting each other aside, but the narrative is a little bigger, and the structure is formed within the narrative, and in the original screenplay, it proceeds on the basis of revelation."

This screenwriter stated that the main problem of the screenwriter is the character, and noted: "The character in the film must experience four archetypes. In fact, the character moves and creates the story. From which point of view the narrative is revealed to the audience is the work of the structure. "Films based on mystery novels are limited information and delay answers."

Cinema is more the heir of literature than theater

Saeed Qutbizadeh, a film critic, pointed out that based on the Aristotelian division, the determination of the story depends on the determination of time, place, and theme, and stated: "Zeller in the play "Father" by keeping these three principles in mind, has interfered in each of them, which at first glance disrupts the audience's connection with the story. That is, the time, place, and topic in this film are inconsistent with the usual routine and common definition, and this issue is the source of the work's ambiguities.

He continued: "In directing his dramatic text, Zeller went further and used the possibilities of sound and image, especially music, to create more ambiguity. For example, the time span in which the events of the play take place is a secret that cannot be revealed in the cinematography, or the place of the events becomes more mysterious with successive location changes, and most importantly, choosing a worn-out mind to narrate the story makes the events appear irregular and the events unusual. Time and space in this film are fluid and captivating, far from what is presented in conventional films.

Qutbizadeh said: "In my opinion, the movie "Father" is an ambitious work, but it is a wonderful experience and not a masterpiece, for several reasons. First, decades after Buñuel's late films, presenting a realistic picture of a sick and worn-out mentality is not a step forward in cinema. Compared to "Tristana", Zeller's film still has nothing new to say, whether in terms of ideas or mise-en-scène. The second reason refers to the director's delight in throwing knots in the narrative that makes the audience's relationship with his film look like the effort of someone who is solving an equation or solving a table or putting together a puzzle. It is only after passing through the difficulties of the text that the audience stops at the zero point.

Saeed Qutbizadeh: The chronicle of a fantasizing, sick and delusional mind is basically interesting and fascinating. We must pay attention not to consider forgetfulness in this film (Father-Florian Zeller) as only a complication and think about its metaphorical aspects as well.

He continued: "The question is whether or not there was a need for this level of complexity in the plot to express the condition of an old man suffering from dementia, and if the audience gets past these ambiguities, will the film still be attractive to them?" It is possible to criticize the film in general that what it wants to say does not need to be said in this way. "Father" is a film whose strangeness is in the plot of Pirangi Gang, and the aim of the filmmaker is to trouble the audience. It's sure to be a fun and even exciting experience for first-timers to find answers to their questions about the ambiguities of the text."

This film critic said: "This is like struggling with a story that is not nonlinear in nature, but because of the choice of the point of view of the sick old man, it looks nonlinear and chaotic." This is the result of a clever trick to make the movie weirder than a genuine weirdness show. My recommendation in this meeting is to see original examples in cinema such as "Lilit" by Robert Rossen or the silent film "A Leaf of Madness" by Kinogas.

Qutbizadeh continued: "Fairly, if we look at this film, it also has features that we can learn from. One of the most important of these lessons is the precise use of objects in the story. The clock and wall painting as two thematic story elements of the film are recurring motifs. The timelessness and placelessness of the story, from the old man's point of view, is with the emphasis on the clock itself, not its hands. Here, the clock signifies time, it shows the narrator's childish sensitivity, and its frequent loss points to his Alzheimer's disease.

This well-known film critic also explained Zeller's narration method in the movie "Father" as a fluid and moving movement between the first person and the third person. In explaining this double narrative, he said: "It seems that a major part of the film is dedicated to the father's point of view, and we observe the surrounding environment and people from his point of view, and then, in an untimely turn, in chapters such as the daughter's fantasy about her father's murder, we see images from his mind."

He continued: In addition to the mentioned cases, the movie "Father" is an interesting and modern example of showing "invalid narration" in the cinema. A kind of revelation against the principle of "image as reality" which Christian Thomson elaborates in his comprehensive writing called "Breaking the Glass Protection".

He continued: "For the audience who always evaluated the moving image as a proof of the authenticity of reality, examples like Hitchcock's "Stage Horror" invalidated this assumption and turned the simple-minded audience of classic films into an audience that later looked at even the most realistic scenes with doubt. Aware of the impact of an unreliable narrative, Zeller took an extreme approach to shock the audience. In the movie "Father", everything we see is apparently real. This emphasis on a real house and ordinary people and tangible relationships is to trick the audience into being surprised to see the father in the nursing home minutes later, in the unraveling chapter of the film. As if all those things that seemed so real were nothing more than an illusion. This realization of the unreal is a trick that, although it surprises the audience on the first viewing, I doubt it will be an effective tactic for subsequent viewings or to emerge victorious from the test of time.

Stating that cinema is more the heir of literature than theater, he said: "One of the things that cinema borrows from literature is playing with the angle of view in fictional and non-fictional narration. In the play, except for exceptions like Beckett and UNESCO, due to the limitation of the stage and the key need for dialogue, the hand of the playwright is not so open for this work, but literature is a wide field for these tricks.

He said: "The chronicle of an imaginary, sick and delusional mind is basically interesting and fascinating. We must pay attention not to consider forgetfulness in this film as just a complication and to think about its metaphorical aspects as well.

Praising the performance of Anthony Hopkins and selecting a piece from the opera "Pearl Fishermen" by Georges Bizet, Qutbizadeh emphasized at the end of his speech: "If we see forgetfulness in the movie "Father" not only as a complication, but as a metaphor for human suffering today, loneliness and the breaking of emotional bonds, then the film will be a mirror in front of us."

At the end of this meeting, the attendees raised their questions about the script of the movie "Father".