Jean-Luc Godard famously said that all you need for a film is a girl and a gun. In Iranian director Farzad Motamen’s new film, All Through the Night / Sarasar-e Shab, we get at least three girls and a knife in place of a gun. Motamen has an interesting oeuvre consisting of dramas, comedies, film noirs, love stories and at least one bona fide cult film, White Nights / Shabhaye Rowshan (2003), based on Dostoevsky’s White Nights. He is also a Godard aficionado and expert.
All Through the Night could be described as a Godardian noir, infused with characters and dialogue from the world of cinema and literature. A writer-director in the film, Davoud Moradi (Amir Jafari), who appears to be Motamen’s alter ego, is looking for a story which he could turn into a movie. It is the first time that he is writing the script of his film and his comedies have been box office hits (both of these attributes echoing Motamen’s real life experience). Other characters include two sisters, Mahta and Maryam (both played by Elnaz Shakerdoost), who may actually be different personalities of the same girl. Maryam is an aspiring actress who is in a deep sleep throughout the night and Mahta a medical student who gave up art in pursuit of science. There is a call girl called Shohreh (Azadeh Samadi) who has been beaten up by a client and with the aid of a young man (her pimp?) is looking to find the assailant and exact revenge. Other characters include a musician who is studying cinema (Sina Hejazi), and a tough guy who wants to be a film producer (Mahdi Soltani).
The main meeting place for these characters is the Alphaville Café. A woman who owns the café involves Mahta, who is having coffee in there, in the call girl’s case, which then gets connected to the tough guy, which in turn is connected to the director. All Through the Night is not a story full of characters but rather characters in search of a story. It is by no means a mainstream film with a beginning, a middle and an end. As Davoud says to the tough guy and wannabe investor in his film,”there are two kinds of films, those with an ending and those without one.” As in Godard movies, story is of secondary importance, cinema comes first.
Motamen has found the perfect sources to adapt from for this film. Murakami’s After Dark which takes place during the night in a diner and features Mari, a young girl, who helps a girl who has been beaten up at the Alphaville hotel. The other source is Hunger by Knut Hamsun. An existential novel which features an aspiring writer wandering in the streets, looking for inspiration.
All Through the Night bears all the hallmarks of Godard, jump cuts, narration at the beginning, action being interrupted by long conversations. The dialogue of the film sounds like and in many cases is, quotations from film and literature. Films of Billy Wilder serve as one of the sources with “I am Big, it’s the pictures that got small” (Sunset Boulevard) and “Nobody’s Perfect” (Some Like it Hot) being a couple of examples. Other bits of quote-like dialogue include, “Night belongs to those who either can’t sleep or don’t want to sleep”, “he who cannot imagine, takes refuge in reality” and so on. There is a mobile on a pavement which whenever rings and one of the characters picks it up plays rap music!
All Through the Night is Motamen’s most purely cinematic film and the one which owes most to Godard. It could have the alternative title of What I have Learned from the Movies. It is as though he has reached a stage in his career where he has made his mainstream films to satisfy the general audiences, his cult films to satisfy his fans, his commercial comedies to satisfy his investors and decided to make a film for himself, one close to his heart and reflective of whatever made him want to be a film maker, bearing influences from his favourite films and directors, his favourite styles and genres of movies, his favourite literature. Indeed, mirror is used as a motif throughout the film as though to indicate that what we are witnessing is only one reflection of events and people and other, different versions could be seen in different reflections. Cinephiles and in particular Godard fans are likely to appreciate All Through the Night, but those looking for a mainstream film, should seek Motamen’s other films, of which I particularly recommend Long Farewell / khodahafezi-e Toolani (2015).
2020. UniversalCinema Mag.