"Chicken With Plums" : The Elegance of Dying of Love

"Chicken With Plums", is the second feature by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud after their Oscar nominated animated feature "Persepolis". Both of which are based on the graphic novels by Satrapi herself. The world she presents is of a long gone Iran, an Iran that resembles a gorgeous but exotic European capital, filled with romanticism and beautiful colors. The film is a live action feature, but is far away from a typical narrative. The magic realism is executed with such elegance that is hard not to dive in and completely block the real world to accept what is on the screen.

The story follows Nasser Ali (Mathieu Amalric)  a musician who has decided to die because his precious violin, which was the only tangible connection with her lost love, has been destroyed by the wife he has never loved. The film is told in an episodic manner counting down the 8 days before Nasser Ali's encounter with Azrael the Angel of Death. Since he must keep his dignity intact, Nasser Ali has decided to just lay in bed waiting for death to come, so we are dragged into his mind to see many vignettes of his past, and of his loved ones future. Nasser Ali is selfish and detached from his wive and kids, being music his only true passion, the only thing that fills the void left by Iran, the love of his youth.

The films in a way reminds me of Jeunet's "Amelie" because of the use of a narrator and the overall tone of the film, even some of the cast in here were part of "Amelie". The humor is dark and melancholic,but it achieves a mood of contempt mixed with sadness, not an over dramatic sadness , but an acceptance of some of the worst things in life. The film is shot just beautifully, the memories and episodes within the film are very stylized and exuberant, but again done with great appreciation for detail and artistry. The cast is overall exquisite,even the comical personification of Azrael by Edouard Baer rings true in the midst of all this over stylized fantastic reality.

The symbolism used in "Chicken With Plums" speaks to the heart of Iranian culture, always enhancing the allure of this misunderstood land. The characters in the film smoke a lot, and the smoke they exhale becomes a character in its own, being a metaphor for the soul and perhaps even for the ephemeral existence we live. Life and death are at war in Nasser Ali's mind, the title refers to his favorite dish, a simple pleasure he cannot enjoy anymore, indeed he has lost the capacity to even love the most minuscule things that made him happy. The fact that the name of his lost love is "Iran" speaks to how probably Satrapi feels about Iran after the revolution, and Iran that was at least in her imagination a beautiful mixture of elegance and mysticism, and which perhaps she will never see again. An excellent and gorgeous film, now in very limited release. Grade A+