Jon Stewart’s directorial debut isn’t really worth rushing out to watch in theaters–but few people are anyway–and I think it’ll find a proper home on Netflix or HBO, where more people will likely see it and that’s probably the right move. At least half the movie is intimate two-person scenes set in a tight interrogation room, and while that can sometimes play flat on the big-screen, your living room won’t have that same problem.
What Works: It’s based on the true story of Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari (played by Gael Garcia Bernal) who—on behalf of Newsweek—went to Iran to cover the 2009 presidential election, and wound up incarcerated for months, charged with being a “spy” in part because of a satirical interview he did with The Daily Show. His Iranian interrogator doesn’t get the joke, and there’s a through-the-looking-glass strangeness in watching a Daily Show interview with a fake American “spy” be used as a real excuse to interrogate and imprison a journalist, all while knowing Jon Stewart is directing the re-staging of this.
The film makes light points about the slippery slope from revolution to repression, about tyrannical regimes and their need to keep the outside world out—-Bahari’s father was a Communist who went through worse treatment under the Shah of Iran—-and how the oppressors, in their own way, are even more imprisoned than their captives. It also provides pretty good info on the thorny relationship between Iran and America, like an “Iranian Political History for Dummies” or “Why They Hate Us: Iran Edition.”
What Doesn’t: It’s a good movie, but a naggingly slight one. When the lights come up and you walk out of the theater it’s hard to feel like you’ve really seen something, and it winds up being a fairly unmemorable experience. Stewart can’t suppress his natural tendency to keep things light, and doesn’t really dig deep enough, continually puncturing the tension with odd giggly moments.
Plus, Gael Garcia Bernal doesn’t add much heft to the proceedings, and it’s a little strange that he was cast in the first place. He looks nothing like Bahari, is (again) a little too airy for the role, and is Hispanic. It feels like a casting misstep for a movie that takes such precision in its politics and so carefully avoids misrepresentation. You can almost feel the Iranian government press release being written to say “See? They could not even find an Iranian who would be willing to star in their Western propaganda film.”
What I Would Have Done Differently: You can’t blame Stewart for wanting to tell a story that was inspired—to a degree—by a Daily Show interview, but he could have pushed the presentation of this material out of his comfort zone a little more.