As the Colonel muttered this sentence, another sentence came to my mind: Exiles, no homeland.
Exile is one of the most tragic fates. Eternal strangers, endless wanderings, often in conflict with unfamiliar environments, hard to let go of the past, and full of sorrow for the future.
Moving to the United States for a family that was once at the top of power, rich in wealth, and admired by others not only means starting from scratch in career, but also means that their culture, knowledge, and literacy are useless from now on. The latter is the real pain.
In order to escape the tyranny of the mother country, it is a tragedy in itself to be forced to unify and abandon the essence of Iranian culture and even the blood of its own nation.
Any true exile will attest that once they leave their homeland, no matter where they end up, they cannot simply accept life and become just another citizen of a new place. Or even so, feeling cramped in the endeavor, feeling that it's hardly worth it. You spend a lot of time regretting what you've lost and envy those who've been at home. Because they can be close to the people they love and live where they were born and raised, not only do they not have to experience the loss of things they once had, but they also don't have to experience the tormenting memories that they can't return to their past lives.
For the colonel, he couldn't actually bury the glorious past decently. For four years they lived a life they simply could not afford. The luxurious apartment, the extravagant daughter's wedding banquet, consumed almost all the property. It is very difficult for new immigrants to integrate into the mainstream society, not to mention Colonel Behrani, who has been in politics for many years without any skills. day.
When he stood in front of the window, he saw the afterglow of the sun diffused through the curtains, like a miracle, instantly opening a door to his chaotic life. The shots here are very freehand and concise.
Behrani's handling of the house issue was beyond reproach, as he said, kathy should sue the county government, why should she pay for their incompetence. It's not wrong for kathy to want to get the house back right away, and her mother will soon find out that things are bound to break. The government has agreed to buy it back at the original price, behrani is willing to step back and the matter is settled. If they can explain their situation to each other clearly, the conflict may not intensify. But after thinking about it, the personalities of the two determine the final direction of things.
Like his country, behrani's family is a typical patriarchal system, he is arbitrary, does not allow doubts, loves face, and is very responsible. As a soldier, this is a deep imprint of his home country where he has lived for decades. Just like he took it for granted that the law firm was run by a man, he ran to the foreman in a straight suit and told the foreman that I was quitting. He wants to be respected, at least as an equal. He lacks empathy, thinks Americans don't know how to value their own lives, and is naive and superficial.
Kathy is drunk, her key word is to escape, to linger in the memory, and refuse to move forward. The loss of the house made her start to wake up, realizing that everything she still has now is not easy, so she struggled to get it back. She and Lester had always seen the behrini noble and aggressive, but could not see that it came from the same, necessarily humbler source.
When Lester visited Behrani for the first time, it was completely the attitude of the master of the country. He despised the outsider and taunted the Shah of Iran by the way, which made the latter immediately put on his armor and go into battle. In Lester's view, any mistake can send them home by immigration, which is precisely where Behrani's weakness lies. In the night he kept his eyes open until the light of day, he must have deeply realized that this is someone else's home, and that a small policeman can threaten his safety, his family. And the information we got from the quarrel between him and his wife is that the sensitive words of the fighter, the NSA, are like a nightmare that cannot be shaken away. For them, there is no way out, they can only survive tenaciously on this land.
What behrani showed was even tougher. On the one hand, in this relatively free country, he learned to rely on the law to protect himself, believing that he must fight to get it;
The mistake made by behrani is that even weak people will have unexpected moments when they are pressed, such as the cry of fire when Lester breaks free. Another example is kathy swallowing a gun in front of his door. He didn't call the police, but followed his ancestor's instructions and took him into the house and took good care of him.
What kathy will face is the condemnation of her conscience for a lifetime. Maybe she never realizes her fault, and only blindly takes anger on others. Her insistence killed these kind and good people. At the end of the film, she finally came to her senses, and what she wanted to stay in was only a fragment of the past, which was already someone else's home.
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