2013 ‘ماهی و گربه’ Directed by Shahram Mokri
A group of students travel to a remote region to participate in a kite-flying event. Next to their camp by the lakeside, they find a restaurant with cooks that treat the students with suspicion. Bizarre events lead to a complicated situation, from which the students cannot escape.
Mahi va gorbeh, Fish and Cat
134 minute, Iranian slow-cinema riff on Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and its slasher contemporaries) that manages to transgress, evade and otherwise manipulate genre conventions to deliver something arguably defiant of taxonomy and all in one elaborate take (with time an interesting concept in its narrative); the Russian Ark of cannibal movies
A mesmerizing one-take kinda-horror-but-not-really film about a group of college students meeting up for a kite festival in the woods while a TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE style situation happens in the background. Or does it?
There are no on-screen kills or set-pieces to be found in FISH & CAT, but the magic of Writer/Director Shahram Mokri's gambit is how he crafts an episodic portrait of a number of characters that slyly jumps through time (in the one take) in ways that cleverly reveal themselves. I will say that I was a little disappointed when I realized the film wasn't going to deliver the conventional goods or stick with characters beyond their main appearances, but the film is so dense with readings (while appearing slyly simple) that I haven't stopped thinking about it since I saw it.
Fish & Cat exceeded all my expectations. When watching a single-take movie, you'd expect a linear timeline, but instead the camera follows different people throughout the movie and returns to previous scenes to show them from the point of view from several characters.
The story begins with two cooks and continues with a group of students who meet for a kite festival near their restaurant. For the first hour the movie focuses on the students and their stories and makes you forget about the chefs, until they suddenly return again. From this moment on Fish & Cat becomes more and more complex and unreliable and forces you to think about everything you've seen to try to figure out what's relevant to the…
unexpectedly transgressive and subversive, trading what kicks off (and often treads along, circles back to, alludes to, and converges towards) as an Iranian spin on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and instead, bends its miraculous one-take format into a hypnotizing mystery that simultaneously acts as a revolving door while folding inward. very particular filmmaking, but all the more enticing as a result, boasting a desaturated dizzy of banality unbound by time, yet, ensnared by the loop.
I recommend to watch "Fish & Cat" without information and with some patience. What you can know before watching it is that it has been mad in one shot and very likely it´s a low-budget production too.
To me it was a strange experience. For around half of the time I didn´t know at all what was going on there and I was rather irritated. The camera is very particular and so are the colors. People are doing strange things that don´t make sense directly. The dialogues are laborious, especially because I don´t speak Persian and there is a lot of talking. I didn´t have any clue and searched for orientation - without success. I had to pause the movie a few times to get a break from this. But still, the longer the movie continued the more I enjoyed it.
In some ways I find it even ingenious. The location has been chosen very well too!
Not since Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark has the single take been attempted at such a grandiose level. Shahram Mokri's first feature length film is an exceptionally audacious, experimental and risky project, which not only defies the meaning of the word 'genre', but also transcends any characteristics standard to the genre film. Fish & Cat is at once a suspense, a thriller, a horror, a romance, a coming-of-age, and a cinematic exercise in stretching the boundaries of the medium.
The film starts with the suspicious Babak, and slowly expands its cast as the camera moves from forest to forest and coast to coast. Some of our questions are answered - others are not. But even this minor attempt at filmic omniscience is…
این فیلم یکی از مشهورترین فیلم‌های سینمای ایران در دهه اخیر است. شهرت «ماهی و گربه» به سکانس پلان بودن آن است؛ نزدیک به ۱۴۰ دقیقه فیلم‌برداری بدون حتی یک کات. «ماهی و گربه» از این جهت در سینمای ما نمونه ندارد.
فیلم با زمان بازی میکند؛ زمان را می‌شکند و شخصیت‌های خود را بین حال و گذشته می‌چرخاند. فیلم یک قصه اصلی دارد ولی مدام از گفتن آن فرار میکند و چندین قصه کوچک مختلف را در کنار آن روایت میکند، که بعضی‌هایش اصلا جالب نیست و تنها راویت فیلم را کند و مدت زمان فیلم رو طولانی میکند. از قصه اصلی فیلم یک خلاصه معروف هست که همه‌جا آن را می‌گویند: چند جوان برای مسابقه بادبادک‌بازی به شمال…
"ماهی و گربه" یکی از متفاوت‌ترین فیلم‌های ایرانی‌ای بود که دیدم. فضای سرد و تاریکش روح انسان را تسخیر میکند و تکرار زمانی‌اش انسان را در مغز خود ناک‌اوت میکند. چقدر همه‌چیز این فیلم هوشمندانه کار شده. فقط کافیست کمی به بازیِ با زمان فیلم آن هم ۱۳۴دقیقه بصورت تک شات فکر کرد تا متوجه این موضوع شد.
فضای فوق العاده سنگین فیلم، موضوع وهم آلود و واقعی‌اش، موسیقی‌ای که در لحظه قلب انسان را می‌ریزد یکی پس از دیگری روی زیبایی "گربه و ماهی" دلالت دارند. کاری که شهرام مُکری در چنین روزهایی آن هم در ایران انجام داد جای شگفتی‌ست.
فیلم از همان ابتدا با مقدمه‌ی ترسناکش جو وهم‌آلودش را نشان مخاطب می‌دهد و با گفت و گوهای…
There was a moment in this extraordinary two-hour plus Iranian single-take mind-bender Fish & Cat when I was hooked, and I stayed so throughout the remainder. This is a conceptual experiment that requires a great deal of patience and won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It is a playful ‘horror’ film - there is tension and unease, but nay a genre convention in sight - that will surely leave audiences scratching their heads. A group of young people meet at a lake, set up their camp and prepare for a kite festival, and over the course of the shot, helmed by the DP of A Separation, we follow these individuals as they cross paths with one another, and two chefs from a nearby dodgy-looking restaurant. As the film does strange things we are challenged to reflect on everything we have seen and simultaneously think ahead, it becomes an increasingly complex entanglement of strands that make for a giddily exciting trip.
"Fish & Cat" is an incredibly unique film, honestly unlike any other film around. It is an increasing slow burn in narrative, learning the story of interlocking characters that are surrounding a lake area for event to fly kites. As there is a series of characters advantageous to fly kites from a perspective local university, there is also a series of brash characters from a nearby "loosely defined" restaurant with seemingly questionable methods of possible murder to supply their meat. All this is an encompassing retelling of actual events that occurred in the late 90's.
While the simple narrative that quietly tells a short moment of time is important, the film is far more noticeable within its properties of uniqueness of…
Watched December 27th
On the Deaf Crocodile Blu-ray release (004)
Directed by: Shahram Mokri
Written by: Shahram Mokri, Nasim Ahmadpour
TSZDT: Unranked
TSPDT: Unranked
141 minutes. I’m writing this two hours after finishing the movie and it has been the only thing I have thought about the entire time. See this movie. It is the anti-slasher, one-take, time-traveling mystery that you never knew you needed.
There is not enough hyperbole for me to express how much I loved this. Shahram Mokri is a freakin mad genius and pulled off a film that doesn’t really sound possible when it’s being described. I feel like there are three equally tough challenges that Mokri tackled with this project:
-Make a slasher without any…
Whenever a major slasher film releases, I become accustomed to seeing a few typical detracting comments against the subgenre. There’s complaints that they are formulaic, that they’re an old hat, and there’s nothing really new to do with them. Even as a massive fan of the subgenre, I don’t find some of these complaints unfounded. Even one of the most iconic slashers in horror, Jason Voorhees, was the product of wanting to capitalize on the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween. I think both the adoration and the criticism towards the subgenre is rooted in its simple set-up. A minimalistic slasher isn’t necessarily much at all, but that simplicity can really open up so many options for the filmmaker, if they’re…
