Be a Dragon: Haghighi’s Enticing Hodgepodge Defies Categorization
Director Mani Haghighi stakes a claim as one of the most innovative new voices out of Iran with his standout fifth feature, A Dragon Arrives!. Systematically defying easy categorization, the slippery political allegory can just as easily be referenced as noir, horror, mystery and docu-hybrid, utilizing a myriad of hat tricks as its increasingly strange and sometimes hopelessly complicated narrative unspools. Though it may be too baffling to attract casual viewers, those relishing a challenge should delight in this mystifying feature which promises to yield multiple interpretations through extensive viewing. Seemingly entrenched in the past, it is perhaps more of an allegory on the present, a puzzling ghost story spectacularly coated (or coded) in fantastical elements.
In 1964 Iran, cultivated detective Babak Hafizi finds he has been abducted by his own agency, waking up to a menacing interrogation from his boss, Major...
Director Mani Haghighi stakes a claim as one of the most innovative new voices out of Iran with his standout fifth feature, A Dragon Arrives!. Systematically defying easy categorization, the slippery political allegory can just as easily be referenced as noir, horror, mystery and docu-hybrid, utilizing a myriad of hat tricks as its increasingly strange and sometimes hopelessly complicated narrative unspools. Though it may be too baffling to attract casual viewers, those relishing a challenge should delight in this mystifying feature which promises to yield multiple interpretations through extensive viewing. Seemingly entrenched in the past, it is perhaps more of an allegory on the present, a puzzling ghost story spectacularly coated (or coded) in fantastical elements.
In 1964 Iran, cultivated detective Babak Hafizi finds he has been abducted by his own agency, waking up to a menacing interrogation from his boss, Major...
- 2/22/2016
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
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