![]() And as for Betty and their daughter? Why, they will stay, too. He has lost his job at the hospital, and plans to stay in Iran. But as the time draws near for their return to America, he undergoes a personality change, becoming angry and short with her, and finally admitting that they are not going back at all. They are interested in her only as the mother of her husband's child her role, it appears, is to be the infidel mother of an Islamic daughter.Īt first Moody is supportive. ![]() The other members of her husband's family make little effort to communicate with her - other than to give orders or repeat religious truths. It is forbidden for her to reveal so much as a lock of hair in public. But soon after they land in Iran, she is plunged into a frightening and alien world.Īs a woman, she is an occasion of sin. Moody promises her - on the Koran - that she has nothing to fear. Finally he suggests a visit to his homeland.īetty is not so sure. Her husband, Moody ( Alfred Molina), suffers from racist taunts at the hospital, and grows homesick when he telephones to his family back in Iran. They have a young daughter and a settled middle-class life, but beneath the surface all is not well. Although it is billed as being based on a true story, this is a film that inspires such distinctions.) The film stars Sally Field as Betty, an ordinary American mom in all respects but one - she has married an Iranian who is a doctor at the local hospital. (It will probably not occur to many of the viewers of this film that we are opposing only one Muslim nation - that the others in the Middle East are on our side. I don't imagine the makers of this film could have imagined this timing in their wildest dreams: that their negative portrait of fundamentalist Muslims would be released at a time when we seem about to go to war with some of them. On another level, it applies a harsh assortment of negative qualities to a group of people we may find ourselves at war with. On one level, it tells a story that almost anyone can identify with - a mother deprived of her child and her freedom by the rigid rules of an unbending religion. ![]() Here is a perplexing and frustrating film, which works with great skill to involve our emotions, while at the same time making moral and racial assertions that are deeply troubling.
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