‘No End’: Busan Review

Dir: Nader Saeivar. Germany/Iran/Turkey. 2022. 113mins

As befits its title, Iranian drama No End applies the psychological screws at the start and never lets up. In truth, the film goes about its purpose with commitment rather than subtlety, but has a strong ring of plausibility in depicting the mechanics of an individual’s ruthless manipulation by a police state. Directed by Nader Saeivar, who co-wrote Jafar Panahi’s 2018 film 3 Faces, No End credits Panahi as editor and advisor; in both capacities, one feels that the maestro could have tightened the film up somewhat.

The film’s strongest card is an unnervingly modulated performance by Shahin Kazem Najad

Nevertheless, as a protest drama, No End commands attention at a time when Iranian citizens in general, and artists in particular, are facing difficult conditions, with Panahi himself sentenced to six years in prison. All this will surely bring the film some attention after its Busan premiere, not least from festivals with a human rights focus.

Saeivar’s first feature, 2020’s Namo (The Alien) – co-written with Panahi – was also about surveillance-related anxiety. In his follow-up, an enigmatic prelude, executed in a discreetly tricky single shot, establishes a somewhat theatrical mode. We’re in a dilapidated basement, hearing and seeing a rent-related dispute outside a window, before a man enters in manifest despair; a slow track between two rooms shows the bleak consequences, following by a sleight-of-hand jump in time. How this relates to what follows doesn’t fully emerge till much later, frustratingly – although, to be fair, Saeivar provides an overt clue for those paying attention.

The main drama involves middle-aged Ayaz (Vahid Mobasseri), a long-serving worker in a government department handling construction permits. A man of quiet integrity, Ayaz refuses the bribes that are offered to him, while naively placing his own hopes in an apartment block scheme that’s clearly never going to happen. Ayar lives with his wife Negar and her mother; his brother-in-law Soroush is about to return to Iran after 30 years of exile in Germany. Soroush owns the house that the family lives in and Ayaz is worried that, on arrival, Soroush will sell the property, forcing him and Negar into rented accommodation.

Ayaz takes the desperate step – elliptically conveyed in one of the abrupt cuts that punctuate the film – by pretending to Negar and her mother that their home has been ransacked by security officers; a ploy of his to dissuade Soroush from coming back. This, however, only attracts the attention of real officials, one of whom ironically attempts to bribe Ayaz into easing the way for a planning application.

Ayaz’s ‘case officer’ – for which, read personal nemesis – is Hadi (Shahin Kazem Najad), who plays him like an organ from the start, acting the gentle, benevolent ‘good cop’ to his roughneck colleagues, and telling Ayaz that he can make his troubles go away if only he’ll help him tidy up the minor mess he’s caused. Before he knows it, Ayaz has become a full-time informer.

Writer-director Saeivar clearly has some informed insights into the methods – sometimes subtle, sometimes hammer-heavy – by which state surveillance can manipulate the anxious, isolated individual. One of Hadi’s methods is to invoke a demanding superior officer, Mr Solati. He finally grants his victim a meeting with Solati, at which Ayaz desperately blurts out a cri de coeur, as a super-slow camera move delivers a payoff that most viewers will see coming from the start.

The film’s strongest card is an unnervingly modulated performance by Shahin Kazem Najad as the cop; he uses his bear-like appearance and sotto voce delivery to appear in turns thuggishly domineering and deceptively reassuring, as Hadi plays puppetmaster to Ayaz – at one point, literally telling him what physical positions to adopt.

By contrast, Vahid Mobasseri – recently seen in a serio-comic role in Panahi’s Venice Special Jury Prize winner No Bears – presents Ayaz as a little too abject throughout. The character’s nadir comes when his inquisitors finish a session of humiliation by making him wear absurdly clownish trousers; in fact, he seems a little buffoonish from the start, not least for the flat cap he habitually wears pulled down too far over his ears. Mobasseri’s glum, puppy-like expression and downturned mouth allow the character less dignity than he deserves, and a less ostentatiously hangdog performance might have let Ayaz stand out more persuasively as the Everyman pawn of a merciless system. And providing such specific psychological motivation for Ayaz’s anxiety, as the film finally does, makes No End less effective as a wider political parable.

The film is parsimonious with its visual appeal, in its predominant palette of greys, beiges and browns – although there’s elegance in the camera moves and carefully staged set-ups. It could also have dispensed with some briefer scenes, like the clunky episode of a civil servants’ party night. Hosein Mirzagoli’s sparely ominous score redundantly over-emphasises menace when it’s amply implicit already.