Performing the poetics of the Iranian dream on silver screen: Hamoun as a tale of spiritual rebirth

Abstract

ABSTRACT Iranian cinema is an artistic forum in which cultural values and national sentiments are discursively performed, rehearsed, and negotiated. It plays a pivotal role in propagating and consolidating various vestiges of national identity. The interplay between cinema and national identity finds its apotheosis in the directorial oeuvre of Dariush Mehrjui, which is characterised by a vested interest in cross-cultural appropriation of canonical literary texts. This study examines the ways Mehrjui appropriates Saul Bellow's Herzog (1964) to project a spiritual spectatorship anchored in Islamic ethos in Hamoun (1990). It builds upon Robert Stam's concept of ‘intertextual dialogism’ to pinpoint the articulation of an alternative texture of ‘Iranian-ness’ within the mythopoetic narrative flow of the film. Hamoun is a character-driven quest narrative in which the protagonist abdicates material life in favour of achieving spiritual salvation. As a filmic discourse, the movie instructs how the narrative trajectory of the refashioned national identity should be conceived in cinema at the turn of the millennium.