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A multimillion-dollar biopic about the childhood of the prophet Muhammad – Iran’s most expensive and lavish film to date – is set to premiere on Sunday.
Tehran’s Fajr international film festival, which coincides with the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, is scheduled to show the country’s own version of how Islam’s most revered figure lived. To protect the prophet’s dignity, the film will be shown out of competition.
Iran has been a vocal critic of the prophet’s portrayal in the west, recently expressing strong condemnation of the Charlie Hebdo cover cartoon in the aftermath of the deadly attacks in Paris, which depicted Muhammad weeping and holding up a sign reading Je Suis Charlie.
Interesting.. and Majidi is of course an important director. However I would have been much happier (though I understand why he didn’t do it!) if the film had properly represented the Prophet. The problem is that you can make a very artistic film on the subject but this gesture of not showing his face essentially ‘respects’ a certain tradition of veneration in this sense. Which might be fine at one level and if that’s one’s only aim (I doubt Majidi is just trying to do a Message for our times) but for the greater, more interesting film some rules have to be broken. To ‘think’ a religion or even a great life one must often ‘think through’ its myths and legends. Both kinds of films are certainly valid. In Hollywood you certainly find so many with respect to Christ (The Last Temptation of Christ was of course the most controversial one.. the original book and the Scorsese movie) but in this case you first of all have hardly anything and then when you do you have to conform to this ‘prohibition’ (which too is not as absolute as it is often presented.. there is a grand tradition in Persia and Central Asia of paintings representing the Prophet.. in most cases the face is ‘whitened out’ but there are very many examples where this doesn’t happen). Again a very skillful film could be made that’s subversive precisely because it plays with this prohibition. Nonetheless there is a certain need to go the full distance. Not easy for a filmmaker, even one who didn’t mind dying (!) because the film would never be completed in the first place.
SATYAMSHOT 
January 30, 2015 at 8:38 AM
It’s great he’s doing a regular feature after quite some time.
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February 2, 2015 at 11:17 PM
A multimillion-dollar biopic about the childhood of the prophet Muhammad – Iran’s most expensive and lavish film to date – is set to premiere on Sunday.
Tehran’s Fajr international film festival, which coincides with the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, is scheduled to show the country’s own version of how Islam’s most revered figure lived. To protect the prophet’s dignity, the film will be shown out of competition.
Iran has been a vocal critic of the prophet’s portrayal in the west, recently expressing strong condemnation of the Charlie Hebdo cover cartoon in the aftermath of the deadly attacks in Paris, which depicted Muhammad weeping and holding up a sign reading Je Suis Charlie.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/30/iranian-film-prophet-muhammad-premiere
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February 3, 2015 at 8:04 AM
Interesting.. and Majidi is of course an important director. However I would have been much happier (though I understand why he didn’t do it!) if the film had properly represented the Prophet. The problem is that you can make a very artistic film on the subject but this gesture of not showing his face essentially ‘respects’ a certain tradition of veneration in this sense. Which might be fine at one level and if that’s one’s only aim (I doubt Majidi is just trying to do a Message for our times) but for the greater, more interesting film some rules have to be broken. To ‘think’ a religion or even a great life one must often ‘think through’ its myths and legends. Both kinds of films are certainly valid. In Hollywood you certainly find so many with respect to Christ (The Last Temptation of Christ was of course the most controversial one.. the original book and the Scorsese movie) but in this case you first of all have hardly anything and then when you do you have to conform to this ‘prohibition’ (which too is not as absolute as it is often presented.. there is a grand tradition in Persia and Central Asia of paintings representing the Prophet.. in most cases the face is ‘whitened out’ but there are very many examples where this doesn’t happen). Again a very skillful film could be made that’s subversive precisely because it plays with this prohibition. Nonetheless there is a certain need to go the full distance. Not easy for a filmmaker, even one who didn’t mind dying (!) because the film would never be completed in the first place.
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