The Night Bus or How to make a sappy war movie

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the US just isn't any good at making Serious Movies anymore. They can make movies about explosions, badasses and bromantic comedies but for anything else I'm going to have to go elsewhere. I haven't even touched the ever growing pile of low-grossing war/terrorism movies that Hollywood has put out over the last decade. Their lack of success never really suprised me much: most of the decent movies about Vietnam didn't come out till well after that war was over. It's not just a lack of interest; it's just really difficult for anyone to look at something so big while we're in the middle of it. Besides, while something is actually happening we really should have other things to worry about than how fast we can turn it into art, like, say, stopping wars.

Whenever I do catch these kind of movies they're usually pretty heavy-handed about having some message of "look, we are all the same" or there is some kind of narrative of the Rebellious White Guy that runs against the grain of his commander/company/organization and works with the brownies to help them do whatever it is that they want to do (stop me if you've heard this one in half the movies you saw last year.)


Of course there is nothing inherently wrong with understanding or cooperation and this cliche has produced movies I truly like (see District 9,) but when it runs against historical accuracy it's worth pointing out. And worth asking why we can't ever make a movie about shitty things that happened without fictionally trying to redeem some of the involved parties? What's wrong with showing what divisions exist in this world that can be pretty impossible?


That's kind of a long intro to explain why I get wary of movies that try to tell us that we're all the same when really we're not. If you know what it's like to see something done really beautifully, intelligently and with political relevance after seeing it done absolutely horribly 10,000 times then you can appreciate where I am at right now. The Night Bus by Iranian director Kiumars Poorahmad, who I'd never heard of before, is about (you guessed it) the Iran-Iraq war and takes on a lot of the same themes while managing to avoid annoying the hell out of me.
Obviously, the political context is different; American movies are often apologetic and trying to make it seem like they're there to help. Most often the narration will execute this by finding the one Good Brown Guy that Rebellious White Guy can work with and they're on their way to saving everyone else (a certain Turkish movie about the Iraq war that shall never be named on this blog again has the exact same premise and failed spectacularly because of it.) The Night Bus succeeds not because its politics are different but because it doesn't force its entire plot to revolve around this stupid premise. It shows the shitty things happening and it's from that that we are supposed to figure out that war is bad and that we fight for stupid people. When the Good Iraqis and Good Iranians can find common ground, it doesn't undo all the shittyness that that happened to them or derail the rest of the story to find a resolution that will let good things happen to good people. The war goes on, much like it did in real life.


Truth be told, there were definitely a couple of points in the film that I noticed that I could have dissected here, but in the end they were overwhelmed by the beauty, storytelling and stellar acting. Or maybe I am just letting them slide because I am consistently wowed by Iranian movies these days, but this is definitely of the the better ones that I have seen so far. Highly recommended.

Get it here(English,Arabic & Farsi subs.)
(I looked around the internet for a dvd but I can't seem to find one, if you know where I can get one drop me a note.)