Careless Crime

Careless Crime, directed by Shahram Mokri and starring Babak Karimi, Razieh Mansori, and Abolfazl Kahani, is an Iranian film released in 2020 that ingeniously intertwines the past and present to shed light on the political, societal, and cultural development of Iran. The film offers a multi-layered narrative that threads through themes of history, guilt, and the inescapable cycles of violence that grip societies.

At the heart of the story, a quartet of men attempt a dubious cinematic arson, seeking to recreate a horrifying historical event that shocked the nation forty years prior. The historical event in question, known as Cinema Rex Fire, was one of the devastating incidents inflaming the revolution, resulting in over 400 casualties. The historical resonance of this incident, and its haunting reverberations throughout Iranian society, forms the backbone of this film. But this is not just a simple dramatization. Mokri uses this premise as a base and then weaves an elaborately complex narrative across different timelines.

Babak Karimi, Razieh Mansori, and Abolfazl Kahani breathe life into this film through their performances, where realities blur, and characters mingle with the past ghosts. Each character is well-realized and seems to represent distinct facets of Iranian society and the impacts historical events have had on them. Infusing pathos and tangible personality into their characters, they help navigate this maze of a story that questions the nature of guilt, individual responsibility, and societal reaction to trauma.

Mokri employs stylistic elements that further compound the sense of unease, allowing the past and present to bleed into one another. Innovative camera work literally brings the viewer into the cross-cutting narratives, with single-take sequences fluidly floating between timelines and consciousness. The often long, uncut shots add an eerie immediacy to the proceedings, enhancing the claustrophobic atmosphere of looming dread.

Careless Crime echoes with the sorrow of remembrance, delivering an emotional excavation of collective memory, history, and the specter of violence that permeates individual and collective lives. It’s a profound meditation on Iran's past couched within a sinister plot, which deliberately eschews conventional narrative structure for a more fragmented and disorientating style. This is not only a story about a plan for a crime, but it is a reflection on the unimaginable crime that is etched into the national memory.

Moreover, the film toys with its viewers through repeated elements of meta-cinema where the line between the narrative and reality further blurs. The film within a film concept is explored masterfully, resulting in viewers questioning the very reality of what they are watching. It interrogates the power of cinema as a tool of both societal reflection and as a means of escape.

Ultimately, Mokri does not provide answers but instead poses questions, encouraging viewers to reflect on the cyclical nature of violence and the nation grappling with its past. The director skillfully allows the audience to step into a distinctive narrative space where time, place, and identity fluidly blend.

Careless Crime is an example of cinema as art, as a historical document, and as a tool for sociopolitical commentary. Darkly atmospheric and deeply unsettling, it is a hypnotic puzzle box of a film that demands viewer engagement and introspection. With its distinct filmmaking style and thematic depth, it paints a haunting picture of a society grappling with its past while lost in a cycle of forgetting and remembering. It is an exquisite blend of social realism, historical acknowledgment, and twisted thriller, breathing an experimental spirit within its narrative labyrinth.

This film is a daring venture into a non-linear storytelling mode that uses cinema's language to investigate how history and violence can become interlocked within collective memory. Careless Crime offers a deeply complex treatment of past events reimagined in the contemporary frame that is both challenging and intellectually stimulating. With its eerie resonance and haunting performances, it's a film that promises to provoke thought, evoke emotion, and invite intense discussion, marking it a valuable addition to Iran's illustrious cinematic legacy.