Holy Spider
| Holy Spider | |
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 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Ali Abbasi |
| Written by |
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| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Nadim Carlsen |
| Edited by |
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| Music by | Martin Dirkov |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 117 minutes |
| Countries | |
| Language | Persian |
| Box office | $1.7 million[2][3] |
Holy Spider (Persian: عنکبوت مقدس, romanized: Ankabut-e moqaddas) is a 2022 Persian-language crime thriller film co-produced, co-written and directed by Ali Abbasi, starring Mehdi Bajestani and Zar Amir Ebrahimi. Based on the true story of Saeed Hanaei, a serial killer who targeted street prostitutes and killed 16 women from 2000 to 2001 in Mashhad, Iran, the film depicts a fictional female journalist investigating a serial killer.
Holy Spider was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in May,[4] where Ebrahimi won the Best Actress Award for her performance. It was chosen as the Danish entry for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards,[5][6] and made the December shortlist.[7]
Plot
[edit]Tehran-based journalist Arezoo Rahimi arrives in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad to investigate a serial killer targeting local street prostitutes addicted to drugs, dubbed the "Spider Killer" by the media. The killer follows a pattern of picking up women on his motorcycle, taking them to an apartment and strangling them with their headscarves, before ultimately disposing of their corpses in desolate areas on the city's outskirts.
Rahimi teams up with Sharifi, the editor of a local newspaper, to discover the killer's identity. Sharifi has been in contact with the killer, Saeed Azimi, having been chosen by Saeed as a publicist of sorts. Saeed claims to be cleansing the city in the name of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia Imam; he is shown in tears at the Imam's shrine. A veteran of the Iran–Iraq War, Saeed is married with three children and works as a construction worker.
Eventually, Rahimi and Sharifi are confident enough in the schedule, location, and patterns of the killer to lure him into a trap. Rahimi, posing as a sex worker, boards Saeed's motorcycle. Sharifi follows by car but loses them in the city's backstreets. Rahimi, armed with a pocket knife and a tape recorder, plans to elicit a confession from the murderer and flee but is soon overpowered. After loudly calling for help, she manages to escape and make her way to the police with evidence. In the following days, Saeed is arrested by the police.
As the case goes to trial, Saeed gains strong public support. When offered the opportunity to plead insanity, he reinforces his religious motivations, insisting he is only "crazy" about the eighth Imam and God. When Rahimi interviews Saeed in prison, he confesses to killing 16 women and ominously declares that Rahimi would have been his 17th victim. The following day, Saeed is found guilty and is sentenced to 100 lashes and death.
Later, Saeed is visited in his cell by his father-in-law Haji and his lawyer, who assure him that he will be spared the death sentence and that on the day of his execution, he will be secretly whisked away in a car. When the day arrives, Saeed is spared the 100 lashes, but when taken into the execution room, he panics when no one comes to his rescue, instead being executed by hanging.
After saying goodbye to Sharifi, Rahimi boards a bus back to Tehran. While traveling, she reviews video evidence gathered during the case, pausing over an interview with Saeed's teenage son, Ali, in which he proudly describes how his father overpowered and choked his victims, before re-enacting his father's killings with his younger sister playing the role of the victim.
Cast
[edit]- Mehdi Bajestani as Saeed Azimi
- Zar Amir Ebrahimi as Arezoo Rahimi
- Arash Ashtiani as Sharifi
- Forouzan Jamshidnejad as Fatima Hanaei
- Mesbah Taleb as Ali Hanaei
- Alice Rahimi as Somayeh
- Sara Fazilat as Zinab
- Ariane Naziri as Soghra
- Sina Parvaneh as Rostami
- Nima Akbarpour as the judge
- Firouz Agheli as Haji
Production
[edit]Abbasi was a student in Tehran when the 2000–01 murders took place and was baffled by the conservative response that heralded Hanaei as a hero, and by how long it took for police to capture him.[8] Abbasi began writing versions of the film shortly after seeing Hanaei interviewed in Maziar Bahari's 2002 documentary And Along Came a Spider .[9] Abbasi said, "In a really strange way, I felt sympathy for the guy, really against my own will. I think there was a psychotic element to the pleasure-seeking aspect of his murders, the twisted sexuality and whatnot, but there was also this strange innocence about him. It was more about how a society creates a serial killer."[8] Initial drafts followed the events more faithfully, but Abbasi eventually deviated from them and invented the character of a female journalist, as he felt the film should focus not only on the killer but on misogyny.[9][8] Additionally, he found it difficult to research the events due to the passage of time and inaccessibilty of certain documents as well as Hanaei's family, motivating him to shift to a narrative with more fictional elements.[10] Abbasi said:
The character Rahimi was based on a female journalist who was featured in Maziar Bahari's documentary discussing the case on camera and interviewing Hanaei. Although she was from Mashhad, she did not investigate the crimes, but she covered the trials and wrote a piece on Hanaei's execution that inspired Abbasi.[9] She wrote that his last words were "this was not our deal", suggesting there was some kind of deal with the authorities.[9]
The film is a co-production between Germany's One Two Films, Denmark's Profile Pictures, Sweden's Nordisk Film Production, and France's Why Not Productions, and Wild Bunch International.[11] The production is 41.36% German, 31.05% Danish, 15.3% French, and 12.29% Swedish.[1]
The development of the film officially started in 2016, which was then boosted by the success of Abbasi's 2018 Border.[12] The filmmakers initially tried to shoot in Iran,[9] but this was abandoned by 2019.[12] A plan was made to shoot in Jordan in early 2020, which had to be pushed back several times because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, in late 2020, they decided to move the production to Turkey, where COVID restrictions were looser, but they were stalled by Turkish authorities.[12] Abbasi has said this was because the Iranian government interfered.[9] The production then went back to Jordan, where filming finally commenced in May 2021 and lasted 35 days.[12]
Abbasi said Bajestani was taking an enormous risk by playing the killer.[9][8] Amir Ebrahimi was initially involved in the film only as a casting director, but was cast as the journalist after an actor dropped out of the role.[9][8]
In the scene where Somayeh's character performs a fellatio, a prosthetic penis was used.[13]
Release
[edit]The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 22 May 2022, where it received a seven-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening.[14][15] It was released theatrically in France by Metropolitan Filmexport on 13 July 2022,[1] in Denmark by Camera Film on 13 October 2022,[1][6] in Germany by Alamode Film on 12 January 2023,[1] and in Sweden by TriArt Film on 20 January 2023.[1]
In May 2022, Utopia acquired North American rights to the film and released it to select theatres on 28 October 2022,[16][17] expanding to nationwide US theatres on 13 January 2023.[18] Mubi acquired the film for the United Kingdom, Ireland, Latin America, and Malaysia.[19][20]
Reception
[edit]Critical response
[edit]On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 83% of 137 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "Holy Spider foregoes subtlety in favor of a viscerally outraged dramatization inspired by appalling actual events."[21] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 66 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[22]
Iranian government
[edit]On 29 May 2022, the Cinema Organization of Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance issued a statement condemning the Cannes festival for awarding the film the Best Actress award, calling it "an insulting and politically-motivated move". The statement compared the film to The Satanic Verses and said it "has insulted the beliefs of millions of Muslims and the huge Shiite population of the world".[23][24]
On 1 June 2022, Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili said Iran "formally protested to the French government through the foreign ministry".[25] He also said, "If persons from inside Iran are involved with the film Holy Spider, they will surely receive punishment from the Cinema Organization of Iran."[26]
Amir Ebrahimi told CNN on 3 June 2022 that she had received approximately 200 threats since winning the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. "The problem is that they didn't even watch this movie, and they are judging this movie, just from a trailer", she said, attributing the reaction to the lack of freedom of expression in Iran.[27]
Accusations of plagiarism
[edit]Ebrahim Irajzad, the director of Killer Spider, a 2020 Iranian film based on the same subject, accused Abbasi of plagiarism and circumventing Iranian censorship in order to make the film sooner, claiming he could have shot it in Iran had he been prepared to wait for government approval like Irajzad had to.[28][29]
Accolades
[edit]| Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cannes Film Festival | 28 May 2022 | Palme d'Or | Ali Abbasi | Nominated | [30] |
| Best Actress | Zar Amir Ebrahimi | Won | |||
| Jerusalem Film Festival | 31 July 2022 | Best International Film | Holy Spider | Nominated | [31] |
| Miskolc International Film Festival | 17 September 2022 | Emeric Pressburger Prize | Nominated | [32] | |
| Fantastic Fest | 27 September 2022 | Best Director | Ali Abbasi | Won | [33] |
| Montclair Film Festival | 30 October 2022 | Fiction Feature | Ali Abbasi | Nominated | [34] |
| Seville European Film Festival | 12 November 2022 | Golden Giraldillo | Nominated | [35] | |
| Best Actress | Zar Amir Ebrahimi | Won | |||
| European Film Awards | 10 December 2022 | Best Film | Jacob Jarek, Sol Bondy, Ali Abbasi | Nominated | [36] |
| Best Director | Ali Abbasi | Nominated | |||
| Best Screenwriter | Ali Abbasi and Afshin Kamran Bahrami | Nominated | |||
| Best Actress | Zar Amir Ebrahimi | Nominated | |||
| Austin Film Critics Association | 10 January 2023 | Best International Film | Ali Abbasi | Nominated | [37] |
| Robert Awards | 4 February 2023 | Best Danish Film | Jacob Jarek, Sol Bondy, Ali Abbasi | Won | [38] |
| Best Director | Ali Abbasi | Won | |||
| Best Original Screenplay | Ali Abbasi and Afshin Kamran Bahrami | Won | |||
| Best Actor in a Leading Role | Mehdi Bajestani | Nominated | |||
| Best Actress in a Leading Role | Zar Amir Ebrahimi | Won | |||
| Best Actor in a Supporting Role | Arash Ashtiani | Won | |||
| Best Actress in a Supporting Role | Alice Rahimi | Nominated | |||
| Forouzan Jamshidnejad | Nominated | ||||
| Best Production Design | Lina Nordqvist | Won | |||
| Best Cinematography | Nadim Carlsen | Won | |||
| Best Costume Design | Hanadi Khurma | Nominated | |||
| Best Makeup | Farah Jadaane | Nominated | |||
| Best Editing | Olivia Neergaard-Holm and Hayedeh Safiyari | Won | |||
| Best Sound Design | Rasmus Winther Jensen | Won | |||
| Best Score | Martin Dirkov | Won | |||
| Best Visual Effects | Peter Hjorth | Won | |||
| Satellite Awards | 11 February 2023 | Best Motion Picture – International | Jacob Jarek, Sol Bondy, Ali Abbasi | Nominated | [39] |
| Vancouver Film Critics Circle | 13 February 2023 | Best Foreign Language Film | Nominated | [40] | |
| Bodil Awards | 25 March 2023 | Best Danish Film | Jacob Jarek, Sol Bondy, Ali Abbasi | Nominated | ,[41][42] |
| Best Screenplay | Ali Abbasi and Afshin Kamran Bahrami | Won | |||
| Best Actress | Zar Amir Ebrahimi | Nominated | |||
| Best Actor | Mehdi Bajestani | Nominated | |||
| German Film Award | 12 May 2023 | Best Fiction Film | Jacob Jarek, Sol Bondy, Ali Abbasi | Nominated | [43] |
| Best Director | Ali Abbasi | Nominated | |||
| Best Actress | Zar Amir Ebrahimi | Nominated | |||
| Best Actor | Mehdi Bajestani | Nominated | |||
| Variety & Golden Globe's Breakthrough Artist Awards | 19 May 2023 | Breakthrough Award | Zar Amir Ebrahimi | Honoree | [44][45] |
See also
[edit]- List of submissions to the 95th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film
- List of Danish submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h i "Holy Spider de Ali Abbasi (2022)". Unifrance. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
Technical details > Coproducer countries : Germany (41.36%), Denmark (31.05%), France (15.3%), Sweden (12.29%)
- ^ "Holy Spider (2022)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
- ^ "Holy Spider". The Numbers. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
- ^ Ritman, Alex (17 May 2022). "Cannes: On The Hunt for an Iranian Serial Killer in Trailer for Ali Abbasi's Competition Entry 'Holy Spider' (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ Ntim, Zac (27 September 2022). "Oscars: Denmark Submits Ali Abbasi's Cannes-Winning Title 'Holy Spider' To International Feature Race". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 27 September 2022.
- ^ a b Pham, Annika (28 September 2022). "Ali Abbasi's Holy Spider selected as Danish Oscar entry". Nordisk Film & TV Fond. Retrieved 4 December 2022.
- ^ Giardina, Carolyn (21 December 2022). "Shortlists for 95th Academy Awards Unveiled". The Hollywood Reporter.
- ^ a b c d e Kohn, Eric (19 May 2022). "'Holy Spider' Shows a Side of Iran the Country Doesn't Want You to See". IndieWire. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i "English Press Kit" (PDF). Cannes Film Festival. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 May 2022. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ Mohtasham, Diba (4 January 2023). "A man killed women he deemed 'immoral' — an Iranian film fictionalizes the story". NPR. Retrieved 4 January 2023.
- ^ "Holy Spider". Cineuropa. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
- ^ a b c d Mitchell, Wendy (21 May 2022). "'Holy Spider' producers on the huge challenges they faced bringing Ali Abbasi's Cannes title to screen". Screen Daily. Archived from the original on 6 July 2022. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ "'EO,' 'Holy Spider,' More Directors Talk Challenges of Making Their Oscar-Shortlisted Movies". www.hollywoodreporter.com. 13 January 2023. Retrieved 30 March 2024.
- ^ Setoodeh, Ramin (22 May 2022). "Iranian Serial Killer Movie 'Holy Spider' — Which Pushes Envelope With Nudity, Sex and Graphic Strangling Scenes — Stuns Cannes". Variety.
- ^ "HOLY SPIDER – RANG I – EV – CANNES 2022". Cannes Film Festival. 24 May 2022. Archived from the original on 14 December 2022 – via YouTube.
- ^ Wiseman, Andrea (25 May 2022). "Anatomy Of A Cannes Deal: How Upstart North American Buyer Utopia Beat Out Bigger Rivals To Land Ali Abbasi's Bracing Cannes Competition Film 'Holy Spider'". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 25 May 2022.
- ^ Jones, Oliver (27 October 2022). "'Holy Spider': A Crisp, Engrossing Crime Thriller That Confronts Iran's Power Structure". Observer.
- ^ Utopia [@utopiamovies] (6 January 2023). "Big expansion news for Holy Spider" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ Ritman, Alex (27 May 2022). "Cannes: Mubi Acquires Ali Abbasi's 'Holy Spider' for U.K., Ireland, Latin America, Malaysia (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 27 May 2022.
- ^ Nikkhah Azad, Navid (29 November 2022). "Ali Abbasi's HOLY SPIDER hits theaters in Vancouver on December 9". Deed.News (Press release). Retrieved 29 November 2022.
- ^ "Holy Spider". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 24 May 2023.
- ^ "Holy Spider". Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
- ^ "Iran condemns Cannes acclaim for "Holy Spider"". Tehran Times. 30 May 2022. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
- ^ "Iran's Culture Ministry Calls 'Holy Spider' Film Insult To Religious Beliefs". Iran International. 30 May 2022. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
- ^ "Cannes Film Festival: Iran says protested to France over Holy Spider selection". The New Arab. 1 June 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
- ^ "Culture minister: Persons in Iran linked to "Holy Spider" face punishment". Tehran Times. 1 June 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
- ^ Abdelbary, Mohammed (3 June 2022). "She had to flee Iran. Now she's won best actress at Cannes". CNN.
- ^ Farhadi, Parasto (24 May 2022). ماجرای «قاتل عنکبوتی» از ایران تا کن (in Persian). Iranian Students' News Agency. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
- ^ حمله کارگردانان «عنکبوت» و «عنکبوت مقدس» بالا گرفت | ایرج زاد: دروغ نگو؛ میخواستی با دلار قانون را دور بزنی!. Hamshahri (in Persian). 24 May 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
- ^ Tartaglione, Nancy (28 May 2022). "Cannes Film Festival: Ruben Ostlund Wins Second Palme D'Or With 'Triangle Of Sadness' – Full List". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 1 June 2022.
- ^ Rosser, Michael (7 July 2022). "Cannes award-winners to compete at Jerusalem Film Festival 2022". Screen Daily. Archived from the original on 12 August 2022. Retrieved 3 August 2022.
- ^ "18. Cinefest Miskolci Nemzetközi Filmfesztivál" (PDF). Cinefest (in Hungarian). Retrieved 9 October 2022.
- ^ Taylor, Drew (27 September 2022). "Fantastic Fest Awards Winners: 'Piggy,' 'The Five Devils' and 'The Menu' Take Top Honors (Exclusive)". TheWrap.
- ^ Prusakowski, Steven (30 September 2022). "Montclair Film Festival Announces Full 2022 Program". Awards Radar. Retrieved 9 October 2022.
- ^ McLennan, Callum (13 November 2022). "'Saint Omer,' 'Close' 'Will-o'-the-Wisp' Win Big at Seville". Variety.
- ^ Goodfellow, Melanie (8 November 2022). "'Close', 'Holy Spider' & 'Triangle Of Sadness' Lead European Film Awards Nominations". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 8 November 2022.
- ^ "2022 Austin Film Critics Association Award Nominations". Austin Film Critics Association. 3 January 2022. Archived from the original on 3 January 2023. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
- ^ Pham, Annika (6 February 2023). "Holy Spider sweeps Robert Film Awards - Carmen Curlers, The Orchestra score in TV". Nordisk Film & TV Fond. Retrieved 9 March 2023.
- ^ Anderson, Erik (8 December 2022). "'Top Gun: Maverick' leads International Press Academy's 27th Satellite Awards nominations". Awards Watch. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
- ^ Neglia, Matt (22 January 2023). "The 2022 Vancouver Film Critics Circle (VFCC) Nominations". NextBestPicture. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
- ^ "Bodilprisen 2023: Her er de nominerede" [Bodil Award 2023: Here are the nominees]. Bodilprisen.dk (in Danish). 20 January 2023. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
- ^ "Bodilprisen 2023: Vinderne" [Bodil Award 2023: Winners]. Bodilprisen.dk (in Danish). 25 March 2023. Retrieved 19 June 2023.
- ^ Roxborough, Scott (24 March 2023). "Oscar Winner 'All Quiet on the Western Front' Leads German Film Awards Nominations With 12". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 25 March 2023. Retrieved 25 March 2023.
- ^ Earl, William (15 May 2023). "Variety and Golden Globes Awards Partner to Celebrate Breakthrough Talent At Cannes Film Festival". Variety. Retrieved 13 January 2024.
- ^ Rubin, Rebecca (20 May 2023). "Cate Blanchett Goes Barefoot to Stand With Women of Iran at Variety and Golden Globes Cannes Party". Variety. Retrieved 13 January 2024.
External links
[edit]- Holy Spider at IMDb
- 2022 films
- 2022 crime thriller films
- 2020s French films
- 2020s German films
- 2020s Persian-language films
- 2020s serial killer films
- 2020s Swedish films
- Crime films based on actual events
- Danish crime thriller films
- Films about journalists
- Films about prostitution in Iran
- Films about real serial killers
- Films about violence against women
- Films directed by Ali Abbasi
- Films set in 2000
- Films set in 2001
- Films set in Iran
- Films shot in Jordan
- French crime thriller films
- French films based on actual events
- French serial killer films
- German crime thriller films
- German films based on actual events
- German serial killer films
- Swedish crime thriller films
- Thriller films based on actual events
==
‘Holy Spider’ Spins a Web of Iran’s Contradictions
A new film revisiting the true story of the country's deadliest misogynist predator could not come at a more apt time
When Ali Abbasi’s graphically violent, “Persian noir” crime thriller, “Holy Spider,” opened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2022, it was received with multiple audience walkouts. Since its recent cinematic release across North America, it has once again begun to garner controversy for its stark depiction of violence against women. The difficulty of watching the film’s brutal murder scenes is intensified by the fact that “Holy Spider” is based on the true story of an Iranian serial killer, Saeed Hanaei, who murdered 16 sex workers in the city of Mashhad between the years 2000 and 2001.
Abbasi’s is the third film to be made about Hanaei, who is renamed in the film as Saeed Azimi, played by Mehdi Bajestani. (The second was a feature film made in Iran, titled “Spider Killer,” released in 2020.) It is also by far the most timely, given the recent female-led protest movement that has swept Iran since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the religious morality police in September 2022. The resulting uprising quickly became the most significant domestic challenge to the Islamic Republic since its inception.
Before those two films, in 2003, Hanaei was the subject of a documentary made after his detention and shortly before his execution, “And Along Came a Spider.” In the documentary, Hanaei presents himself as a righteous, God-fearing man on a divinely sanctioned mission to rid the world of social ills. Abbasi claims that watching the documentary when he was still in Iran was his primary inspiration for “Holy Spider.” In scenes recreated by Abbasi, Hanaei’s wife, son and even local residents of the city defend his actions, with what range from tentative (yet equally unsettling) rationalizations to passionate character endorsements.
Abbasi’s film, unlike the other two, was not shot in Iran (as originally planned) but in Jordan. Abbasi moved the production outside Iran after being denied a permit from the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Culture censors. Filming outside the country allowed him to make the film the graphic depiction that it is.
The film’s opening sequence shows a bare-chested woman, scarred and bruised, with a cigarette dangling from her mouth, kissing her son goodnight and going to an unseemly public bathroom to put on high heels and makeup. She is then picked up by a man on the street, who takes her to his home to have sex and smoke opium. After that, she is picked up by a second man. Finally, after asking to see his money, she reluctantly gives in to a prowling Saeed on his motorbike and is taken to his home, where he strangles her with her own hijab. This disturbing sequence is repeated several times throughout the film, with minor variations.
The film is parsed between the perspectives of the prostitutes, Saeed, and the character of Rahimi (played by Zar Amir Ebrahimi), a fictional investigative journalist who acts as the film’s protagonist by pursuing the story of the infamous “spider killer” (Hanaei was called a “spider killer” because he lured women to his home, then strangled them and dumped their bodies). Saeed’s is the most developed and deeply psychologized of the film’s characters. He is simultaneously a middle-aged, working-class builder, a family man with a wife and young child, and a traumatized veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, whose Shiite religious fervor causes him to lament not being martyred on the battlefield. He is followed by Rahimi, who is mainly used as a foil to advance the plot and to communicate the daily social struggles of independent, middle-class Iranian women in a patriarchal society. Last come the sex workers, who are known only instrumentally through their victimhood.
On the one hand, critics of the film have condemned it for fetishizing violence against women in gratuitous, prurient scenes of prostitutes being killed by Saeed, while focusing too little on the female characters and too much on exploring Saeed’s psyche, causing it to be ultimately “self-defeating” in its “moral incoherence,” in the words of Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times.
In spite of her award-winning performance, Ebrahimi’s character (the journalist Rahimi) is seen by the film’s detractors to be “underwritten.” Even so, the fact that she gets more attention than any of Saeed’s victims only makes matters worse because, as Wendy Ide of the Guardian writes, it “unintentionally supports the idea that some women’s lives are worth more than others.” According to this perspective, the film hypocritically reproduces the dehumanizing attitude toward women that it sets out to critique.
On the other hand, different critics contend that the film’s stern, albeit stylized, realism is a harsh and unforgiving indictment of the systemic and cultural misogyny endemic to Iranian society.
Abbasi himself maintains that his film exposes the dark, seedy underbelly of life in Iran — a daily reality of prostitution, patriarchy and sociopolitical injustices. For Abbasi, if the film seems repugnant and misogynistic, it is because the reality is repugnant and misogynistic.
Yet, what, exactly, is the relation of the film to the real Iran? “Holy Spider” is a German, French, Danish and Swedish co-production that was shot in Jordan. Its director, Abbasi, lives in Denmark, and his last film, the award-winning “Border” (2018), was a Swedish folk-fantasy. His penchant for nudity and violence bears him more kinship with his Danish compatriot Lars von Trier than with any Iranian filmmaker. “Holy Spider’s” female lead, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, the 2022 winner of the Best Actress Award at Cannes, has lived in exile in France since 2008 due to a threat of imprisonment she received after a sex tape controversy. Her story has parallels with that of her character, Rahimi, who is uncomfortably probed by her male colleague about a rumor that she had sexual relations with her boss in Tehran before leaving for Mashhad.
In other words, the film is in many ways distant from the cultural geography of Iran. At the same time, it claims to depict, through its cinematic style and storytelling, the reality of Iranian society more viscerally and honestly than the country’s domestic cinema ever has.
Perhaps the solution to this apparent contradiction lies in taking a different approach than that of popular critics — an approach which interrogates the traumatic reality at the heart of the film itself. Reading the film as plain social commentary (i.e., as an indictment, successful or otherwise, of misogyny) is overly reductive. Rather than debating whether the film’s depiction of misogyny is pointed and accurate, or merely a reproduction of it in the form of a faux art-house crime drama, we should ask how the film itself accounts for and grounds the symbolic structure of misogyny that it narrates and ultimately presupposes.
The prevailing arguments about the theme of misogyny as a politically reinforced cultural malady are derived from two broader motifs (and their interrelation) that run throughout the film — namely, exposure and fantasy.
Exposure, in this context, has several dimensions. First, Abbasi claims to be exposing us to reality in a way that domestic Iranian cinema has not, or rather cannot, due to censorship. The main dilemma of postrevolutionary cinema in Iran has been censorship. Specifically, the requirement that all women in a film should wear a hijab has been the most complicating aspect of this censorship, as it precludes any filmic depiction of interior, intimate scenes that correspond to lived reality. Demonstrably, not only does Abbasi portray women in intimate contexts as unveiled, but he does much more than that by showing both male and female nudity. Abbasi deliberately transgresses the formal boundaries of Iranian cinema and, in this way, his film is already in dialogue with the filmic tradition he vocally disavows.
Second, Abbasi’s characters’ exposure of their ideology via their narrative works in tandem with the characters’ dialogue, which is more in keeping with traditional Iranian cinema. Abbasi’s film revolves around the axis of contradiction between the prohibitions of public life and the permissiveness, or perversion, of private life.
For example, in a scene where Rahimi goes to the police station in an attempt to glean information about the case from an officer in charge, she wears a full veil (chador) and has a mostly formal exchange with the officer, in which he deflects her questions and prohibits any kind of incursion. He also chastises her for having publicly written about the case in a way that portrayed the police as incompetent. Later in the film, the same officer shows up at Rahimi’s hotel room and coaxes her into letting him inside on the pretense of discussing work. He tells her, “Don’t let my uniform fool you. I may look tough on the outside, but I’m a sensitive guy.” When she rejects his sexual advances, he harasses and berates her. The public, exterior appearance of modesty — her hijab and his uniform — is not simply illusory. It is also the condition for suggesting possible erotic transgression. Abbasi’s film reverses the original distinction by exteriorizing the transgressive nature of the interior against the backdrop of public prohibition, thereby making its contradiction clear.
Exposure also takes shame and, at a more fundamental level, fantasy, as its objects. In one scene, Saeed brings home a prostitute who is particularly nonchalant and flirtatious. She teases him as he bashfully and awkwardly tries to push her away and tell her to stop. Emerging from the bathroom, she lifts up her skirt in front of him, at which point he quickly looks away and tells her to cover up, frustrated and perturbed. When, hesitantly, he puts his arms around her neck to start strangling her, she remarks, laughing, “So this is how you like it, huh” and begins to choke and wrestle with him, licking his beard. Saeed, ashamed, goes to the bathroom to perform religious ablutions (wudu) and pray before finally managing to do the deed.
Why does Saeed feel shame here? He feels it from the “exposure” of his own interiority, the breakdown of his own illusory self-image as an honest, pious man. The flirtatious prostitute exteriorizes what is personal, and publicly prohibited, to Saeed — his own lust. In other words, the prostitute’s behavior brings out the anxiety latent in his erotic fantasy.
We can read this against the quote by the Imam Ali that appears at the beginning of the film: “Every man shall meet what he wishes to avoid.” What Saeed wishes to avoid is twofold: desire and, therefore, life. Saeed embodies the death drive — an unconscious movement toward his own death. He sees himself as unfortunate for having not died in the war, for having not fulfilled the intense erotic pleasure, or jouissance, contained in the fantasy of martyrdom — a religious ideology that was adopted and heavily valorized by the Islamic Republic in widespread state propaganda during its war against Iraq in the 1980s. Saeed’s repression of desire is a function of this death drive. To not desire is to die. Yet, to actually will one’s own death is too traumatic for Saeed to enact. Therefore, he commits murder as a sublimation of his basically erotic desire for his own death. Having not died in the war, Saeed acts out a trauma that is not quite as traumatic as the jouissance of death itself, which he compulsively repeats by killing women and thereby his own desire for them.
The most disclosive sequence of the film is its ending. Saeed, in prison, is visited by a friend and fellow war veteran with state connections, who informs him that he has many supporters and will not be executed. Instead, when he is called for execution, there will be a van waiting for him in the back to take him away. When Saeed is taken for execution, the judge denies Rahimi her right to view it as a witness, despite her protests. She then asks the judge whether Saeed has received his corporal punishment of 100 lashes, at which point the judge directs an officer to take Saeed into a room, and the officer whips not Saeed but the wall. At this point, it seems the state is indeed on the side of Saeed. But, of course, when he is taken to be executed there is no van waiting for him. His response of shock and indignation is met with callousness, and he is executed.
Before being taken for execution, Saeed sticks his hand outside his cell window, and we see that it is raining. The camera shifts outside, and the rain stops, implying that the rain seen from Saeed’s cell was a mirage. Yet, when he pulls his hand back in, it is wet, and he performs ablutions in order to pray. What this shows is that Saeed actually believes in the fantasy — in a reality already emptied of truth — wherein the fundamental meaninglessness of ideology reigns.
The film’s ending reveals its primary theme: that reality is structured by a fiction, which is the condition of the possibility for misogyny to exist. The underlying structure of the society being depicted is one of absurdity, allowing contradictions to abound. The film’s characters play false roles, which are outwardly paradoxical but sustained by a network of fantasies. If there is a reality being exposed by Abbasi, it is that reality itself has broken down to its most traumatic core, embodied in Saeed. The symbolic order — the law and social norms — operates according to contradictory cultural fantasies that no one actually believes in, except Saeed, which leads him to destruction.
The state itself — the state that indoctrinated, traumatized and fostered Saeed — is a fiction. The Islamic Republic and its state apparatuses are, ultimately, the industry of functionaries in a capitalist system whose ideological makeup has no “real” coherence.
The Iranian state and its organs of repressive ideology have never been weaker than they are today. The perpetual weakening of the Islamic Republic is undoubtedly warranted by its irreconcilable contradictions. The act of exposing these contradictions and the fantasies that support them, as “Holy Spider” does, must be the task of any relevant cinema, Iranian or otherwise, in order to create the openings in which freedom becomes possible.
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Holy Spider – prurient Iranian serial killer drama
Based on the real-life case of a man who murdered 16 women, Ali Abbasi’s tense film feels at once timely and dehumanising
The third feature from Copenhagen-based Iranian director Ali Abbasi shares with his breakthrough film, the troll-thriller Border, a fascination with the monsters that lurk on the fringes of society. But in this Persian-language picture, based on a real-life serial killer who murdered 16 sex workers in the Iranian city of Mashhad, the monster is not just a single individual, but a wider culture of misogyny.
It’s a timely release, adding to the spotlight on women’s rights and roles in Iranian society, and driven by two impressive performances – from theatre actor Mehdi Bajestani as the murderer, and Zar Amir Ebrahimi, playing Rahimi, the female investigative journalist reporting on the case. It’s a tense, atmospheric piece of film-making but it made me profoundly uncomfortable – and not, I should add, in a good way. There’s a prurience in how the murders are filmed – the camera hungrily scouring the distorted faces of dying women – that borders on dehumanising. This, combined with the fact that it’s the female journalist, rather than any of the victims, whose character is developed, unintentionally supports the idea that some women’s lives are worth more than others.
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