For a film with as astutely naturalistic observation of city life as Jafar Panahi’s Crimson Gold, its plainly stated, platitudinal thesis is more than a little frustrating. In the first scene, chronologically speaking, an older man approaches two men after noticing a stolen purse, and briefly lectures them on the entire world being made up of thieves, of one kind or another; “If you want to catch a thief, arrest everybody.” Opening with a murder of a store owner during a botched jewelry heist followed by the shooter’s suicide, the rest of the movie follows the two robbers in the few days leading up to the incident. Panahi (working from mentor Abbas Kiarostami’s screenplay) designs the rest of the movie as a study of the various causes of the man’s crimes, with the idea that by the time the narrative builds up to the bravura long take of the robbery, our perspective will be altered given the context.
Besides this scheme being a bit simple, especially compared to the more narratologically experimental The Circle, it also seems to underestimate the viewer’s sympathy. Thirty minutes in, upon realizing the protagonist’s mental instability, current indigence, and immutable lack of affect, I had a pretty clear idea that the guy wasn’t a nefarious butcher. Although deliberately less ostentatious, the effect of its structure is as if Irreversible or Memento had adumbrated all of its characters’ pretexts in the first act.
Aside from structural concerns, Crimson Gold also displays the contrast between classes in urban Tehran. Main character Hussein specifically targets the jewelry store because of its owners open disdain for him as he denies him entry to the shop, profiling him by his street clothes. In a second scene at the store, part of a nice tripartite rhyme with the film’s opening and closing shots, Hussein dresses up and pretends to shop for jewelry clearly out of his price zone with his fiancé. The owner, whether by remembering their prior run-in or through further profiling, suggests he shop at a cheaper store for materials that are easier to liquidate. Clearly his inferior status transcends clothing.
The plot is made up of other, less incisive comparisons between the situations and treatment of the rich and the poor, though Panahi’s formal adroitness is generally on display, the camera fluidly tracking Hussein’s cross-city pizza deliveries on his motorbike (his buddy claims that he’s happiest while driving) and nervously onlooking his wonderings around a ridiculously opulent stranger’s house.
Grade: Worth a Look.
New York Film Festival, 2003
Cannes Un Certain Regard, 2003
The Defeatist Completist 