There were tears and applause when Tatami was presented in Venice, in the Orizzonti section, last September. And we were on the ground, lying down. Go see it now that it’s out in the cinema. Go see it, even if it looks like a small black and white film. It’s powerful, strong, overwhelming, like a sudden grip that slams you down. Maitta, knocked out.
Tatami it is a great film not only for the political value of its story. Not only because it tells a great story of female courage. Not even because it is a film that, already in its production history, makes history: it is the first co-direction between an Israeli – Guy NattiviOscar winner for short film Skins – and an Iranian – Tsar Amir Ebrahimi, who is also the co-star of the film. Let’s keep in mind that in Iran it is forbidden to even say the word “Israel”, which is referred to as “the occupying country”. And that Israel and Iran call each other “The Great Satan”.
Well, it’s not that yet. The fact is that Tatami he tells all this in a cinematically powerful, dry and decisive way. Everything makes sense, everything constructs meaning. Even the format of the film, that ancient, outdated 4:3, which inscribes every body and every face inside an almost square space, similar to the tatami that welcomes and closes judo fights.
Black and white makes sense, a black and white that doesn’t allow colors to intervene and lighten the story. And which recalls certain classic films, where boxers massacred each other in the ring, in black and white. Body and Soulfrom 1947, o The Set-Upfrom ’49, o The great champion with Kirk Douglas. Or even one of Kubrick’s very early works, Day of the Fightfrom 1951. O Someone up there loves me with Paul Newman.
And the spatial closure of the film also makes sense, as it almost never leaves the sports field where the destinies of the two protagonists are played out. Off-screen is a living room in Iran, her house: the face of her husband, her neighbors gathered watching television. For the rest, everything remains closed in the Tbilisi Sports Palaceas if it were the stage of a Greek tragedy.
But these are not, in any case, exercises in style. It is a search for essentiality. Telling clearly, without digressions, as if we too were closed by the confines of a tatami, the story of women struggling with a choice. The most difficult of their lives.
