A gripping new movie dramatizing the fight against the so-called “Islamic State” deserves a global audience. In Damascus Time director Ebrahim Hatamikia points his camera at a very tumultuous clash of people, beliefs, and armed forces. The Syrian victims of the violence embody all the moral ambivalence permeating a crazy war zone where spectacle and fantasy collide regularly with hard bloody facts on the ground.
Given that the film emerges from the busy film industry of Iran, a country that takes its own indigenous cinema very seriously, it is not surprising that two of the most appealing characters are an Iranian father and son. Both are accomplished pilots and respected officers in the Iranian Armed Forces.
Played with a sense of serene composure by Babak Hamidan, Ali the son is diverted from returning home to Iran. In Iran, Ali’s wife is about to give birth. Another local emergency, however, intervenes. The circumstances pull Ali towards his duty as a pilot, a soldier and an Iranian patriot with the expertise to save many lives …
The emergency arises because of the fall of Palmyra in eastern Syria to the “Islamic State.” The “Islamic State” is sometimes referred to as ISIL or ISIS. Daesh is the Arabic and Farsi term to identify the notorious organization. Henceforth I shall use the term, “Daesh,” in this review.
Ali and his father, Younes, team up to fly a large group of Syrians fleeing the absorption of Palmyra into the terrorists’ orbit. Or so it is made to seem as the most intense phase of the film gets underway.
One of the stars of the show is not a person but, rather, a high-tech industrial product providing the set where much of the action unfolds...I have never seen a cinematic portrayal of dramatic sequences as gripping as those that unfold within the gargantuan airplane featured in Damascus Time.
Damascus Time is the first drama I have seen portraying Daesh in the part of the world where it did become a significant force in the geopolitical landscape. At one point Daesh controlled about half of the territory of Syria. The fact that the Iranian government and Daesh are enemies may come as a surprise to many in the West who have fallen under the spell of the psychological warfare that has rendered Iranophobia as an adjunct of Islamophobia.
The nature of the “Islamic State,” Daesh, as a mercenary force backed by the likes of USA, Saudi Arabia and Israel is not well understood or much discussed in the West. In the era of the so-called Global War on Terror, consumers of the infoentertainment products of the big media cartels are fed a steady diet of propaganda supporting the theory of a natural, as opposed to manufactured, clash of civilizations.
Besides generating the political currency of fear to be exploited by war profiteers, the role of Daesh-terrorists-for-hire has been, for instance, to help create and maintain the chaos in Syria. It has been help to energize the effort to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad. This push for regime change can be seen as part of the attempted break up of Syria and Iraq to clear the way for the military invasion of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
From my perspective it seems that Ebrahim Hatamikia views Daesh as a receptacle of Western decadence and excess. Some of the Daesh members are essentially Westerners dressed up for propaganda purposes in Islamic clothing. Some of them display what Hatamikia might see as a corrupted version of Islamic behavior.
Damascus Time deals with issues specific to the Middle East and also addresses issues common to the larger human condition. For instance, Ali is challenged by his mother-in-law to explain how it is he seems to put helping foreigners in distant lands over the responsibility of helping his own family.
This theme of living a life not rooted in continuities of time and space must resonate with some in significant sectors of Iranian society. More and more Iran is being drawn into major theatres of international conflict in Eurasia as well as major theatres of ideological alliances and animosities globally.
There is much in Damascus Time to interest those viewers who are not Iranians but who have an interest in the re-emergence of Persia as a significant mover and shaker in global geopolitics. The arrival on a world stage of Damascus Time is part of the process wherein Iran is taking its rightful place among the major producers of culture in the global village.
It was Canadian media commentator, Prof. Marshall McLuhan, who welcomed the arrival of the global village decades ago. McLuhan did so during an era when the movement for global peace had traction. The manipulations attending the Global War on Terror after 9/11 have diminished the capacity of many to embrace peace and eschew war. The moment has come to transcend this sad condition; to restore the global peace movement as the rhythmic heart beat measuring the universal time of a more harmonious human family.
WRITER
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