Secret Ballot (2001)

Thanks for the memories!

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The protagonist of this film is a member of the Revolutionary Guard. Her mission: to awaken the agrarian people of a desert island to the possibility of voting in a democratic election - women included.This is the same Revolutionary Guard that George Bush and Hillary Clinton want to convince us are nothing more than terrorist puppets. Uh-huh?! The film is slow, but it is easy to watch, partly due to its amazing visuals, panoramic for a non-epic narrative; partly due to it's subtle humor; partly due to the essential humanness of its characters - all brilliantly and professionally acted. Indeed, there is no way to fault the professionalism of the film, and only its leisurely pace may annoy the open-minded viewer.But I started out with the politics involved, because they are important right now. Remember: Bush and Clinton want us to kill these people. If you can watch this film with an open mind and still want to waste them, you don't need a film review, you need psychotherapy - and as much Thorazine as your body can handle.An exquisitely human - and humane - film about humans in Iran.

Films that have new ideas to put on the table are always welcomed. So many filmmakers today feel like the only way they can express their sincere views and emotions is to format these ideas and emotions into a cliché structure. It is good to know, however, that a relatively new filmmaker named Babak Payami can express his thoughts in a story that has never been told before. The film Secret Ballot is a about 'a girl' (Nassim Abdi) who travels through some islands off the coast of Iran with a guide (Cyrus Abidi) meeting random people and marking down their votes for election day. Half the people she meets do not even know who the candidates are; she has to explain their tell them about the candidates for five minutes before they vote. Payami uses the girl's quest for votes as a jumping off point for the greater question of the value of democracy and uses the relationship between the girl and the guide as a jumping off points for questions about feminism in Iran. The commentary on feminism is funny and so are the scenes where the girl is collecting random peoples' votes but to use such a terrible voting system as a way to question the value of democracy is a bit like using the characters from Lord of the Flies as a way of questioning the value of children-the excellent story in this film really doesn't make up for the phony message. I'm unimpressed by Payami's terribly indulgent visual style; if a film is going to have self-indulgent visuals, their should at least be something to indulge in, but I can't say that this is the case for Payami's images. This is the kind of mildly entertaining film that might be not be worth seeing at the movie theatre, but, if you're bored, you could catch on television one day (billions of years from now when they decide to put Iranian films on television.)

For what it's worth, if I'd been head of programming, I wouldn't have shown this film around 2 p.m., even though these days it seems we just should be glad to see this sort of film on TV in the first place. Set your video recorders if it's shown again. I know I will, if only because I missed the first 20 minutes.Secret Ballot (or Raye Makhfi) is the story of a woman who travels to an island to get the inhabitants' votes. A soldier is told to accompany the election agent while she does her job. At first he's surprised to find out she's a woman, but they learn to appreciate each other.Even though the political and feminist points of the film are powerful, in the end it's the visual style that's the biggest reason one should stay watching. There's a lot of candy you can treat your eyes to, from the camera work to the nearly surrealistic scenes (the ballot box dropping, the traffic lights).Directed by Babak Payami and from an idea by the legendary Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Secret Ballot may lack essential elements to be called a masterpiece, but it's a very good movie with visual flair and a message that should be heard. It should be seen.

"Secret Ballot" certainly takes its time with each scene, but is quite satisfying by the end. It is as close to surrealism as I've seen recently. The music during the credits is beautiful.