Secret Ballot
Secret Ballot is…a demonstration of the fact that society at large has much more integrity than the forces that govern it. This is as true in Iran as it is in the United States. –Babak Payami
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Was this wishful thinking as well? A second look at this road movie made me think yes and no. Yes because Iran isn’t entirely a democracy and because Bush would never want to see this movie in a million years. (He’s on record as being especially fond of The Rookie and Austin Powers in Goldmember, whose obsession with fathers and sons–especially the villain’s beloved Mini-Me–must have made it an obvious choice.) No because Babak Payami, the film’s writer-director, is perfectly aware that Iran isn’t entirely a democracy and is using idealism about democracy and elections as only one element in a complex and nuanced argument addressed to people outside as well as inside Iran, and because Secret Ballot, which unlike Kandahar isn’t an art film, is opening at multiplexes.
The multiplex in Chicago is Landmark’s Century Centre, which makes it the venue for the two most entertaining and well-crafted Hollywood movies–generically if not technically–I’ve seen lately, the other being the German film Mostly Martha. Part of what makes these films Hollywood comedies is their ability to please a wide variety of viewers, not just an art-house crowd. The same holds for other recent Landmark selections, including Amelie, Y tu mama tambien, and The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat)–movies whose ability to hold an audience is so great the fact that their characters aren’t speaking English scarcely matters, though it will still keep such movies out of most other American multiplexes.
Generally Payami uses surrealism much the way he uses a form of realism–as a means of positioning his audience so that we become subjective participants in the action and not merely neutral bystanders. His realism uses not only natural locations and nonprofessional actors, but long shots and extended takes, both of which give the viewer time as well as space for observation and reflection. His surrealism tweaks verisimilitude to position his characters in order to make points about them; in one extended gag the first soldier stubbornly obeys a traffic sign in the middle of nowhere that clearly has no reason for being there.
It’s interesting that males in Iran can vote at 14, females at 16; one could argue that might make Iran more democratic than America, at least insofar as the electorate is more representative of the overall population–though females are, as usual, less than equal. (One adult in the film questions why girls can’t vote at 12, since they can get married at that age.) Yet evaluating the democratic institutions of Iran by comparing them to this country’s doesn’t get one very far, because the variables are so different. Still, it’s fun to speculate how Bush would relate to a movie like Secret Ballot. Would he identify more with the idealistic election agent, who’s obsessed with the idea of getting every eligible citizen to vote, regardless of whether they know whom they’re voting for or even if the choices are meaningful? Or would he identify with the soldier, who mistrusts everyone on principle? Would he agree with the soldier that democracy comes out of the barrel of a gun? Or would he agree with the agent that those gun barrels make democracy relatively meaningless? It’s pertinent that the Florida vote counting that preceded Bush’s taking office occurred while Secret Ballot was in production. “In fact,” Payami told the U.S.-based Iranian critic Jamsheed Akrami, “I added a scene to Secret Ballot that was to remind the audience of the Florida events deciding the election. I will not disclose which scene it is!” (Maybe the Landmark could promote this movie with a contest seeing who can come up with the right scene.)
An extended episode in which the agent tries to enlist voters in a remote settlement lorded over by an unseen matriarch known as “Granny” suggests that democracy and voting become meaningless in such a social context. But it would be shortsighted to assume that neofeudal backwaters of this kind can be found only in Iran or the Middle East, and Payami’s allusion to the Florida elections makes it clear that this movie is about more than Iran. Axis-of-evil types are everywhere.
