Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary supplies the following definitions of the word guilt: 1) the fact of having committed a breach of conduct esp. violating law and involving a penalty; broadly: guilty conduct 2a: the state of one who has committed an offense esp. consciously b: feelings of culpability esp. for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy: self-reproach. What the definitions don’t address is the festering psychological fallout from this condition that can result in a loss of self-esteem and possibly derail more than one person’s life. You couldn’t find a better illustration of this than Bedoone Tarikh, Bedoone Emza (English title: No Date, No Signature, 2017), an award-winning drama from Iranian director Vahid Jalilvand.
It all begins one dark night as Dr. Kaveh Nariman (Amir Aghaee), a forensic pathologist, is driving home when an aggressive motorist begins to tailgate him at high speed. When Kaveh quickly moves into the right lane, the passing motorist clips his car, causing him to hit a motorcyclist on the side of the road. Kaveh stops to aid the person he hit and discovers that the cyclist Musa (Navid Mohammadzadeh) was transporting his family – his wife Leila (Zakieh Behbahani) and two children – on the vehicle. No one appears to be seriously hurt but the motorcycle was damaged and Musa’s son Amir took the brunt of the fall. Musa demands that Kaveh call the police but the doctor dismisses the request as unnecessary and offers Musa a wad of cash for his trouble. Kaveh also advises Musa to take his son to a nearby clinic to make sure the fall didn’t cause unseen internal damage to the boy.
Later in the week Kaveh is called to the hospital morgue to inspect a new arrival and recognizes it as the body of the eight-year-old Amir. Although he admits to his colleague Dr. Sayeh Behbahani (Hediyeh Tehrani) he knew the boy, he doesn’t reveal anything about the accident that involved them both. Later Sayeh, who performs the autopsy, discovers that Amir’s death was caused from botulism. When she questions the parents about this, they both appear stunned but the truth slowly emerges: Amir had recently eaten some chicken that was bought from Habib, an employee at a local chicken processing plant who sold discarded chickens as a side business.
No Date, No Signature quickly descends into tragedy as Musa takes revenge for his son’s death by going to the chicken plant and confronting Habib. Musa is physically removed from the facility by coworkers while Habib is reprimanded by his boss for selling rotten meat out of the trash bins but it doesn’t end there. Musa storms back into the building and gives Habib a severe beating (offscreen) which puts him in a coma. Musa winds up in prison for his actions and things take a turn for the worse when Habib dies from his injuries.
Kaveh is completely unsettled by this news because he feels that Amir might have died from injuries suffered in the motorcycle accident instead of botulism and ends up requesting a second autopsy (Even though the results prove there was some spinal damage to the boy, it is impossible to cite it as the main cause of death). And so the guilt suffered by Kaveh and Musa for their behavior the night of the accident becomes the driving force behind this character study that examines not just class differences in Iranian society (Kaveh is upper middle class, Musa is working class) but also moral and ethical concerns.
No Date, No Signature becomes an existential “what if” scenario about the actions of both Kaveh and Musa and how it spirals out of control affecting family and colleagues. Sayeh, in particular, becomes swept up in the human drama due to her professional relationship with Kaveh as well as the boy’s family. Leila, Musa’s wife, also becomes a proactive witness in the affair as she consults a lawyer to help defend her husband.
Vahid Jalilvand’s second directorial feature (he co-wrote it with Ali Zarnegar) is an emotionally complex and troubling look at contemporary Iranian society. To any outsider, life in Iran looks like a bureaucratic nightmare in this movie. Authorized permits, numerous forms to sign and visits to government officials to accomplish the most basic tasks from renewing car insurance to visiting a doctor are the everyday reality. No wonder Kaveh and Musa were reluctant to engage in that process but it doesn’t excuse them from their actions. Nor does it seem possible that either man will ever be able to assuage his guilt over that faithful night.
It is true that No Date, No Signature can sometimes be a frustrating and baffling viewing experience for non-Iranians. For example, women are treated like second class citizens who must defer to men in most matters yet many women are employed in various institutional occupations who work alongside male colleagues. So is Sayeh the rare exception who is allowed to perform an autopsy without male supervision? And what is meant by “blood money” and is it accepted and condoned as reparation for injustices in Iranian society? Are we also to surmise that Kaveh will lose his job and face possible prison time over his failure to report the initial traffic accident?
There are also missing narrative details in Jalilvand’s film that would clarify certain relationships such as the one between Kaveh and Sayeh. They seem to be more than just mere colleagues but were they romantically involved at one time? Or is there another reason she becomes so emotionally involved in his personal and professional troubles?
Although No Date, No Signature was Iran’s official entry to the Academy Awards for Best International Film of 2018, it didn’t end up as one of the final five finalists. Nevertheless, the movie won numerous awards including the Gold Hugo from the Chicago International Film Festival (for Vahid Jalilvand) and three nominations from the Venice Film Festival for Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor (Navid Mohammadzadeh); it won in the latter two categories and Mohammadzadeh’s performance is an essential part of the movie’s compelling nature. The actor’s constantly shifting mood swings between grief and rage is almost palpable but the supporting cast is no less impressive, especially Hediyeh Tehrani as the empathetic but prodding Sayeh and Zakieh Behbahani as Musa’s desperate, driven wife.
In the end, Jalilvand’s film is more than just an examination of guilt and its debilitating power. It is also a rumination on the male ego and how it can be undermined by an obstinate nature. Many U.S. critics praised the work with Godfrey Cheshire of RogerEbert.com writing, “The success of this kind of drama depends not on its thematic depth but on its surface execution. And every aspect of the execution on display here posits Jalilvand as among Iran’s most assured directors to have emerged in this decade.” And Craig D. Lindsey of The Village Voice called it “ a soberly made piece of melodramatic neorealism featuring just-trying-to-live characters who are forced to make moral decisions in a world where doing the right thing is usually a luxury that cannot be afforded. It is at heart a film about two men making the wrong decision at the exact same time.”
No Date, No Signature is available through Distrib Films and was released on DVD in February 2019 in a no-frills edition without extra features.
Other links of interest:
Cinema Sojourns 