(2016) **
The Tiger award for the Rotterdam International Film Festival, I was actually misled by its synopsis. I believed that it was a movie about rock, as the story is about a radio located in San Francisco trying to have a meeting between Metallica and the first Afghanistan rock band, Kabul Dreams. Well, it’s not so much so.
It’s more about the struggle of this writer who kind of directs the radio shows and, to me, basically about frustrations. The guy seems to have a special interest in art, poetry, and to always feel uncomprehended by people around. There’s this really involving scene of a lady who works for the radio telling a story of a city narrowed by water and she is emotional – only to be cut by the annoying tones of the jingle for commercial ads.
Although it’s funny to watch his disbelief knowing that Miss Iran USA talent is actually poetry, or to see a young man who was supposed to sing a Russian song being lured to wrestling by the radio’s owner, I just missed more of rock. Perhaps it’s really the feeling that they wanted us the public to have, after all. We follow the growing expectation at the radio station and by the Afghan rock band, only to have a brief moment of hearing their music (however funny was the little drummer boy’s energy), followed by an excited Lars Ulrich. How had that encounter been, really? The writer with crazy hair of a opera conductor misses it, and we too. We miss some great moments to the banality of reality, like a suicide on to jump by a famous bridge is so banal that only deserves to hear a pop soda can being open.
But one great moment to my opinion is the song played simply, on acoustic guitar, by the character or Reza. Maybe the true unmissable moments lie in simplicity, maybe of someone around us, maybe we should really value more these small moments instead of waiting for a big one? Just maybe.
:Denichan 