Critics reviews

Though it works as a violent and angry genre piece, Manuscripts does sometimes filter serious comment through clearly romanticised dramatic techniques. Yet its ultimate point — that intellectual censorship requires the blanket elimination of those who pose even minimal threat to the possible destabilisation of the government — rings loud and long.

It's an enthralling work, a fine Iranian counterpart to the recent spate of films from post-Communist European territories which similarly explore the persecution of dissidents at the bidding of a corrupt regime, albeit more often with the safety net of years of history and democratic reforms between the films' makings and the events depicted.

Rasoulof's attempts to show the human side of his hitmen sometimes overreach; the constant references to money and ill health feel like forced attempts at pointing out the vulnerability his characters all share. That said, there's something bracing about the anger of Manuscripts Don't Burn. The gentle critiques of Iranian society in films like Mohsen Makhmalbaf's A Moment of Innocence or Abbas Kiarostami's Ten have been cast aside for something as potent and fiery as the vodka Kasra drinks.

Judged by some standards, the film's last third could use greater dramatic torque and deeper thematic probing. But this is not a standard political thriller. It is an unprecedented statement and damning analysis, an X-ray of not only the toxic political and personal motives that underlie the current regime's murderous assault on dissent, but also of a society polarized between educated cosmopolitans on one side and often illiterate and credulous regime-supporters on the other.

Shot on the fly, with the cast and crew unnamed to avoid reprisals,"Manuscripts Don't Burn" (the title is a quotation from a novel by the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov) unfolds in appropriately wintry light. Its violence is low-tech — a clothespin and a suppository feature prominently — and its look is old-school, but its message could not possibly be more momentous.

I found echoes of The Lives of Others in the routine surveillance of citizens, but this is more confrontational and brutal and Rasoulof hasn't the safe distance of exploring a fallen regime. His targets are current and he puts a target on his chest for this. For that reason, he's the only artist on the film who takes credit; the other names are hidden for fear of reprisals (we assume the actors are expatriates safely out of country).