2 Minutes 26 Seconds of Heaven: Thursday Appointment

A gift of immense meaning from a 20-year-old Iranian filmmaker.

Free on You Tube.

At 2 minutes, 26 seconds, this Iranian short film by 20-year-old Iranian filmmaker Syed Mohammad Reza Kheradmand is brief, even by “shortie” standards. Yet it is packed with so much archetypal meaning and cultural detail that it is perhaps the most remarkable film of its kind ever made.

I’m going to ask you to watch it three times.

First, just watch it all the way through.

Then watch it one more time to pick up the things you inevitably missed the first time around.

What you’ll notice is that despite its language being Farsi, you understand it completely—even if you’re not Iranian, even if English is your only language—and you’d understand it even if it didn’t have subtitles. Its simple plot, the warmth between the old man and the old woman, and the wisdom and love between the two make the story obvious. The sacrifice of roses to a couple in conflict and a child in distress fully establishes how generous these two oldsters are and how healing are their ways.

What you’ve just taken in is the archetypal level of this simple story. This tale, and all like it, mean something to us at the level at which we are all responding as human beings. Every individual has instinctual drives of survival and reproducing—but also profound needs for learning, loving, finding meaning, being creative, and transcending to being something more than human. That’s the archetypal level, the collective unconscious that belongs to all of us.

How stories come down to us is shaped by culture, and with regard to this movie, if you understand some of the culture of Iran, this incredibly rich film becomes even more compelling.

So, here we go:

What is a Thursday Appointment?

In Iran, people traditionally visit the graves of their loved ones on the last Thursday and Friday before the Persian New Year. As we’ll soon see, they take very specific gifts.

The Persian New Year is called Nowruz, and it is observed at the vernal equinox. This year Nowruz, which has been celebrated for 3,000 years, is on March 20-21, 2023. That makes the date of the next Thursday Appointment this coming Thursday, March 16.

So this Thursday, people all over Iran will reenact the scenes of this film, streaming out of the cities to the cemeteries, ancient and modern, where relatives and friends have been laid to rest. There will be traffic jams. And in the midst of them couples will have arguments, children will be afraid, and grandparents will save them all over again.

What Poetic Game Are They Playing? The Hafez Game!

In this film, the old man and the old woman are actually playing a game. It’s The Hafez Game, and almost everyone in Iran knows how to play this game.

Khwāje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī (Persian: خواجه شمس‌‌الدین محمّد حافظ شیرازی), known by his pen name Hafez, was born in Shiraz in Muzaffarid, Persia, in 1325 CE. Now, a thousand years later, this mystical lyricist is still the best-loved poet in Iran. He wrote in ghazals, the poetic form considered most propitious for expressing divine love in poetic terms. Perfect for a Sufi, which he was.

His most famous work is The Divān of Hafez, a collection of ghazals compiled after his death. A copy of the Divān can be found in virtually every Iranian home—and many Iranians memorize it. The couple in this film certainly did! On days of special celebration, people use the Divān as an I Ching, randomly flipping open the book and considering what they read there to be a prediction.

The other use of the ghazals by Iranians who have memorized the Divān is the game played by our elderly couple in Thursday Appointment. One person begins the game by reciting a line of Hafez’s poetry. Now the challenge is that the other person needs to come up with the next line! In the case of our old lovers, they are reciting a ghazal that is a very passionate one—for indeed Hafez’s great fame centers around spiritual ecstasy poetry which, like much poetry in Sufi literature (check out Ibn al-Arabi), sounds very much like human love poetry. In the case of these two very married people, this is perfectly apropos. She knows he’s flirting, and he loves doing it.

Hafez bucked authority, wrote about romantic love and taverns, poked fun at spiritual strutting, and despised hypocrisy with every fiber of his being. He died in Shiraz between the ages of 60 and 65. His poetry, translated into English in the 18th century, influenced Goethe, Yeats, Emerson, Thoreau, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

What is the Symbolism of the Dates and Flowers?

The last scene of this tiny wonder of a film shows the front passenger seat as being empty. It holds only a few rose petals (from the bunch of roses the couple gave away) and a little bowl of dates.

Dates in all cultures are equivalent to the fig. They represent fecundity, fertility, and—as the date palm was the Tree of Life in the ancient world—life itself, the cycle of life, and the spiritual Sephiroth, the ten channels of energy through which the will of God is revealed. Roses are a symbol of romantic love and also of spiritual love.

In Iran during Nowruz, flowers and dates are the traditional gifts taken to the graves of beloved ones who have died.

Where Is the Old Woman at the End?

That’s hard to say. But it rather looks as if she’s never been there. Once, when the old man looks at the arguing couple in the next car, he is looking out through the right passenger door window, but the old woman isn’t in the passenger seat. So perhaps this conversation between two old lovers is a conversation between an old man and the ghost of his wife.

Now watch the movie a third and final time. …

It’s the same movie, but now you know a little bit more about the culture from which it sprang. Its archetypal meaning, visible regardless of culture, is just the same. But somehow, it is far richer to join their journey knowing something about what their rituals mean.