PolitiSage Sunday: Three Great Movies for Cultural Understanding

Thursday Appointment, Seven Years in Tibet, and Baraka

Images of other cultures will puzzle us sometimes. The lives of people in other lands are often a mystery to us. But windows into their experiences enrich our own, and, in the end, we come to understand that they are so much the same as we are. And yet, they are also unique: their lives are as complex as our own—their cultures and religions are as unique as our own—and they are shaped by their cultures and histories just as we are.

Here we invite you to explore three films—one of them just 2-1/2 minutes long—that immerse the viewer in cultures far away from the Western venues that are common to most of us. All of these films can be rented on Amazon, YouTube, Netflix or Paramount+. Go exploring. It’s going to be worth it.

Thursday Appointment — Iran

YouTube. Free.

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.

Seven Years in Tibet (1997)

From the book by Heinrich Harrer.

Starring Brad Pitt, David Thewlis, Bhutanese Actor Jamyang Jamtsho Wangchuk (age 8) as the Dalai Lama, B.D Wong, Mako, and Lhakpa Tsamchoe. Music by John Williams and Yo-Yo Ma. Available on Netflix, Amazon and YouTube.

By the late 1930s, Austrian athlete and adventurer Heinrich Harrer (Brad Pitt) was already a legend. He was an Olympic skier, a champion golfer, and a top-ranked Alpine climber who had been part of the first team to scale the north face of Eiger. He was arrogant, selfish, childish, and cruel—and he was also a member of the Nazi Party and the SS. After the Eiger ascent, Harrer was photographed with Hitler. He wore his SS uniform only once, however—to his own wedding to Charlotte (Lotte) Wegener, the daughter of famed glaciologist and Continent Drift theorist Alfred Wegener.

In 1939, Harrer left his pregnant wife behind to join fellow Austrian climber Peter Aufschnaiter (David Thewlis) in British India to scale Nanga Parbat, one of earth’s fourteen 8K mountains and the ninth highest in the world. Aufschnaiter was a world-ranked Alpinist, a geographer, an agriculturalist, and a cartographer who had learned the Tibetan language in Sikkim in 1931. He was also, like Harrer, a member of the Nazi Party.

It was their associations to the Third Reich that would soon put both of them in harm’s way.

After several attempts to summit the Nanga Parbat, they prepared to leave, planning to return and take a new line to the peak the following season. Then fate intervened.

World War II broke out in Europe, and Harrer and Aufschnaiter were detained by the British. They remained in prison until their daring escape several years later. Evading the troops sent to find them, they slipped across the border into Tibet. Initially repulsed by the anti-stranger Tibetan people, they eventually disguised themselves and traversed the impossibly difficult Tibetan Plateau. After months in the worst conditions, they finally made it to Lhasa, where they were befriended by a Tibetan official.

In 1946, Harrer was introduced to 11-year-old Tenzin Gyatso, the boy who would become the 14th Dalai Lama. For the next several years, Harrer tutored Tenzin in world geography, science, languages and Western culture—and they became the deepest of friends. However, the idyllic and beautiful Tibetan culture was being stalked by the Chinese government. Eventually, the Chinese went to war, destroyed Tibet’s defenses, and took over the country. Harrer left before the Chinese took Potala Palace, but the young Gyatso, invested as Dalai Lama shortly before Harrer left, remained behind.

The Dalai Lama approved of Harrer’s international best-seller and the subsequent film. He said that while many works on Tibet by Westerners were essentially exploitative, Harrer’s book was authentic.

When Heinrich Harrer died in Austria in 2006 at the age of 93, the Dalai Lama wrote to his widow:

“I am extremely sorry to hear of the passing away of my friend Heinrich Harrer. I wish to convey you and your family members my deeply felt condolence. I am particularly saddened because Heinrich Harrer was a personal friend and taught me English, an Austrian English teacher!

“When I first met him in 1946, he was from a world I was not familiar with. I learned many things, particularly about Europe, from him.

“I want to take this opportunity to express my immense gratitude and appreciation for his creating so much awareness about Tibet and the Tibetan people through his well-known book Seven Years in Tibet and the many lectures he gave throughout his life. His love and respect for the Tibetan people are clearly evident in his writings and his talks.

“We feel we have lost a loyal friend from the West, who had the unique opportunity to experience life in Tibet for seven long years before Tibet lost its freedom. We Tibetans will always remember Heinrich Harrer and will miss him greatly.

“My prayers are with you and your family.”

This film shines with the relationship between an arrogant climber who found his soul and a boy who would shine as an example of love, compassion, and engagement for the whole world.

Baraka (1992)

"If man sends another Voyager to the distant stars and it can carry only one film on board, that film might be Baraka." — Roger Ebert

Concept and screenplay by Ron Fricke, Mark Magidson, and Constantine and Genevieve Nicholas. Available on Amazon, YouTube, and Paramount+.

It is 1 hour and 37 minutes of images shot around the world in 70mm film. There is no dialogue or voice-over. It is completely wordless. And it is one of the most emotionally, mentally, and spiritually impactful films ever made.

From natural wonders to the ravages of war—from a stunningly powerful sequence of the Hajj to the devastating long shots of Auschwitz—from a serene slow-motion image of a Buddhist gong ringing to the mind-numbing boredom of factory work, Baraka is a film that explores human life and its great environmental matrix with incomparable cinematography and ravishing music. It is art and architecture— opulence and poverty—hard images of modernity juxtaposed with mesmerizing ancient religious iconography.

In the end, it is simply baraka, a blessing that is regarded in various Eastern religions as an indwelling spiritual force and divine gift inhering in saints, charismatic leaders, and natural objects.

It is also the best-kept secret of college and graduate religious studies professors, for it is a portal to opening minds to an experience of the world that is broad, encompassing, and engendering of tolerance.

In 2007, Baraka’s original film was rescanned to 8K Blu-Ray. Roger Ebert said the re-issue was "the finest video disc I have ever viewed or ever imagined."

This is a film to buy and keep in the family—and get the DVD re-issue if possible. It is a film appropriate for teenagers and adults, and it is as culturally freeing and thoughtful about the world’s people and the planet’s environment as any film ever made.

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We hope you have enjoyed this brief journey to Iran, Tibet, and … the rest of the world. We’ll do this again sometime. [s]

Thank you for joining us for PolitiSage Sunday.