Secret Ballot (2001)

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Blistering performances.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

_Secret Ballot_ is an important film and even a surprising one, with its not so subtle message of voting equality for all. The protagonist is likable and so is her sidekick, the soldier/begrudging escort. The scenery is wonderful as are the insights into a culture that is so seemingly disparate from ours in the US.I also thought the film was subversive in many ways and was surprised it got past the strict censorship that governs the film industry in Iran. _Secret Ballot_ clearly asserts the importance of female equality, and the sexist soldier even exemplifies his respect for her at the end of the movie in a scene that is sweet and touching.There also seems to be the slightest hint of romantic feelings between the two. At first, the ballot collector rides in the backseat of the car, but at the movie's end, she is riding in the passenger's seat. When the ballot collector stops midway to the airplane to give one last look to the soldier, it is a wistful moment. These "feelings" seem to be reciprocated by the soldier when in the last frames, that are almost identical to the first, the soldier/escort tells his pal that he will go on guard duty, because "he cannot sleep" anyway.Still, the pacing of this film is very slow, and at times I could understand why some claim it verges on boring. It is a movie that is probably more significant and thought provoking than enjoyable.

Films that have new ideas to put on the table are always welcomed. So many filmmakers today feel like the only way they can express their sincere views and emotions is to format these ideas and emotions into a cliché structure. It is good to know, however, that a relatively new filmmaker named Babak Payami can express his thoughts in a story that has never been told before. The film Secret Ballot is a about 'a girl' (Nassim Abdi) who travels through some islands off the coast of Iran with a guide (Cyrus Abidi) meeting random people and marking down their votes for election day. Half the people she meets do not even know who the candidates are; she has to explain their tell them about the candidates for five minutes before they vote. Payami uses the girl's quest for votes as a jumping off point for the greater question of the value of democracy and uses the relationship between the girl and the guide as a jumping off points for questions about feminism in Iran. The commentary on feminism is funny and so are the scenes where the girl is collecting random peoples' votes but to use such a terrible voting system as a way to question the value of democracy is a bit like using the characters from Lord of the Flies as a way of questioning the value of children-the excellent story in this film really doesn't make up for the phony message. I'm unimpressed by Payami's terribly indulgent visual style; if a film is going to have self-indulgent visuals, their should at least be something to indulge in, but I can't say that this is the case for Payami's images. This is the kind of mildly entertaining film that might be not be worth seeing at the movie theatre, but, if you're bored, you could catch on television one day (billions of years from now when they decide to put Iranian films on television.)

I thought I'd add another comment to the mix of comments made about this film, which is that this film also tackles the issue of Iran's treatment of its Arab minority. This minority lives primarily in a western province called khuzestan (borders w/iraq), and along the western coastline, where the island portrayed in the movie happens to lie.Most of the local inhabitants that the election official meets speak Arabic, some dont even speak Farsi (like the man in Granny Naghoo's compound). Being semitic, they have different physical appearances from the iranians, who are indo-european. And their customs are more similar to the arabs on the arab side of the persian gulf.In addition to making points about democracy and about gender issues, Secret Ballot is also about the distance of Iran's central government from its Arab minority, seeming to be out of touch with their customs, their concerns, and their issues.Incidentally, this theme of how Iran deals with its minorities is also addressed in Baran (Majid Majidi), but in that case it's about Iran's Afghan minority.Congratulations to Babak Payami for a wonderful little gem of a movie.

On Election Day on a remote island in the Persian Gulf, an airplane drops a parachute containing a ballot box filled with registration materials and ballots. A soldier (Cyrus Abidi) retrieves the material but is astonished when he discovers that the official who arrives to run the election is a young woman (Nassim Abdi). The official (unnamed) is an outspoken idealist who believes that voting can give citizens the opportunity to make a difference, while the soldier does not see any value in it. Secret Ballot by Babak Payami is a lightweight but charming Iranian film about the frustrations an election official encounters while attempting to collect votes in a place where there is no tradition of democracy. In this case, the official's problems are compounded by the fact that she is a woman in a male-dominated society and must combat ideas about what is proper for women to be doing.As the soldier drives her around the island in his jeep, the quest for votes leads to one absurd situation after another. The unlikely pair meets a man running across the desert that the soldier suspects of being a smuggler and has to persuade him to vote by pointing his gun at him. They must also contend with a truckload of women and a single man who insists on casting all of their votes for them. In other situations, women in a nomadic camp refuse to vote without permission of the men who are out fishing, and a Muslim at a solar energy site will vote for only one candidate -- GOD -- who isn't even on the ballot. In one of the more surreal episodes, the soldier refuses to drive past a red traffic light standing in the middle of the desert even though he knows it is broken and will never turn green. Simplistic ideas about the value of democracy are tested against the reality that the islanders must face. One potential voter asks the official, "What do you know about us and our problems? We have to hide our feelings here." In another case, women cannot vote because they are forbidden to look at the photographs of the male candidates. Another time, the official cannot register the votes of men at a cemetery because women are forbidden to enter the sacred ground. It is not clear if the film was made to promote democracy or to show it as being ludicrous. Apparently the Iranian officials took it seriously because the film was banned in Iran. What is clear is that unless an electorate is informed and feels a stake in the outcome, the process of voting is a sham and, as the protagonists in Secret Ballot found out, cannot be imposed with high minded speeches or a gun pointed at the voter's head.