'Holy spider', the besieged woman according to Ali Abbasi's hypnotic gaze

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Plato was not Iranian.

Ali Abbasi, yes.

Or at least, in part.

He is now Swedish, a Swedish film director, but his birth forces him to be from Tehran forever.

What Plato has to do with his idea of ​​matters that have an idea.

The philosopher was clear that justice, the beautiful or the good have by force and necessity to live placidly in a perfect way in a platonic world of ideas.

More debatable is that the somewhat less abstract concepts of man or water also enjoy such a privilege.

But what leaves no room for doubt is that things (or sub-things) as insignificant and dirty as dirt, hair or, for that matter, spilled semen will never gain access to such a high honor.

'Holy spider

' is essentially a dirty movie that talks about dirt.

All of it is offered to the viewer like a sticky glass from which to observe a life that stains.

And from there, his anti-Platonic creed, because it is precisely thanks to his contingency, to his desperate gesture between lives that do not matter at all, that he acquires the exemplary character of what is necessary.

Like a platonic idea, but in reverse.

But not with the intention of shocking or surprising him, but, on the contrary, making him observe the deepest part of himself in all its splendor.

It sounds tremendous.

And it is.

That she was chosen for a protest act that denounces sexist violence during her presentation is no less a part of her merit.

The film is based on a real event, something that happened in Iran in 2001.

.

The subsequent trial caused great commotion both because of the very horror of the events and, and here the most emetic of all, the fascination generated in a part of the population by the criminal suddenly transformed into a hero, the soldier of a holy war.

The director says that everything related to the case came to obsess him to the point of practically paralyzing him.

Years had to pass and he became a filmmaker in a cold, clean and distant land so that a renewed look from a distance has allowed him to return to the scene of each and every one of the crimes.

The film is presented to the viewer as a '

' with a classic air.

His only peculiarity with respect to the norm is his willingness to approach every detail even beyond modesty.

And from there, from an almost microscopic angle, portray the entire universe.

The camera moves with the murderer who goes around the city on his motorcycle in search of his victims and the night seems like a malignant tumor growing to the depths of the gaze.

One detail: the crudest scene with the plane of dried semen on the face of a prostitute will be cut in certain territories.

Structured in two parts,

moves through the killer's mind like a sleepwalker on the edge of a precipice.

When, thanks to the work of a journalist, he is captured, the public trial will reveal that the illness that was believed to be a matter of a sick mind is actually more of a problem for everyone.

The filth of society (a single vowel between one term and another) concerns Iran and any corner of the world.

And hence the director's reverse platonism: in the end there was indeed an idea for the dirt.

Let's say the director does it again.

If '

', his dazzling 2018 work, was a fantastic story with '

' camouflaged among people who suddenly became a story about immigration and acceptance of the different, now the mechanism is the same.

Plato was definitely not an Iranian.

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