The 2009 magical realism film Women Without Men, directed by Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari, follows the lives of four Iranian women during the 1950s. Set in Tehran, the events of the film take place against the background of the coup which toppled the democratically elected regime. Through the stories of these women, the film shows the many challenges associated with being an Iranian woman and the difficulties in escaping them. Women Without Men presents four women imprisoned in their circumstances, depicting their attempts to free themselves and ultimately their failure to do so.
The first woman, Munis, lives with her controlling brother who hopes to marry her off soon. Munis, however, is engaged in the political happenings of the time and resentful of her brother’s desires. She describes herself as a prisoner in her brother’s house. We are next introduced to Faezeh, a friend of Munis who appears to be in love with Munis’s brother. Faezeh looks forward to marrying and disapproves of her friend’s political inclinations. In contrast to Munis and Faezeh’s domestic setting, the third woman, Zarin, lives and works at a brothel. While she does not speak, the defeated look and expression of discomfort on her face suggests that she too is trapped in her circumstances. After a surreal sequence in which one of Zarin’s customers appears faceless to her, she flees the brothel. The scene shifts and we are introduced to Fakhri, an older, well-off woman. Although she is married, she becomes entranced by an old friend recently returned to Iran from the United States. Later, in their home, Fakhri tells her husband that she wants out of their marriage and calls for a divorce.
At this point in the film, all four women and the prisons they are trapped in have been introduced. Munis is stuck in a future dictated by her brother, Zarin is haunted by men, and Fakhri is stuck in an unhappy marriage. Faezeh’s prison is less obvious. Her self-imposed goal of marrying Munis’s brother limits the way she sees herself and her self-worth. We watch as these women attempt to escape their prisons
Fakhri escapes Tehran in the literal sense, purchasing a large, walled orchard and house outside of the city. After leaving the brothel, Zarin finds herself well outside of Tehran. She follows a small stream, eventually reaching Fakhri’s orchard. Fakhri later discovers Zarin, motionless, floating in the water outside of the house. The caretaker of the orchard carries her inside. Eventually Zarin awakens and begins to recover.
Munis takes the most extreme action to escape her circumstances, jumping from a rooftop. Faezeh finds her in the street, apparently dead. Her brother buries her in the yard. Sometime later at the wedding of Munis’s brother, Faezeh is in the yard and hears Munis’s voice coming from the ground. She digs at the dirt and finds Munis, still alive. Rather than reveal her resurrection to her brother, Munis immediately makes her way to a nearby café to sit and hear the latest political news, never to return to her brother’s house. Faezeh hesitantly follows her. In the café, Munis meets a young man who is a member of the communist party. For Munis, this moment marks the beginning of her emancipation from her brother’s control. For the rest of the film she is an active member of the party, fighting against the American-backed coup.
For Faezeh, however, visiting the café marks the peak of her struggle. While Munis goes inside, Faezeh hangs around outside the café. After noticing two men watching her, she rushes away, only to be followed by them. Later, Munis finds her crying on a doorstep; it is apparent that she has been raped. Faezeh is engulfed by shame and faced with the reality that she will have a difficult time finding a husband because she is no longer a virgin. Munis and Faezeh leave the city and find themselves at Fakhri’s orchard. It is not clear why Munis knows of this place or why she brings her friend there. It is here Faezeh is left to free herself from her shame and accept herself.
Despite political upheaval in Tehran, Faezeh, Fakhri, and Zarin are free to do as they wish in the sanctuary of the orchard. For a time, it seems that all of the women have escaped their prisons to the safety of the lush green gardens. However, as the film ends it becomes clear that this is not the case. Zarin, upon recognizing the caretaker as the faceless customer, falls ill, eventually dying. Faezeh and Fakhri are unable to save her. Fakhri’s oasis is further invaded when soldiers arrive, apparently looking for enemies of the Shah. The soldiers are only appeased when they learn that Fakhri is the wife of an important general, once again reducing her to the role she was attempting to escape. Faezeh is surprised when Munis’s brother arrives at the party and proposes. Although she had once hoped to marry him, she refuses his advances, knowing that as a second wife she would not truly have the marriage she wanted. She too is unable to escape the attention of men even though it was once desirable to her.
Munis’s fate is no better than that of the other three women. After the successful coup d’état, Munis and the other communist party members are hunted by the police. Having lost her means for political expression, her escape too has failed. In the final scene, we see Munis once again standing on a rooftop. Her voice narrates, explaining that “[she] thought, the only freedom from pain is to be free from the world.” She then jumps to her death.
The mystery of the orchard- its isolated location, how any of the women knew of its existence, and its ambiguous size- only serves to highlight its importance as a space for women. While we know very little about its background, we do know that the orchard serves as a sanctuary for the three women. In this way, the filmmakers create a literal safe space for women which they then ultimately break down by introducing men to the setting. This deliberate destruction of a female space emphasizes the inescapability of the prisons built for women in a patriarchal society. Munis, in contrast to the other three, does not seek asylum in the orchard. Her narrative instead shows that breaking into a men’s space (the realm of politics) also does not guarantee freedom from a woman’s prison. Through the lens of these women’s lives, the film successfully speaks to the unavoidability of oppression in many forms for women in Iran.
This pessimistic message does not suggest that women can never be free of their oppressors but that they cannot do so within today’s society. It is not enough for women to defy their oppressors: for the status of women to change, the patriarchy must be fully dismantled. Otherwise, Fakhri, Munis, Faezeh, and Zarin will always be a wife, a sister, a tainted woman, and an object of sexual pleasure. In this way, the filmmakers successfully underscore the need for societal change. While the film is set in Iran, Women Without Men can appeal to an international audience because its message is relevant in any patriarchal society.
While the its message is evident, the filmmakers fail to clarify many of the film’s details. The elements of magical realism in the film, like Zarin’s faceless customer and Munis’s resurrection, go unexplained. It is unclear to the viewer how these aspects relate to the film’s overarching themes. This ambiguity leaves the viewer confused, as though they missed something important, making the film less enjoyable to watch. While Women Without Men succeeds in telling the poignant stories of four Iranian women, it leaves the viewer a bit lost at times.
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