Women Without Men (2009), originally a video installation by the visual artist-turned-director Shirin Neshat, is characterized by its powerful visual elements, but the first impression it makes is audial. A black screen faces the viewer as the adhan, call to prayer, plays. One of the film’s four central women sits on the edge of a white rooftop, her black chador and hair contrasting a grey-blue sky. The adhan underscores her evident turmoil, as she struggles to make a decision, and cuts out the moment she does. Her name is Munis (Shabnam Tolouei), a 30-something unmarried woman who lives with an abusive brother and longs to be part of the world of political action she hears through her radio. This is the first enigmatic vignette of the fragmented, otherworldly feminist film.

Munis is joined in the film by three other women, who become entangled through the physical and mystical sides of life. One is Munis’ best friend, Faezeh (Pegah Ferydon), religious and conservative but jealous and longing to marry Munis’ brother. Then there’s Zarin (Orsolya Tóth), a silent but expressive young woman working in a brothel, and Fahkri (Arita Shahrzad), an older woman who leaves her controlling husband and buys an orchard where all three women begin to live together: a women-centered Garden of Eden of sorts, or, more fittingly, Jannah, a hidden paradise. 

 The film is adapted from a 1989 novel of the same name by Shahrnush Parsipur, but adds a more political thrust. The setting, 1953 Tehran during the imperialist US-British backed coup of the progressive leader Mohammad Mossadegh, is more than just a backdrop to the film. British-American forces, seeking to maintain control over Iran’s oil, not only destabilize the political sphere, but exacerbate the personal turmoil of the characters. Munis becomes the political axis of the film, active in the pro-Mossadegh resistance, while the militarized imposition of the Shah parallels patriarchy’s violent repression of women. As the women struggle to free themselves from their individual circumstances and their subjugation as women, so masses of protesters resist the imposition of a new regressive government. 

Two images are central to Women Without Men: one is the long road, leading to a horizon, where all of the women walk. The other is a babbling creek, which comes to a cave-like opening that leads to the semimagical orchard. These images recur throughout the film, facilitating travel, transition, and rebirth in the literal and metaphorical senses. The women encounter and journey along these pathways often in silence, with only the sound of footfalls or water accompanying them.  The diegetic sounds, absent any dialogue, heighten these meditative and almost trance-like moments, leaving us on edge as we wonder what will happen next. In these moments, the women transgress the division between reality and mysticism, and between the physical constraints they suffer and spiritual freedom. 

The road and creek are physical images, natural ones, that bridge the gap between the magical and the realistic. The film plays with surrealist images and techniques: a faceless man, a woman suspended in flight mid-air, a doubling of a character that allows her to watch herself. They are reminiscent of the effects achieved by the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, but in the context of the film and Neshat’s direction, this surrealism is distinctly Iranian. It is inextricably linked to the film’s mysticism, a narrative tool that rejects dominant, often Western, narrative styles. It is also thematically fitting: in a world where characters face repression, silencing, and control, they must find alternative ways to make meaning and express themselves. The Shah’s dictatorship and later the Islamic revolution imposed censorship of expression in Iran. Hence the elements of surrealism, magical realism, and other non traditional narrative and stylistic techniques for which Iranian cinema is known. Neshat’s particular approach to these elements suggests an intimate understanding of trauma and the subconscious: her surreal images always get at a hidden meaning or intention of her characters. 

Neshat’s direction and Martin Gschlacht’s cinematography pair perfectly to create the visual language of the film. Each image is created, navigated, and mediated by sharp, intentional camera movements that orient and disorient the viewer. An unflinching aerial shot shows Munis floating vertically in a howz, a pool, her dress billowing around her in what looks almost like a stationary version of a Sufi dervish. This stillness is contrasted in other parts of the film, especially those set in the orchard. One such moment shows Faezeh’s first encounter with the orchard, unmanicured and darkly beautiful. As she walks, the camera pans over her body 360 degrees, making us just feel just as lost as Faezeh. 

While the visual language of the film is largely effective, it is not entirely so. While Faezeh, Munis, and Fahkri are part of the images, Zarin is an image. Emaciated, traumatized, and close to death, she silently struggles and endures. We don’t get much of Zarin’s point of view beyond her suffering. She, compared to the other women, seems to be far more archetypal and one-dimensional, despite Tóth’s remarkable performance. Zarin feels like an anonymous image of the young, victimized, sex worker, rather than her own person. Her status as an image undermines the film’s evident belief in the complexity and richness of its women characters, especially those who are most vulnerable. 

Aside from this notable misstep, Women Without Men creates its own vocabulary of understanding, communication, and meaning. While rooted deeply in its historical and political moment, the film finds its home in a liminal space. Women Without Men’s pointillistic aesthetic gives us fleeting images that stay with us long past the credits— and extend the film’s resonance from 1953 to 2009 to 2020.