| Chess of the Wind | |
| Director: | Mohammad Reza Aslani |
| Producer: | Bahman Farmanara |
| Starring: |
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| Cinematography: | Houshang Baharloo |
| Editing: | Abbas Ganjavi |
| Music: | Sheida Gharachedaghi |
| Distributor: | Janus Films (international) |
| Runtime: | 99 minutes |
| Country: | Iran |
| Language: | Persian |
Chess of the Wind (Persian: شطرنج باد|Shatranj-e Baad), also titled The Chess Game of the Wind, is a 1976 Iranian film written and directed by Mohammad Reza Aslani.[1] The film was screened only once before the 1979 revolution in Iran and was accompanied by a negative reception. After being rediscovered in 2020, the film was released in different countries and was well received.[2]
In an aristocratic family, the matriarch, Khanom Bozorg, dies. Her wheelchair-bound daughter, Aghdas, is left to mourn her in her large house alongside her mother's widower, Hadji Amoo, and his two nephews, Ramezan and Shaban. Ramezan is engaged to Aghdas, but it becomes apparent that he is only interested in her for her money. Aghdas is looked after by a maid, Kanizak, who also cultivates a friendship with Shaban. Throughout the film, intercut scenes of washerwomen gossiping fill in the details of Aghdas and Hadji Amoo's history.
Both Aghdas and Hadji Amoo believe they are entitled to inherit Khanom Bozorg's house, and one day Aghdas and Kanizak enter Hadji Amoo's room and burn the deeds to the house with his name on them. After several confrontations between stepfather and stepdaughter, Aghdas plans to kill Hadji Amoo and obliquely lets Ramezan know of her plan. As Hadji Amoo is praying in his room, Aghdas is wheeled in by Kanizak and strikes him on the head with a silver flail. He falls to the ground and Kanizak and Ramezan drag him to the cellar, where they store the body in a bottomless jar, intending to return later and dissolve it in nitric acid on Aghdas's orders.
A few days later, two creditors of Hadji Amoo arrive at the house with a police commissar, trying to collect a debt he owed them. Aghdas claims not to have seen Hadji Amoo for several days, but the commissar replies that he ran into him on the street more recently. Shocked, Aghdas is unable to respond, and Kanizak and Ramezan take the men down to the cellar, where they examine the jars without finding the body and then leave.
Aghdas becomes increasingly paranoid about whether Hadji Amoo is really dead or not; when a travelling musical troupe claim to have met him in public, she panics and falls ill. Kanizak persuades Aghdas to let her leave the house for a couple of days to visit a nearby holy site. Alone in her room at night, Aghdas hears laughter from the cellar. Taking an antique pistol from her drawer, Aghdas drags herself down the stairs to the basement, where she discovers Hadji Amoo and Kanizak in the bath. Shooting Hadji Amoo, she succumbs to a heart attack.
Kanizak and Shaban plan to live off the inheritance together, and it is implied that they had planned this all along, with Kanizak helping Ramezan to fake Hadji Amoo's death until they could safely dispatch him together. However, when Kanizak realises that Shaban does not intend to marry her, the two begin to argue upstairs. Coming across the bodies in the cellar, Ramezan is enraged at Shaban's betrayal, and runs upstairs, shooting him dead.
In the final scene of the film, Kanizak departs the mansion, leaving behind only a young boy and Aghdas's elderly nanny. The camera pans across the city outside the walls of the house.
Aslani cited Johannes Vermeer as an inspiration for daytime scenes and Georges de La Tour as inspiration for the nighttime scenes. Georges de La Tour's use of central light sources in his paintings, as well as his willingness to have portions of the painting either over- or under-exposed, intrigued him. Aslani also referenced Barry Lyndons approach to light, but stressed that he and Kubrick are different directors with different attitudes. Chess of the Wind includes film tinting reminiscent of some silent films.[5]
Hossein Eidizadeh wrote in Lola Journal:
The original negatives were presumed lost, yet rediscovered by the director's children in a junk shop in 2014. Reception was positive after a restored film was screened in 2020. Robin Baker, head curator of the BFI National Archive said it will "impact" the "world film canon". Baker praised its "ambition", finding it "shocking" and unique in relation to film as well as Iranian culture.[1]
As of 2021, Janus Films currently owns the North American distribution rights to the film.[6]
The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD by The Criterion Collection in September 2022 as part of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project series.