Nostalgia Kinky

Deaf Crocodile recently released a second printing of their fascinating Blu-ray box set, ‘The Time-Bending Mysteries Of Shahram Mokri’. I spent the past several nights watching this intriguing set of 4 films from the great Iranian director, sharing my thoughts at Letterboxd as I went. Below are those capsule reviews. This very fine collection can be ordered directly from Deaf Crocodile or from MVD. The main extra across the set is a new exhaustive interview with Mokro, running impressively well over four hours.

Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories (2009)

Iranian filmmaker Shahram Mokri had yet to turn thirty when his first feature, Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories (2009) hit local Iran theaters. A former film student, Mokri’s entire life seemed to lead to cinema. Much of this was due to his father, an obsessive film lover who kept a folder of stills from American films, often illegal to access. The first film in Deaf Crocodile’s terrific ‘The Time-Bending Mysteries Of Shahram Mokri’ box, Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories is a good debut and a sure sign of a talent that has only grown since its release. 

Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories proved a bit of a challenge for me, as I have a real aversion to films inspired by Pulp Fiction. As much as I’ll always love Tarantino’s early films, the copycats left in their wake were both damaging and upsetting. Anyone who lived through the nineties can attest to this. And there is no question that QT’s epic 2nd released film plays a huge influence throughout Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories, distractingly so at times.

Mokri’s episodic script for Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories owes much to the likes of Tarantino, Hartley, and Jarmusch. Probably even P.T.A. as well. While its black and white photography might resemble the French New Wave more, Moki’s debut is a love-letter to the American cinema of the nineties, before almost all its great directors became corrupted by acceptance, money, and power.
My man Hal Hartley excluded, of course. And Mokri has much in common with Hartley, particularly in the way he embraces confusion as a narrative technique.

Running just over 90 minutes, the sometimes silly Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories is pretty slight. In fact, the film feels perhaps more like an experiment than a fully formed piece of cinema, but regardless, this is a mostly charming film, fun and enlightening.

In the end, Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories is a bit too heavily indebted to Mokri’s favorite films and directors, but as a debut, this is solid work. Not as essential as the rest of Deaf Crocodile’s Moktri box, this is still very well worth watching and an intriguing view. 

Fish & Cat (2013)

Whoa, what a difference five years can make. While I enjoyed the relatively inconsequential Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories (2009), I was not at all prepared for this chilling, unnerving, and masterfully made follow-up Fish & Cat (2013). The 2nd film on Deaf Crocodile’s recent Blu-ray Box-set ‘The Time-Bending Mysteries Of Shahram Mokri’, Fish & Cat is a frightening and powerful picture quite unlike anything else I’ve ever seen.

Set in an unimaginably dreary lakeside hosting a kite-flying competition, Fish & Cat is told in one unending shot, capturing an unreal amount of dread with very often little to nothing at all happening. If his debut aped early Tarantino, then Fish & Cat is his take on John Carpenter and what a splendid one it is. 

Methodical and plodding, Fish & Cat harkens mostly back to films of the seventies, while having obvious kinships to It Follows, released less than a year after this. Mokri’s camera is relentless, capturing his excellent ensemble talking and walking into tragedy. Owing as much to mumblecore as horror, Fish & Cat successfully blends both, earning its near two and a half hour running time at every turn.

Fish & Cat might have just been an interesting experiment in less talented hands than Mokri, but he delivers a genuinely splendid sort of slasher that matches the film’s technical prowess.
This is the good stuff.

I don’t want to say anything else about Fish & Cat as this is absolutely a film best viewed cold. Just don’t watch it in the midst of seasonal depressive disorder. Deaf Crocodile’s presentation is strong, and the hour-plus interview with Mokri, discussing his influences and this special film, is a great watch.
Tremendous stuff.

Invasion (2017)

While I appreciate the narrative daringness and technical experimentation of Invasion (2017), Shahram Mokri’s follow-up to his masterpiece Cat & Mouse (2013) left me very cold. Like the superior film that preceded it, Invasion is once again a sort of horror film told in a single shot. Set in a miserably dark future, the entirety of Invasion takes place in an empty soccer stadium. There’s been a murder, and the police are running the suspects through the crime methodically and repeatedly. Whereas Cat & Mouse was an incredibly engrossing and immersive film, Invasion is confused and ultimately more of a challenge than challenging. There’s no denying Mokri’s superior work behind the camera, and all of his large ensemble does fine work. Invasion is just too clinical, too passionless to my eyes to succeed. There are elements of Robbe-Grillet’s masterworks here, but Invasion doesn’t have any of the transgressiveness that those did. It’s just kind of empty, an admirable but not entirely succesful  experiment.

Careless Crime: (2020)

An often riveting and haunting dramatization of a deadly arsonist set cinema fire that became connected to the Itanaian Revolution Careless Crime (2020) is the final and most recent film in Deaf Crocodile’s fascinating Blu-ray box. 

A dense labyrinth of a true-crime thriller that blends memory with mystery in surprisingly moving ways, Careless Crime is a strange creation. With its mixture of loosely correlated events and its self-reflexive nature, Careless Crime is an eerie, occasionally deliberately confusing work, scripted by Mokri and Nasim Ahmadpour, who also appears in the film.

Mokri continues to show off his talents as a world-class filmmaker with Careless Crime. Not as overtly experimental as the other films on Deaf Crocodile’s set, Careless Crime is still quite unlike anything else I can think of. This is particularly true of the film’s haunting final moment, which attempts to answer a real-life unsolved mystery with cinematic surrealism. 

Like the other films in Deaf Crocodile’s set, a lengthy new interview with Mokri is included. This chat is particularly interesting as it sheds light on the real-life events surrounding the film. We’re also treated to a nearly half-hour making-of documentary shot on set. This is especially cool as it allows us to see Mokri work behind the scenes. Careless Crimeis a difficult but completely engrossing film that offers a chilling conclusion to Deaf Crocodile’s highly recommended Blu-ray box set ‘The Time-Bending Mysteries Of Shahram Mokri’. 

-Jeremy Richey, May 2026-