There are a number of people in my life that I call my heroes.
Some are personal, some professional, others just big-name figures that have had a big impact on my life.
I would consider both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to be heroes of mine.
These two can take the news happening around us, give an astute commentary on it and give it a twist of comedy that’s laugh-out-loud funny night after night.
When I heard Stewart was tackling a subject as tough as foreign journalist imprisonment for his first feature-length film, I wasn’t skeptical.
I knew Stewart had the chops, at least as a journalist and commentator, to take on a story like that of Maziar Bahari.
Before I launch into the nitty-gritty nuances and flaws of “Rosewater,” let me start by saying that this is a damn fine film.
It takes courage and bravado to create a film like this. Some might pass it off as menial Oscar bait, but I think more highly of it.
As a whole, the film works great, at least with its basic storytelling capabilities. It tells the story of Newsweek journalist Bahari, played deftly by Gael García Bernal , and his 2009 trip to Iran to cover the corrupt election of the country’s new leader.
He becomes imprisoned in an Iranian solitary confinement cell on the charge of espionage and stays there for months, his body and spirit being beaten to a pulp with his ruthless and witless captors trying to coax a confession out of Bahari that doesn’t exist.
The biggest problem with this film is that it’s hollow in a strictly cinematic sense.
Foundationally, “Rosewater” is perfect. The story, based on Bahari’s 2011 memoir “Then They Came for Me,” is phenomenal and one that definitely deserves as beautiful of a telling as it can get.
The issue at hand is that “Rosewater” is clearly directed by a rookie director — one that’s nose-deep in television news.
Stewart doesn’t butcher the story of “Rosewater” in any way, but he doesn’t give it the literary and artistic integrity it’s just screaming for.
The cinematography is simply kind of boring, the dialogue is clunky — the film really should have been in Farsi, Iran’s language, with subtitles — and the moments of heartache and despair that should have been breathtaking drove on by like a car on cruise control.
It gets the meat and potatoes of the story across with a definite attempt at artistry but, ultimately, it reads as a very good TV news package.
All that said, “Rosewater” is still one of the best films this year.
The real-life story of Bahari keeping hope through months in solitary confinement and the telling of his commitment to true democracy and the need for the audience to hear the stories that matter are both what make this film one that can’t be missed.
It’s too important, too relevant of a story to miss.
Stewart’s got better up his sleeve, he just needs experience to hone his skills.
Let’s hope we get to see them in the future.
