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Maryam (2002)
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Reviews Counted:34
Fresh:26
Rotten:8
Average Rating:6.8/10
Runtime: 90 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Opening with a montage of news footage of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the exile of the Shah, set to The Cars' "Good Times Roll," MARYAM depicts the patriotic fervor and anti-Iranian... Opening with a montage of news footage of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the exile of the Shah, set to The Cars' "Good Times Roll," MARYAM depicts the patriotic fervor and anti-Iranian sentiment of America in 1979 through the eyes of an assimilated Iranian American teenage girl (Mariam Parris) who, like most teens, only wants to fit in. Her suburban existence is slightly shaken by the arrival of her cousin, Ali (David Ackert), a fundamentalist Muslim who has come to the U.S. to attend grad school. Ali reveals a terrible family secret that Maryam's mother (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and father (Shaun Toub) have kept from her. The family's peaceful middle class life is thrown into turmoil when the hostage crisis in Iran brings the bigotry in their white suburban community to the fore. Parris delivers a strong and sympathetic performance as a shy, pretty teen whose growing political and personal awareness brings on an emotional upheaval. First-time writer-director Ramin Serry has created a deeply personal film about an international crisis. His treatment of the subject is fair-minded and insightful. Working with a limited budget, he captures the specific flavor of 1979 and the universal angst of adolescence with equal aplomb. [More]
Starring: Mariam Parris, Shaun Toub, David Ackert, Shohreh Aghdashloo
Starring: Mariam Parris, Shaun Toub, David Ackert, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Maziyar Jobrani, Sabine Singh, Victor Jory, Michael Blieden, Jason Nash
Director: Ramin Serry
Director: Ramin Serry
Screenwriter: Ramin Serry
Producer: Shauna Lyon
Composer: Ahrin Mishan
Studio: Streetlight Films
Reviews for Maryam
It's a very sincere work, but it would be better as a diary or documentary.
[Serry] wants to blend politics and drama, an admirable ambition. It's too bad that the helping hand he uses to stir his ingredients is also a heavy one.
The picture would be better suited to public television, where its modest character will be more at home and its didacticism perhaps less blatant.
A lack of thesis makes Maryam, in the end, play out with the intellectual and emotional impact of an after-school special.
Less about racial profiling than racial self-hatred, Maryam is all shallow afterschool special with a loathsome anti-foreign core.
Serry does a fine job of capturing the climate of the times and, perhaps unwittingly, relating it to what is happening in America in 2002. But hard-to-believe plot twists force the movie off track in its final half hour.
A searing reminder of the relevance of recent history and of the timeless power of fiction to humanize people and crystallize sweeping events into personal drama.
This movie may not have the highest production values you've ever seen, but it's the work of an artist, one whose view of America, history and the awkwardness of human life is generous and deep.
High on melodrama. But it's emotionally engrossing, too, thanks to strong, credible performances from the whole cast.
Most impressive, though, is the film's open-ended finale that refuses to entirely close its characters' emotional wounds.
A quietly moving look back at what it was to be Iranian-American in 1979.
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