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Day break refers to the time of day when the guards in a Tehran prison come to the cells of the condemned to bring them for a medical examination. To be hung they must not be too sick. If the exam goes well they are taken to the room where the family of the victim must be, to decide their fate: forgiveness or retribution. If no family member is there the condemned is taken back to his cell to try again another day.
In this fascinating 2005 film from Hamid Rahmanian of Iran –of the post Kohmeni revolution and imposition of Islamic law– we have one of the best documentary-style looks at prisons, men on death row, and the judicial-religious values permeating them to be seen. Though the movie has all of the sounds of cell doors closing, and truncheons beating on bars, it is not a prison story in the sense of The Shawshank Redemption (1994), or Short Eyes (1977) or any of dozens of movies about men’s lives in prison, bonding and fighting, creating a society away from society. It doesn’t have the production values and story line of the excellent Dead Man Walking of 1995 or The Green Mile of 1999 but then Louisiana isn’t Iran either. As is true of almost all Iranian and other Middle-Eastern movies I have seen, the small budgets and restraints to technology and permission from authorities have allowed the writers and directors to concentrate on the simple and necessary elements, undistracted by all that money can buy.
The story centers on Mansour [Hosein Yari], on death row for a murder-by-brick we see only the outlines of in the opening scenes. We get glimpses of his life in brightly colored flashbacks as he waits in the blue-black gloom of his cell. He is recently married; his wife is nine-months pregnant. His father is aging, his mother practically dumb with grief. They are not allowed to be with him on the day of his execution so they come for a final visit the day before, spreading out a picnic sort of lunch in the visiting room — much more casual than any we would find in the United States. After the early morning physical exam, the condemned are taken in a small white bus to the execution area.
The real revelation for us though is of Islamic law as it pertains to murderers and their victims. Not only must a representative of the victim’s family be at the execution and consider whether forgiveness is possible. He must actually pull the wheeled platform from under the murderer’s feet, his neck in the noose. The family whose son Mansour killed has not been able to come on several dates, so he has gone through the day break exam and waited in the execution room several times, including the central part of the film. With him is another man for whom the victim’s family does show up, a stern looking elder with two younger men and two women in the background. The condemned weeps and cries to them to spare his life: he has a wife and two children. Who will provide for them? The men confer and say forgiveness is not possible. He is helped up onto the platform and the noose put around his neck. We see the hand of one of the family on the rail, ready to pull it out from under his feet. [The fall does not look like much, making me think that death would come slowly by strangulation rather than quickly by the broken neck favored in more “advanced” countries.] At the last moment the elder asks if it’s true that the man owns a house. He does. In that case, says the elder, if he will sign it over to an orphanage and move out, retribution will have been satisfied. He is let out of the noose, climbs off the platform and weeping and praying embraces and kisses the guards who were holding him. As wrenching and terrifying as the hours are for the condemned, the families themselves go through a kind of second hell. After the death of a loved one, sometimes quite grisly, and the months of living with it, and still to be lived, they must witness the fear and turmoil of the killer — and consider what their heart should do. This is not a decision that will be made at leisure, in the quiet of a mosque or a walk along a river. It is made now, with the man’s neck in the noose, pleading for his life — all while the absence of the murdered one cries out the sorrows of loss.
Mansour is taken back to his cell. With no representatives of the family he cannot be killed. This is the third or fourth time he has been “a dead man walking.”
Stylistically the film is a faux documentary, “based on true events” as the introductory titles tell us. Several times characters look directly into the camera and explain why there are there, and what is going on. The young doctor who does the medical examinations is a medical student and is serving his two years of military service. He invites the cameras to follow him into the prison. Guards rush out, yelling to stop filming, blocking the lens with the hands. During several scenes we hear the voice over of morning rush-hour traffic news, telling Tehrani’s where there are blockages and slow downs. Even in the van on the way to the execution the prisoners hear the radio, “Good morning dear sports enthusiasts.” This momentous day for them is unnoticed by greater Tehran. Life is normal; life goes on. Had the tell-tale signs of a documentary continued throughout the film it might have had even more of an impact. As it is, documentary is signaled at the beginning and then forgotten as we move into the powerful witness of the events and Mansour’s state of mind.
The character of most interest to us, besides Mansour, and of course the forgiven man, is the judicial-religious official. In his pin striped suit it’s not clear to me he is an Imam with traditional religious standing but it is he who explains to us, and the families, what the rules and options are. He takes attendance, with IDs, to ensure a family member is indeed present. He is very careful to explain both sides of forgiveness or retribution to the family. It is not a wink and a nod.
“A right [to retribution]” he tells them, does not mean you must exercise it. You have a choice. Just as you have the right to retribution so you have a right to forgiveness.'”
He tells us that “according to the holy verse the victim’s family is King over the murderer.” Whatever they decide will be righteous. It is he who tells the guards to seat the prisoners at a table so they can write their last will and testament, and to make them ready for prayer.
As in many films from Iran and other Muslim countries praying and religiously based homilies are a major part of conversational exchanges. Sitting down to explain something begins with “In the name of God.” The explanation of forgiveness or retribution is filled with references to God and the Koran. Even when the aged father is talking to himself –or, into the camera, to us– he prefaces and ends most thoughts with a “God willing,” or some such phrase. Almost everything is explained as “God’s will” — from the additional 40 days Mansour must wait before he is brought out again, to the hanging itself. The prisoners are allowed –expected– to kneel in prayer in the judgement room, before the victims’s families, guards and doctor. Other things of interest are the solicitous manners of the guards towards their condemned charges, and the broken, passive demeanors of the two prisoners. None of the tough guy posturing of U.S. prison movies.
The sound track is very effective, adding to serious, national character of the event, using traditional Middle-Eastern instruments, including the duduk, a spooky sounding wind instrument, and a traditional stringed instrument, the dotar or setar I imagine. Interestingly, the sound track is credited to David Bergeaud who has a long list of totally non Iranian films scores to his credit.
Of course this is only one story about prisons, and Iranian prisons at that. There are undoubtedly many more to tell, and from the little we have heard following the repression of this year’s public demonstrations in Iran, with much uglier stories. Day Break, however, is certainly worth seeing as a study of men facing the possibility of death or forgiveness, the intricacies of an execution system different than our own and human workings of a society that seems so strange and distant to us.