“My work deals with one thing only: the condemnation of existence. A human being, as a multidimensional human being, no longer exists today. And this is the annihilation I reflect by eliminating the hand and feet, the eyes and mouth. They have none of these. I can see it and hear it, I am certain of it. They have no life whatsoever. And this is what I show: this person that is nothing. But at the same time I have compassion. Because, after all, he’s human,” said exiled Iranian artist Bahman Mohassess, the so-called “Persian Picasso” — whose work was prominent in pre-revolutionary Iran — in Mitra Farahani’s remarkable documentary Fifi Howls from Happiness, filmed a few months before the painter’s death and completed after it.
Actually, Bahman Mohassess was not only a consummate painter, but a gifted sculptor and a famed translator of literary works as well. And just as important as Mohassess, the artist, was Mohassess, the man. Or perhaps even more.
Confrontational and biting, his outspoken opinions made him a rather controversial figure: he called his fellows Iranian “bootlicking cowards,” he was resentful with the world at large in almost every which way, he found the notion of an afterlife to be unbelievably stupid, and also felt that homosexuality lost all its meaning and force when it was no longer forbidden (the idea of same-sex marriage drove him mad). As he liked to say, he was a homosexual with a penchant for “straight” boys with fiancées as his companions, and definitely not a gay man into effeminate creatures. Old school, but never a homophobe. Neither was he an essentially obnoxious or inconsiderate character. He was no monster — unlike some of his bizarre sculptures with missing limbs and featureless faces.
You get to learn all this and much more in Farahani’s revelatory documentary, and yet there’s no need to fear since it’s not another case of a talking head in front on the camera. On the contrary: Fifi Howls from Happiness smartly resorts to the spoken word as much as needed, but never as a tedious series of fancy words — let alone big meanings. In fact, Mohassess’ speech is pretty down to earth and is used to interplay with the voice over of the documentary maker, who questions and motivates the painter in order to draw a real portrayal of a person instead of that of an artist on a pedestal. So words are used in a candid and friendly manner, as they are swiftly intertwined with still images of his work and with framed paintings he used to decorate the functional and somewhat comfy hotel room where he lived for ages. Since this is a man who had opted to seclude himself, a real home to end his life in would have been out of the picture.
He was also a cinema lover and Luchino Visconti’s Il gattopardo was one of his favourite films. He also believed, as a line from the film has it, that “men used to be leopards and lions, but have been replaced by jackals, hyenas, and sheep.” He liked cinema so much that he dared advise the filmmaker how to design and shoot her film, which is actually a work in progress of sorts that displays its own narrative and aesthetic mechanisms. Not as a case of a self-conscious exercise in style, but arguably as the best way to portray such an unpredictably nuanced character.
As an example, when a couple of Iranian artist brothers visit him to commission a large oil painting on subject of his choice, his proverbial sarcastic and judgmental nature gives way to a kind, sensitive man. Someone you can care for. That’s surely why the abrupt and eerie ending is bound to hit you with deep emotional resonance. It wasn’t planned at all, but, one way or another, you could probably see it coming.
Production notes
Fifi Howls From Happiness (Coprod., 2013). Written and directed by Mitra Farahani. With Bahman Mohasses, Mitra Farahani. Cinematography: Mitra Farahani. Running time: 99 minutes.
