A fascinating film about a couple of hundred people living on a rusty, abandoned cargo ship stranded on a shoal off the coast of Iran. A fictional story that also works as a revealing documentary about how a community can organize life in such an unlikely place. Captain Nemat rules unchallenged over the residents: divvying responsibilities, dispensing medicines, organizing marriages, etc. He is the primary character, but the star of the film is the ship. The remaining oil in the tanks is drilled and pumped out to be sold onshore. The barrels scene that explains it is mesmerizing. In an ironic touch, the innards and unessential structures are being cut to be sold as scrap metal. Oil and metal thus form the two main sources of income. Those of course are finite. Moreover the ship is slowing sinking into the shoal. The days of the community on board are numbered. Nemat is well aware of this though he tries to hide the fact from the residents so as not to alarm them. But Nemat has a plan whose execution propels the story to an unsettling conclusion.
There is a Romeo and Juliet subplot with a forced marriage that makes us suspect Nemat. When Nemat makes a deal to sell the ship for scrap and claims that the money will be used to relocate the community to a site on land, our suspicions increase. Is he going to run away with the money? The ending, especially the final scene with the "Fish" boy, is not immediately apparent, but upon reflection it is a pointed commentary on the future of the community as it relocates from its iron island to an arid stretch of blanched earth. A fish stranded in a small and shallow tidal pool is freed by "Fish", but he quickly realizes that several feet away, a line of unmanned fishing nets planted a short distance from the shore await. Well done!
There is a Romeo and Juliet subplot with a forced marriage that makes us suspect Nemat. When Nemat makes a deal to sell the ship for scrap and claims that the money will be used to relocate the community to a site on land, our suspicions increase. Is he going to run away with the money? The ending, especially the final scene with the "Fish" boy, is not immediately apparent, but upon reflection it is a pointed commentary on the future of the community as it relocates from its iron island to an arid stretch of blanched earth. A fish stranded in a small and shallow tidal pool is freed by "Fish", but he quickly realizes that several feet away, a line of unmanned fishing nets planted a short distance from the shore await. Well done!