Holy Spider

I became interested in Holy Spider when Zar Amir Ebrahimi won Best Actress for her performance at the Cannes Film Festival this year.  I decided to see it at the Broadway (my second home this week) last night and it is disturbing but very compelling.  A journalist named Arezoo Rahimi (Ebrahimi) travels to the holy city of Mashhad in Iran to investigate a serial killer known as the Spider.  Saeed Hanaei (Mehdi Bajestani), a middle-aged veteran of the Iran-Iraq War who laments the fact that he did not become a martyr for Allah, travels through the city on a motorcycle, lures prostitutes to his apartment when his wife and children are away, strangles them with their own headscarves, and disposes of their bodies in the same location.  He believes that what he is doing is a crusade to rid the streets of sin and, as Rahimi investigates, she suspects that the chief detective on the case (Sina Parvaneh) and an important local cleric (Nima Akbarpour) believe the same thing because there have been no new leads in the case in the past six months.  She decides to intervene and poses as a prostitute in order to catch him herself (in scenes filled with so much tension that I was holding my breath) but then must contend with the public who view him as a hero.  I was very struck by the difficulties that Rahimi faces as a woman trying to investigate a crime.  She is almost refused a room in a hotel because she is a single woman, she is berated for showing too much hair (there are many parallels with the situation in Iran today), she must be accompanied by a male journalist (Arash Ashtiani) everywhere she goes, and she is physically attacked by the police chief (the juxtaposition between the threat posed by a serial killer and by men in power is very thought-provoking).  I was also struck by how normal Hanaei is in his interactions with his wife and family and by how easy it is for him (and, later, his son) to get swept up in a religious mania.  Even though the audience knows who the murderer is very early on (it is based on true events) it is still incredibly suspenseful because of what happens after Hanaei is arrested and there are a few twists and turns that had me on the edge of my seat.  Ebrahimi is brilliant in the role because you can see the fury on her face even as she pulls her hijab tighter.  This scathing condemnation of misogyny and religious extremism is difficult to watch (the violence is very graphic and the final scene left me shaking) but I recommend it.