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Just 6.5

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Just 6.5@r-nyn1463d
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  1. JUST 6.5 by Saeed Roustayi (2019) (Iranian) on MUBI@nazirullsafry1833d

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    Detainees being cramped together in a detention hall is being shown shirtless. Then there are close-up shots of their lifeless and barely conscious faces. Then a long shot to show the whole group of them.

    Enter Payman Maãdi playing as Sergeant Majidi walking around them drawing a stark contrast between a man that has a role in society and those who are an addict to the substance.

    Up until the end of the movie, it might have been just another cop drama/thriller, but the director Saeed Roustayi gives one final hint away by showing a panoramic shot of people getting out of their cars and fleeing, chased by cops in the middle of a highway with the whole city in the background - a kind of shot....straight out of a zombie movie!

    Why?

    The director is not even being metaphorical in his treatment of ‘zombies’ in this one. Like in the ‘Dawn of the dead’ where the zombies represent mindless consumers under capitalism and in Zombi Kampung Pisang zombies as mindless supporters of a political party.

    Saeed straight away shows the viewers in many scenes that drug addicts are the real zombies. But as in other zombie flicks, the line between them and the real human is always blurred. The same here.

    “...at first, the relationship between a detective and a drug lord equals just to the one between good and evil.

    But director Roustayi dig the fact that there is justice in vice and vice injustice. Then, the intricacy between these two bursts in the last act with intense wonderment...” - Saitosouta, a review at Mubi.

    Some are hopeless addicts. Some are addicts but they still recognized their families. And there are non-addicts like the protagonist Sergeant Majidi and the antagonist drug lord Nasseer Khakzad.

    Even the line between Majidi and Khakzad is blurred. In one instance Majidi was negotiating a bribe. Nasseer even though a drug lord still has some honor in him for not running away even after Majid let him so. Just to prove that he is in it for the survival of his family. He even committed suicide to detach all drug connections with his family, until being revived by Samad.

    “There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide. - Albert Camus

    Suicide is not liberating. It is the only life that offers freedom and Nasser Khakzad is confused and trapped between the two.

    THE ZOMBIES OF OUR TIME

    The meaning of zombie is originated and targeted towards the slaves in Haiti back then. And to be a slave of something is halfway to becoming one.

    In this day and age, it is hard to not say you are a slave of something. One can't deny the eternal lure of the handphone and social media. Calling you to check on them every now and then. And the crowd walking in public bowing down onto their devices...a zombification of its own, without us knowing.

    And even more at this time of pandemic where physical socializing is almost taboo, we look at our phones and imagine all the ‘life in it. Isn’t it close enough to the old fairy tale where a which stores the soul into a stone and they are all entrapped in it?

    Neah. Gonna check it for one minute - just one minute. Just one hour. Better than three hours pfft.

    STATE OF EXCEPTION

    “The camp is the space that opens up when the state of exception starts to become the rule” - Giorgio Agamben.

    Masha Gessen wrote in Surviving Autocracy (2020), when an emergency shakes up the accepted order of things, the ‘sovereign’ steps forward and institutes new, extralegal rules.

    Who is the ‘sovereign’? In this case, it's Majidi representing the law and order. What are the extralegal rules? The death penalty. What is the state of emergency? The rising number of drug addicts in Iran.

    (We in Malaysia have our own ‘sovereign’ now you know who)

    Does the new death penalty law fix it? According to Hamidi near the ending, it could’ve been 10 million but after the introduction of the law, it is just 6.5 million.

    Just like checking the phone for 1 minute. Just 10 minutes. Just 6.5 million. Better than 10 million.

    A hint at the beginning of the movie showing a young dealer/addict runs from Hamidi and fell into a pit and got buried alive. A total game of chance and fate - A divine intervention.

    And that brief moment of hope when Nasseer’s nephew did a cartwheel.

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