Cinematical

Mansour (Hossein Yari) is guilty of murder, awaiting the decision of whether or not he will be executed. His fate does not fall in the hands of a judge, though. It falls to the family of the man he murdered; if they ever make it down to the prison to make the call. Under Iranian law in cases of capital punishment, it is up to the victim's family to either condemn the offender to hang or save him with their forgiveness, but they are required to appear on the day of execution to officially select their verdict. Mansour has already faced the day of his sentencing a few times, and each time the judgment has been postponed due to the family's absence. And so he continues to wait for his appointment with death.

Anyone familiar with existentialist Iranian cinema can predict how Day Break ends, but it doesn't really matter if Mansour lives or dies. He is like Schrodinger's Cat, simultaneously alive and dead and neither state all at the same time. Trapped in a form of limbo, he endures the psychological struggle with having an indefinite future and a definite lack of free will. The torture of not knowing, for Mansour, becomes far worse a punishment than death.

My father once told me half-jokingly that prison isn't too bad a place when you're too poor to feed yourself. As depicted in Day Break, Iranian prison doesn't appear so tough; there is plenty of singing and dancing and intramural sports; pottery and knitting; good food, including cookies. Occasionally there is a fight, and prisoners end up in solitary confinement, but the only real downside appears to be dependent on guilty consciences and nervous anticipation. A group of prisoners enjoy themselves in an everyday social gathering when the radio announces an imminent earthquake; most pray they could only be so lucky as to be killed by the hand of god instead of the uncertain fate that makes them so anxious.

The contrast between physical and mental incarceration severely emphasizes the agony of the latter, which is otherwise invisible to the audience. The few times when Day Break attempts to actually visualize Mansour's ,it employs such standards like the repeat-image flashback montage and the fakeout dream sequence, both of which detract from the primarily straightforward action of the film. The scenes that cut to Mansour's past and show his life beforehand, though, enhance the film; moments depicting his home and family add another kind of contrast, and a display of his employment troubles offer a hint of his motive to commit murder.

Day Break is directed by Hamid Rahmanian, a documentary filmmaker (one of his recent films is about the man on whom The Terminal is based). Interestingly enough, Rahmanian studied graphic design in Tehran and computer animation at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, then worked as a rendering artist on the Disney films Tarzan, The Emperor's New Groove and Dinosaur before returning to Iran, where he now joins his country's continually amazing film industry. With Day Break, Rahmanian has developed a compelling story from a simple, single concept and, with his ingeniously limited use of fake documentary technique and beautiful eye for camera placement, maintains its intrigue amidst an existential style that normally results in slow and drearily dull cinema. His capability with the medium certainly makes him a director to watch.