Iranian filmmaker Shahram Mokri’s Tajiki Persian-Russian language film, Black Rabbit White Rabbit, begins with a famous tenet from the legendary Russian writer Anton Chekov, “If the pistol was not going to be fired, it would not be hung upon the wall,” broadly implying that any element or object consciously introduced in the narrative, should fulfil its function and not be around for no useful reason. Or else it’d be a betrayal of the reader/audience expectations.
Mokri follows the rule stringently in his bewildering film in which guns and misfired shots tie up disconnected lives, settings and events. As do white and black rabbits and some baffling doppelgangers. Not to mention a badly injured woman, recovering from a car crash, Sara (Hasti Mohammai), who is wrapped up in bandages yet for some strange reason is moving around with perfect ease. Not just that, she even wonders if she’d hit upon a human being once the bandages are unwrapped. A gun deal in an antique shop, over an original Italian and its Chinese knock off, comes to an unfortunate end with an accidental death. Sara is having issues with her dominating husband only to get additionally worked up with the car company representative’s assessment that the mishap may not have been due to her carelessness but tampering with the brake oil. If that weren’t enough, the delivery of a gun, which Sara claims to have not ordered, creates further rift between the couple. Meanwhile, a gun does the rounds on the sets of the remake of a classic Iranian series and has Babak (Babak Karimi), the props manager, fearing it might be real and doubly worried for not having tested it earlier. Also lurking around is a young actress (Kibriyo Dilyobova) who dodges her mother to audition for a role. Acting, however, is not quite all about pulling a rabbit out of the magician's hat that she mistakenly assumes it for.
The Tajikistan-UAE co-production had its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival and has travelled to several other international festivals since then. The meta narrative itself has a similar roving spirit and meandering structure to it with the action moving between varied spaces and timelines, shifting between the past and the present. Morteza Gheidi’s camera adds to the momentum in the long takes as it follows and keeps pace with the busy characters at the shoot and captures the bustling energy and chaos of the location. Co-written by Nasim Ahmadpour and Mokri, the surreal script plays with the audience's mind as to what is real and what is an illusion and spotlights the wonderful manipulation that the medium of cinema itself is supposed to be. The retakes and the multiple angles used for shooting the same scenes add to the visual texture. Amir Esbati's production design doesn’t just evoke the sense of place but plays a vital role in adding to the element of fantasy and simultaneously revealing the reality behind it. Breaking the fourth wall physically, as it were.
Having said that, the film, which eventually turns out to be about its own making, doesn’t come together well entirely, neither on screen, nor in the audience's mind. It gets too protracted and intricate for its own good and feels populated with too many superfluous characters. Its consciously confounding nature and moving around in circles fascinates and intrigues for its visual appeal but leaves with many unanswered questions and eventually a sense of distance and disinterest in the characters and the goings-on. After a point you give up trying to solve the puzzle. An eminently watchable film that is audacious and layered but spirals out of control to turn inscrutable and challenging.