Opponent – Film Review
by Hugh Maguire

Director – Milad Alami
Writer – Milad Alami
Stars – Payman Maadi, Amirali Abanzad, Ahmed Abdullahi

Opponent is released in UK & Irish cinemas 12th April 2024
Certificate 15 & Running Time 119 Minutes

With a great sense of anxiety, the film opens with a breathless ‘hero’ fleeing some unknown force which turns out to be the Iranian military police.  Within seconds we are transferred to the icy wastes of northern Sweden on the border with Finland and confront the life of this Iranian family attempting to accommodate itself to dramatically changed circumstances.  The transfer of locale is as abrupt for us as for the family.  Iman is doing his best to keep the show on the road.  While hoping for asylum status he delivers pizzas late at night (possibly illegally) and the easily affluent liberal freedom of the Swedes is a marked contrast to his more repressed homeland and self, not to mention the life of the refugee hostel.  His wife and daughters are devoted to him and have followed him unquestioningly to these cold climes.

Iman, once a celebrated wrestler in his homeland, joins a local wrestling club, against his wife’s wishes.  His rebuilding of fitness and physical skill initiates a slow and painful self-realisation as he confronts not only his past life and his role within the family but also his long-repressed sexuality.  His now pregnant wife is all too aware of his struggles and we too feel her pain throughout, especially the waning of physical contact despite the pregnancy!  It is not easy to imagine that a film with a lot humping and bumping wrestling could actually be sensitive and subtle.  There is a charged eroticism throughout and yet nothing that could justify a censor’s intervention.  Through a flicker of an eyelid or a casual glance, so much is conveyed.  All of this intense emotion and feeling is held together by the magnetic screen presence of Iman.

There are films where the narrative is striking, the action gripping, and everything gels wonderfully to create a unique cinematic experience.  And then there are others where an individual component can be so good that everything else seems secondary.  In this case, the lead actor playing Iman is overwhelming, but in the most impressive way.  For viewers who have had the chance to see Ken Loach’s The Old Oak (2023) this film, Opponent, is a wonderful counterbalance.  One is celebrated for its ‘real’ people and ‘real’ dialogue and so forth.  And yet in contrast to Opponent, Loach’s effort in hindsight almost seems contrived – great political speeches in the mouths of non-actors appearing contrived and ultimately sentimental.  Here it is all disturbingly real. We experience the confinement of a refugee centre and the despair of people seeking a better life, along with the frustrations of bureaucracy.  In one short instance – a feat of clever editing – we get a compelling sense of the rapidity of turnover in the refugee centre and we glimpse the huge variety of lives and narratives that can be gathered in one place of hope.  On one level there is the basic struggle for survival in a new land and yet across cultures, there is the inner struggle to cope with our own lives regardless of locale. It is a wonderful piece of cinema.