Review of The House is Black (by Interfaith Youth Team)

I remember the first time I watched The House is Black, or perhaps more precisely, I remember the silence that followed, a silence that did not fall upon me like a curtain at the end of a performance, but rather settled into me like sediment into water, slowly, densely, without disturbance or fanfare. It was not the kind of silence that follows after a horror film, where one's body trembles out of instinctive fear, nor the awe-filled quietude that might trail a film of grand spectacle. Instead, it was a silence that felt like it had always been there, nested deep within the ribcage, simply waiting for the right moment to awaken.

Forugh Farrokhzad, whose name in Persian letters already carries the weight of lyrical legacy, does not so much direct this film as she composes it, as though each shot were a stanza, each pause a punctuation mark in a larger poem that refuses to end in resolution. The House is Black is not so much a documentary as it is a philosophical and spiritual mirror, one which, rather than reflecting a clear image, reflects back the gaze of its viewer, trembling and unsure, forcing one to reckon with their own discomfort. Set in a leper colony in Tabriz, the film avoids sensationalism entirely, and yet, through its utter commitment to unvarnished presence, becomes more unsettling than any dramatized depiction ever could be.

There is no protagonist, no narrative arc, no climax, no resolve. And yet, within its twenty-two minutes, there exists more life than in most works twice its length. A girl combs her hair. A boy recites the alphabet. A man bows down in prayer. These are the rhythms of the film, and in their repetition, in their absolute normality, they attain a quiet metaphysical significance. The viewer is left to ask, without invitation but also without escape, what it means for something to be “normal” in the first place.

I found myself at one point wondering, quite involuntarily, whether what I was watching was beautiful. And if so, whether it should be. But perhaps that is a misguided question, or rather, an irrelevant one. For Farrokhzad does not ornament. She reveals. And in that act of revelation, a different kind of beauty emerges, one not based in aesthetics but in the moral weight of attention. It is not the beauty of a rose but the beauty of acknowledging the thorn.

Scripture and poetry intertwine throughout, at times recited in a child's voice, at times voiced by Farrokhzad herself. “Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.” A line like that does not soothe; it challenges. It forces the viewer to contend with their assumptions about suffering, about dignity, about the language we assign to both. The film, in this way, becomes not a portrait of a colony, but an interrogation of the gaze, yours and mine.

I do not know if I will ever return to it, not because I do not value what it offers, but because the space it opened in me remains raw. To call the experience of watching it a privilege feels insufficient, almost offensive. Yet what else can one call the opportunity to witness something so resolutely human?

There is a line near the end, delivered so plainly that it lingers like smoke: “There is no shortage of ugliness in the world. If man closed his eyes to it, there would be even more.” That, I think, is the soul of this film, not a plea for pity, not even a call to action, but a demand for attention. Not the attention that gazes from a distance, but the kind that listens, that trembles, that refuses to turn away.

When it ended, I sat still. I looked at the screen. Then I looked at my hands. And I thought, not for the first time, that to make art such as this, art that neither shouts nor pleads, but simply exists with unwavering honesty, is the rarest form of prayer.