Manuscripts Don't Burn

Putting aside the worthiness of its politics, this is also a crackling, tense thriller, graced with beautifully measured performances, that explores with wisdom and sorrow the best and worst in human nature.

Rather than relish in the stark proceedings, Manuscripts Don't Burn preys on its viewers' imagination, leaving several deaths and other dreary outcomes off-screen. In the unbearable tension of its final moments, the movie arrives at an expected destination, but the outcome stings more than anything preceding it.

The film, while wrenching and audacious, is crafted with that humane and observational mastery of great Iranian cinema of recent decades.

Easily the most daring and politically provocative film yet to emerge from Iran.

The initially cryptic plotting and low-key realism are familiar from Iranian dramas; what’s striking is how Rasoulof shifts into such a lucid, gut-punching tale of persecution. The film’s flaws are forgivable; its very existence should be applauded.

An unflinching portrait of state-sponsored evil, Manuscripts Don’t Burn feels like the work of an angry artist who has been jailed, censored and harassed too long. This time it’s personal.

Rasoulof’s dissident return to filmmaking is ultimately little more than a sporadically searing, though more often unfocused and listless treatise on the pervasive censorship enforced by the autocratic Iranian government.