"As
long as you got the dough, you’re fine" is the way a taxi
driver sums up life in Los Angeles in the film Surviving
Paradise, written and directed by Kamshad Kooshan.
But the content of the film, far more optimistic than the
racial analysis contained in Grand Canyon (1992),
belies his criticism of the City of Angels. The story focuses
on an Iranian mother Pari (played by Shohreh Aghdashloo),
with a degree in architecture from Boston University, who
leaves her husband in Tehran to take her ten-year-old son
Sam and eight-year-old daughter Sara (played by Keyan Arman
Abedini and Lauren Parissa Abedini) for a better life in the
United States. Since the children were born in Boston while
she was a student, they are American citizens. Her brother,
one of many Iranians to settle in Los Angeles after the Islamic
revolution, is in Las Vegas when the three arrive at LA airport.
Mistaking the mother to be a courier for the sale of a precious
manuscript of Aristotle’s Poetics, two Caucasian gangsters
(played by David Barry and David Wissak) kidnap her at the
airport right in front of the adorable two children, who are
thus stranded and virtually penniless. While the gangsters
foolishly interrogate her about a valuable manuscript that
she does not possess, the children try to find their uncle.
Police promise to locate Pari, and tell the children to await
a social worker to provide accommodation; but they flee from
the police station, fearing that the social worker will take
them to prison. After the taxicab driver takes them to downtown
LA, they wander around town in search of their uncle and discover
much kindness as they meet those who do not "have the dough."
A homeless man gives up his blanket so that they have some
warmth while sleeping on a park bench during their first night
in town. Hispanic "Homeboys," at first hostile, provide a
telephone number to call in case of emergency. After a second
night on the streets, the owner of a Chinese restaurant allows
them to eat in exchange for work. The next day, an African
American family takes the children into their home, offers
food and a bath, and the father takes them to an Iranian restaurant
where they enjoy kebab and teach him how to eat Iranian rice;
his characterization of LA is that the diverse population
resembles a salad, not a soup. The Iranian restaurateur then
takes on the search for their uncle while offering a New Year
celebration, when there is much camaraderie among the expatriate
Iranians except for someone whom the restaurateur calls a
"crook." Humiliated by being called a "crook" at the party,
the Iranian calls the Immigration and Naturalization Service
to report that illegal aliens are working at the restaurant.
Since INS seizes the children, whose mother has their passports,
they call the Homeboys for help. Meanwhile, their mother escapes
from captivity and heads for the same Iranian restaurant.
As she arrives, INS is trying to put the illegal alien employees
and the children into a paddy wagon; the two gangsters show
up to recapture the mother, but the Homeboys arrive just in
time to save the day. Pari, reunited with Sam and Sara, shows
an INS agent that the children hold American passports, and
her brother (the uncle) soon arrives to take care of the family.
For a filmviewer in Iran, the movie makes several powerful
statements beyond the tagline "Reaching paradise is easy;
survival is an art." The first revelation is that professional
women in today’s Iran can defy their husbands. We learn that
Iranian adults and children are tough enough to survive the
worst in LA because they are operating as if they were in
Tehran, where ordinary people are decent; Sam handles conflict
by being assertive, complemented by Sara’s penchant to find
commonalties with strangers. Nevertheless, though dangerous
on the surface and inhospitable in the downtown commercial
district, LA has some very friendly and helpful minority people
who are able to cope with a certain amount of discrimination,
retain their root culture, and still enjoy the good life.
Iranian expatriates are making a lot of money in LA, though
they are not working at jobs appropriate to their qualifications;
some Iranians try to cheat others, but most are honorable.
LA has both poverty and affluence, but humble jobs provide
a comfortable living for those who are honest. The gangsters
and Homeboys are portrayed as otherwise decent people driven
to their profession out of lack of appropriate occupational
skills in the high-tech LA society, a subliminal way in which
the story appears to account for the failings of the clerical-dominated
regime in Iran. The liberalization currently occurring in
Iran, in short, is responsible for Surviving Paradise,
which shows that an Iran following American free market principles
and cultural tolerance will inevitably prosper the way Iranians
have found success in the United States. The director believes
that the adventure of the children is a metaphor for contemporary
Iran’s search for itself, but the film also exposes why immigrants
experience as paradise the opportunities in America, where
newcomers are respected for contributing their customs and
values. MH
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