Gardena Cinema screens “Reading Lolita in Tehran”

Books to lead young minds astray!

“Reading Lolita in Tehran” – July 1 at the Gardena Cinema

by Bondo Wyszpolski

It’s an evocative title, isn’t it? A couple of days ago Randy Berler’s South Bay Film Society enjoyed watching this film, directed by Eran Riklis, and based on the memoir (published in 2003) by Azar Nafisi. They saw it at the AMC Rolling Hills 20. Well, the response was so overwhelming that screenings are being reprised on Wednesday, July 1, at the Gardena Cinema, with showtimes at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m.

It’s not playing anywhere else right now, and that’s because it’s not opening in the Los Angeles area for another two weeks.

The storyline? “As a professor in Iran, Nafisi secretly gathers seven of her female students to read and discuss forbidden classics of Western literature.” Nafisi’s book club took place from 1995 to 1997, but essentially the same censorship that was in place 30 years ago is still in place today. The cast “is composed of Iranian actors banned and exiled by the Iranian regime.”

In the film, the books discussed include “The Great Gatsby,” “Daisy Miller,” “Washington Square,” “One Thousand and One Nights,” and “Pride and Prejudice,” as well as Nabokov’s “Lolita,” first published overseas in 1955 and in the U.S. in 1958. These books aren’t exactly obscene or pornographic, although it’s possible that they could give impressionable minds some impermissible or unlawful ideas.

“Lolita,” for example, which can be summarized as the story of a middle-aged man who abducts an adolescent girl and drives around the country with her, is discreet, despite its occasional innuendos. We know that Humbert Humbert is obsessed with nymphets, but the novel is rather coy, somewhat wordy and even tedious. Pretty low on the arousal scale, if you get my drift.

In Nafisi’s memoir, over 30 books are referenced. I haven’t read all of them, but I imagine that few of us in the West would find any to be truly, or even faintly, subversive.

But the film has other implications, among which are the efforts of governments, organizations, or people in power to limit what we are allowed to think, or to force us to think or to believe things that aren’t true. That’s not only true in Iran, but even in the United States.

“Reading Lolita in Tehran” should leave audiences with a great deal to ponder and to discuss.

The Gardena Cinema is located at 14948 Crenshaw Blvd., Gardena. Tickets are $14 if you buy them online; $12 at the door. The auditorium seats 800 (it’s among the last of the single house movie theaters) so I wouldn’t fret over either of the two showings selling out. The running time is one hour and forty-eight minutes. Free parking on the street or in the big lot adjacent to the theater. And if that’s not enough you can phone (310) 217-0505 or go to gardenacinema.com.