Thanks for the memories!

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Two Iranian soldiers "guard" some trivial outpost on an irrelevant, nearly deserted, desert island. One morning a ballot box and a young female collector of ballots materialize. One soldier has to take these across a desert scene by open jeep to collect "votes" from natives who are totally in the dark of what is happening. Scattered abandoned projects are encompassed along the way. Such as a stop light that never changes at a remote crossroads. A concrete bridge in the middle of nowhere.The woman is concerned late in the day that they won't get back before the boat comes for her and she will be stranded. In a preposterous near-final scene, a full-sized jumbo jet arrives on an usable strip to pick her up.The soldiers alternate in using a steel bed in the open desert.There are many fascinating secondary stories. It is just short of pure comedy and of near tragedy.

"Secret Ballot (Raye makhfi)" should be required viewing in every class in the country that deals with civics, government, and social studies (it wouldn't hurt the kids to read the subtitles). And it wouldn't hurt for policy makers who mouth off about allies while ignoring lack of democracy to see this too. The story is simple -- an idealistic government agent is sent to get as many votes as possible by 5 pm on a desert island (I didn't even know Iran has such islands, let alone that they are populated.) The agent is accompanied by a resentful, cynical soldier. On this unique road trip of a scavenger hunt they each are changed in subtle ways by each other and the wide variety of characters they meet up with who deal with their first exposure to them, to voting and to a secret ballot in a variety of complex ways that are beyond American experiences.The movie vividly demonstrates the physical,logistical, psychological, political and social challenges of bringing some semblance of democracy to other cultures, let alone to the Mideast. While the amateur actors keep this from having an emotional Hollywood satisfaction so it feels more like a docudrama/comedy, their reality (including the obvious censorship restrictions) brings it all home anyway. (originally written 9/2/2002)

On Election Day on a remote island in the Persian Gulf, an airplane drops a parachute containing a ballot box filled with registration materials and ballots. A soldier (Cyrus Abidi) retrieves the material but is astonished when he discovers that the official who arrives to run the election is a young woman (Nassim Abdi). The official (unnamed) is an outspoken idealist who believes that voting can give citizens the opportunity to make a difference, while the soldier does not see any value in it. Secret Ballot by Babak Payami is a lightweight but charming Iranian film about the frustrations an election official encounters while attempting to collect votes in a place where there is no tradition of democracy. In this case, the official's problems are compounded by the fact that she is a woman in a male-dominated society and must combat ideas about what is proper for women to be doing.As the soldier drives her around the island in his jeep, the quest for votes leads to one absurd situation after another. The unlikely pair meets a man running across the desert that the soldier suspects of being a smuggler and has to persuade him to vote by pointing his gun at him. They must also contend with a truckload of women and a single man who insists on casting all of their votes for them. In other situations, women in a nomadic camp refuse to vote without permission of the men who are out fishing, and a Muslim at a solar energy site will vote for only one candidate -- GOD -- who isn't even on the ballot. In one of the more surreal episodes, the soldier refuses to drive past a red traffic light standing in the middle of the desert even though he knows it is broken and will never turn green. Simplistic ideas about the value of democracy are tested against the reality that the islanders must face. One potential voter asks the official, "What do you know about us and our problems? We have to hide our feelings here." In another case, women cannot vote because they are forbidden to look at the photographs of the male candidates. Another time, the official cannot register the votes of men at a cemetery because women are forbidden to enter the sacred ground. It is not clear if the film was made to promote democracy or to show it as being ludicrous. Apparently the Iranian officials took it seriously because the film was banned in Iran. What is clear is that unless an electorate is informed and feels a stake in the outcome, the process of voting is a sham and, as the protagonists in Secret Ballot found out, cannot be imposed with high minded speeches or a gun pointed at the voter's head.

This is a superb film. Almost plotless, but far from pointless, this film really made us think about what democracy means in a society where the democratic political institutions are so slight.The young female voting agent is excellent, transforming, as her day on Kish proceeds, from fresh faced idealist to drawn pragmatist. Her soldier guard, by way of contrast, is barely touched by what he sees, he's kind of seen it all before. The traffic light in the middle of nowhere is surely symbolic of the futility of such democracy, as well as surrealistically very funny.Avoid this film like the plague of you need action, glamour or twist in your movies, but if you want to be thinking about a film for days after seeing it, Secret Ballot is a great one to see.