ROSEWATER – The Blu Review

Jon ‘THE DAILY SHOW’ Stewart made his motion picture directorial debut last year with ROSEWATER, the true story of Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian journalist who was detained and violently interrogated in Iran for 118 days, suspected of being a spy. One of the main pieces of evidence his captors used as proof of his guilt was a satirical interview he did on Stewart’s ‘THE DAILY SHOW’. Stewart directed and wrote the film which he adapted from the memoir ‘Then They Came for Me‘, by Maziar and Aimee Molloy. It starred Gael Garcia Bernal as the journalist and also features Kim Bodnia, Haluk Bilginer, Dimitri Leonidas and Shohreh Aghdashloo.

Though not Oscar material, ROSEWATER was generally well-received. Jim Batts here at WAMG gave it 3 ½ stars and wrote: “Stewart directs with a confident, steady hand. … this is an impressive first work from the beloved comic observer. When he’s through with the anchor desk, he should have an equally impressive career behind the camera. ROSEWATER is a good first step toward that” (read all of Jim’s review HERE)

I have mixed feelings about ROSEWATER but I still think it’s an impressive cinematic debut for Stewart, who as a director shows a lot of promise with visual technique throughout. It’s interesting (but not surprising) that he directed a political drama for his first film, but ROSEWATER is a political film without any significant political slant. Stewart plays it safe. He wants us to know that Islamic theocracy is the enemy of freedom, that international journalists deserve respect, and that families suffer terribly when their loved ones are thrown into political prisons. My problem with the film is that, while filled with noble intentions, it was basically a lot of scenes of a man sitting in a jail cell without any contact to the outside world, accused of something he did not do. It takes real skill to make that a cinematic concept, and green director Stewart fails to lift it to something really great. Gael García Bernal as Bahar is highly sympathetic because he’s a talented actor who understands the character, but for the most part, we spend 103 minutes watching him look pensive as he reflects on his character’s predicament between punishments and to me it got a bit dull after a while.

We Are Movie Geeks has seen the Blu-ray of ROSEWATER which will be released by Universal on February 10^th

The film’s gritty, 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is a perfect match for the film, and likely looks just as intended. ROSEWATER features varying levels of clarity, graininess, and noise and there’s an appreciable amount of detail to be seen. Colors seem well-saturated throughout for a film about isolation and imprisonment. Skin tones look excellent, the occasional bursts of color really pop, and black levels are deep and inky.

The performance-driven nature of ROSEWATER doesn’t lend itself to an overwhelmingly aggressive audio design, but considering its low-key approach, the English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack leaves little room for complaint. The film’s dialogue is consistently rendered cleanly and clearly throughout, and it’s never once dominated in the mix by the score or sound effects.

The Blu-ray Combo Pack includes a Blu-ray, DVD and DIGITAL HD with UltraViolet. At first glance it appears to be loaded with extras, tacking on the following “featurettes”:

• Iran’s Controversial Election
• The Story of Maziar Bahari
• Real Spies Have TV Shows
• What Happens in New Jersey…
• A Director’s Perspective

Unfortunately, each of these run around 60 seconds and seem hastily assembled. They simply use a sequence or line from ROSEWATER, and add a Stewart or Bahar talking head for a few moments and a couple of clips from the film. To call these “bonuses” is really misleading. There is no Stewart (or Bahar) commentary, which would have added some sorely-needed depth to the extras package.