Jon Stewart – globally adored liberal icon and presenter of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show – is maybe due a career stumble. I can only say it hasn’t arrived yet. Stewart has made a very credible feature-film debut, as writer/director of this shrewd and heartfelt movie about the ordeal of Tehran-born BBC journalist Maziar Bahari, who was detained without trial, tortured and interrogated as an alleged US spy for 118 days. The case was prominently taken up on The Daily Show. Stewart has created a humane black tragicomedy that reminded me of Tom Stoppard’s anti-Soviet satire Every Good Boy Deserves Favour.
In a comparable way, Rosewater conjures up the nauseating ironies and outrageous petty absurdities involved in the micro-management of tyranny. Bahari is played by Gael García Bernal; and his interrogator by the Danish actor Kim Bodnia: this torturer was known simply as Rosewater, a name whose resemblance to Blackwater led me to assume the only CIA involvement was on his part. Oddly, the codename is not used in the script, and perhaps it is also odd that non-Iranian actors are chosen to play the principals, but these are really effective performances in an absorbing drama.
