dex14

Jon Stewart’s directorial debut Rosewater has a trailer. The adaptation of the Maziar Bahari book Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story Of Love, Captivity And Survival stars Gael Garcia Bernal as Bahari, the BBC journalist who left London in June 2009 to cover Iran’s presidential elections. He was kidnapped, spending the next 118 days in Iran’s most notorious prison being brutally interrogated by a man he knew only by one thing: he smelled of rosewater. Stewart took a summer hiatus from his Comedy Central show to direct his own script and will premiere the film tomorrow at Telluride. (See the just-announced Telluride line-up here.) Rosewater then travels to Toronto before Open Road releases it November 7:

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Mabuse

It's tone seems much more serious than I expected. I knew Stewart wasn't making a slapstick comedy but I thought it was going to have some kind of comic or farcical angle on the situation.

E Unit

Damn, that looks pretty good. Are we sure it's really THAT Jon Stewart? Great looking directorial debut.

And yes, I'm joking. Looks like a real passion project.

Groucho

Wow. And I thought that the United States hated Mexicans!

Mabuse

The American Sniper success thread got me thinking about this film. (Not that there's much similarity.) This movie sure came and went with zero fanfare. When Jon Stewart announced he was taking time off from the Daily Show to make a film it grabbed more news attention than when the film actually came out. Is the movie embarrassingly bad? What happened?

Troy Stiffler

I was curious about it. Apparently it played locally back in November. I pay attention to local showtimes and check in every week or two. Never remember it playing.

Troy Stiffler

Wow. Nobody watched this?

It's on Netflix. Check it out. Really good, straightforward story. The interrogator was a very interesting character. The interrogator's (and his supervisor's) inability to understand anything outside of their daily life and doing what they're told is something that was portrayed very well.

Regardless of Stewart's age and showbiz experience, it's still directorial debut. He chose to take the style in a few different directions in a handful of scenes. That never turns out right. Rookie mistake. You pick one thing, and stick with it throughout the film.

RichC2

Is it as jarring as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind where Clooney took the key visuals from every director he's worked with and used them for every other scene?

In that one it was at times a Coen brothers movie and a Soderbergh movie in the same sentence.

Troy Stiffler

Couldn't tell you. I remember liking all of the set choreography and goofy stuff in Confessions.