Synopsis

Thrown out of the hospital, a son and his miserable old father are offered to earn some money in exchange for their blood.

New fruitful collaboration between Dariush Mehrjui and Gholam-Hossein Saedi after the splendid The Cow, The Cycle is a cruel fable, an uncompromising dive into the schemes and trafficking of Iranian society in the years of the Shah.

Censored for three years, The Cycle did not come out until 1978. It was awarded with Critics' Prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 1978.

 

Cast: Saeed Kangarani, Ezzatolah Entezami, Forouzan, Bahman Forsi, Amrollah Saberi, Esmail Mohammadi, Ali Nassirian, Marzieh Boroomand, Rafi Halati, Esmail Shangale, Soroosh Khalili, Atash Khayyer, Jamshid Layegh, Mohammad Motie, Iraj Rad, Rahim Roshanian


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Dayereh Mina (The Cycle, 1976), evokes the plight of the poor in Iranian society. The film is set in Tehran, the national center of government, wealth, corruption, and human misery.

Ali, an innocent youth in his late teens, comes to the city with his dying father in search of medical care -a hopeless mission because they have no money to pay for treatment.

As they mill around the hospital gate with others like themselves, an ambulance driver directs Ali to the local blood bank where he can sell his blood, where addicts, alcoholics, and invalids are rounded up and literary drained of their life blood to supply the hospitals (and those who can afford them).

Faced with the prospect of joining the miserable ranks of the exploited, Ali opts to become and exploiter instead.

Attaching himself to Sameri, the director of the blood bank, he is soon helping to round up victims and to deliver their more or less infected blood to the hospital (where he also steals rice that can be sold to the poor on the streets).

When one principled doctor tries to set up a legitimate blood bank, Ali works with Sameri to block his efforts. Caught up in this cycle of corruption, he cannot spare the time to care for his dying father, and misses his funeral because he is busy siphoning blood out of a couple of derelicts.

When he finally arrives at the cemetery on his motorbike, the ambulance driver confronts him, but it is clear form the final freeze frame of Ali in his sunglasses and new leather jacket that the cycle will continue.

The title Dayereh Mina -literally "cycle of the universe"- is taken from a verse by Hafiz, a famous mystical poet of the fourteenth century: "Because of the cycle of the universe, my heart is bleeding."

According to Mehrjui, "I didn't choose this tile to signify the whole of the film, but to underscore the relationship that develops among these characters around that 'other,' which is the blood of one human being going into another." (Salam Cinema )