Spiders · Long Movies · Trump
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The crime
In 2000, Saeed Hanaei was a construction worker living in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. He was also a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, a father and husband, and a serial killer. In less than a year he murdered sixteen women, and was dubbed “The Spider Killer” by the press due to his use of strangulation.
All of the victims were sex workers, and their killings had initially been dismissed until the numbers began to increase, forcing the social taboo of “street women” onto the covers of newspapers. After his arrest some of these newspapers praised Hanaei for his attempts to “eradicate the sickness” of prostitution. Despite his popularity in his community and the support of his family, Hanaei was found guilty and given the death penalty. Before his execution he expressed no remorse for his actions, which he said were God’s will: “I am not repentant at all for what I have done. Had I not been arrested, I’d have wanted to kill 150 of them.”
The story
The blurring of the lines between documentary and feature-film storytelling is common in true crime, a genre that doesn’t need a postmodernist to explain how fiction can sometimes out-fact the facts themselves. Best Evidence fave Bart Layton does this right in the text of American Animals, while you can compare and contrast the vérité of Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding vs. actual Tonya Harding, or Al Pacino’s Sonny Wortzik with Dog Day Afternoon’s inspiration John Wojtowicz, with a quick trip to YouTube.
Director Ali Abbasi’s new movie Holy Spider retells the story of Saeed Hanaei, the women he preyed on, and the city divided by his crimes, with the deft interweaving of fiction with elements from Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari’s documentary And Along Came a Spider. Made twenty years apart, they mirror each other; while Bahari’s documentary is steadfastly furious at the dispensation a killer gets from a culture that sees his victims as less than worthless, Holy Spider channels that anger into the character of a fictional female journalist.
In Abbasi’s movie, journalist Arezoo Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi, brilliant) arrives in Mashhad as the number of victims is rising. She’s politely dismissed at the police station, warned away by the courts, and almost thrown out of her hotel room for travelling by herself. Swatting away this constant sexist aggression that buzzes around her, she is laser focused on tracking down the murderer, whose confidence in his own untouchability leads him to call her male colleague to boast about his crimes.
As Rahimi circles the city, talking to the women on the dark street corners tucked away from the glow of the holy mosque at its center, Saeed goes through his routine. Played by Mehdi Bajestani with hollowed-out eyes, it’s crystal clear the kind of guy Saeed is when you see him in action. Women are wary in his presence, even his wife (played by Forouzan Jamshidnejad), who struggles to repair their exhausted marriage. When he pauses during one attack to give his victim a speech about the cleansing of impurity, it comes out dull and rote, and in that delivery is the chilling effectiveness of Holy Spider.
In contrast, the interviews with Hanaei in And Along Came a Spider are, as is sometimes the nature with real life footage over stylised fiction, less than sinister. He’s got the glassy look and pep of a true believer — of his own bullshit, if not of his religious righteousness. Circuitous and rambling, he goes on about how God approved of him and how he’d done nothing wrong.
For all his candor, his words are not nearly as revealing as the statements from his friends and family. His brother is resolute that “those he killed were not human beings. If they’d been human beings he wouldn't have killed them.” This is still less shocking than the interview with his wife, who talks at the pitch of someone trying to convince themselves that everything is going to be all right — that the women her husband murdered in their home deserved it, because “If [a woman] rides on a motorcycle with a man she doesn’t know, the punishment is nothing less than death.”
The documentary doesn’t just pick over the defensiveness and misogyny of the people circling Hanaei. Along with Bahari, journalist and Iranian women’s rights advocate Roya Karimi Majd gets astonishing access to the victim’s families, which, when shown in contrast to pictures from the crime scenes, is more harrowing than any of the explicit violence of the feature film.
Is this gratuitous? It’s certainly tough to witness, but given how the women were victimized first by Hanaei then dismissed in death as being less than human, it’s also a testimony to both their selfhood and the brutality they endured.
Unlike the documentary, made with a view of the crimes after they happened, Holy Spider plays by enough rules of the serial killer movie that there’s more suspense, with characters moving around the spider’s web of the city, not yet caught in the impact of the crimes, with Rahimi pushing herself further into danger to try and catch the killer; a family still under the impression that everything is fine, mostly; and a city that doesn’t want to believe in sex workers existing, let alone being a community they need to defend.
Ali Abbasi’s other work, like the excellent Border (2018), or his episodes of The Last of Us, often take place in alternative worlds, versions of ours where something terrible has happened, but in Holy Spider he mines both horror and surrealism from a pre-existing reality. The movie ends with an almost-verbatim recreation of a scene from the documentary, set in the same room where the killings happened. It’s an unforgettable scene, bringing together the ghost of the killer, his family, and their unseen victims, past and future.
Holy Spider doesn’t apply any varnish to its story of a serial killer, but does transform its source material into something sharper, something that’s too powerful to turn away from, even as hard as it can be to watch. The movie, built from both truth and artifice, is one of the best serial killer stories of the decade so far. — Margaret Howie
And Along Came a Spider is available on Vimeo, and is embedded above. Holy Spider is available to rent on Apple TV, Vudu, and Amazon
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As I type this, the U.S. is preparing for what’s likely to be its biggest true crime story of the year (and beyond). Former American President Donald Trump is expected to be arraigned at 2:15 p.m. ET today on criminal charges related to alleged business fraud; he’ll surrender at a courthouse in Manhattan, then will be fingerprinted and will face a judge.
About an hour before, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — whose hoax criminal allegations and fringe falsehoods were just given a national stage by 60 Minutes — plans a rally and protest outside the courthouse, an event MSNBC reports contains threats of violence, with commentator Ja’han Jones writing that “Many have been quick to dismiss or downplay the potential for Trump supporters to stoke violence reminiscent of Jan. 6 in response to his indictment. I’m not sure that doing so is justified, given the words that have come from these supporters’ own mouths.”
Setting the worrisome cloud of potential attack on the courthouse aside, which is not the easiest thing to do, anyone who watched the news, open-mouthed and disbelieving, on Jan. 6 2021 can attest, there’s still a lot we don’t know about what will happen today. The charges in the indictment, which relates to an alleged hush money scheme during the 2016 presidential campaign (solid explainer here), have been under wraps, and will remain that way, until today’s hearing, we we don’t truly know exactly what specific counts (and their possible penalties) the former president will face.
CNN has a comprehensive and accessible explainer of what we do know about today’s hearing, including the special treatment Trump is likely to receive as a suspect with extremely unique security needs.
One of the most notable things to know is that though the matter is of incredible interest to people on all sides of the political divide, its proceedings will not be televised. Acting New York Supreme Court justice Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the affair, has denied a request from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and a multitude of other big name outlets to allow broadcast of the hearing. That said, the door for greater public access isn’t completely closed, perhaps.
From CNN:
While he rejected the request to broadcast the arraignment, Merchan acknowledged the historical significance of the proceeding.
“That this indictment involves a matter of monumental significance cannot possibly be disputed. Never in the history of the United States has a sitting or past President been indicted on criminal charges. Mr. Trump’s arraignment has generated unparalleled public interest and media attention,” he wrote. “The populace rightly hungers for the most accurate and current information available. To suggest otherwise would be disingenuous.”
Merchan said that while the media’s request was understandable, the news organizations’ interests in providing the broadest possible access to the proceedings must be weighed against “competing interests.”
This lack of courtroom access, and subsequent media reaction, has longtime courts reporters frustrated, as this is an issue they’ve been raising for years. A Twitter thread by journalist Victoria Bekiempis crystalizes that frustration.
That’s how it begins, and it’s worth reading the whole thing, especially when you get to the kicker:
When put that way, Merchan’s decision does feel especially confounding — after all, what’s to prevent journalists with one agenda or another from misrepresenting the proceedings presented — due to Merchan’s restrictions — only via their filters. It’s a troubling situation, and as a journalist I’m hopeful that these well-funded outlets will place greater pressure on the courts for access. But this isn’t just a place for my opinion, what do you think? — EB
Perhaps longer than the Trump trial will be Killers of the Flower Moon, the long-planned Martin Scorsese adaptation of David Grann’s book of the same name. The Hollywood Reporter reports that the movie — a dramatic take on the wave of murders of members of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma — will make its debut at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20.
Us regular, non-Cannes folks will have a long time to train wait for the movie, though, as limited theatrical release is set for Oct. 6, with wider distribution on Oct. 20. An Apple production, its eventual home will be the Apple+ streaming service, which might honestly be the best way to watch it, as the goddamned thing is reportedly four fucking hours long.
That comes from Variety, which mentions the film’s runtime almost in passing. It’s an aspect that’s been picked up since by other outlets, with headlines like “Leonardo DiCaprio's Next Movie Gets Record-Breaking Runtime,” “Martin Scorsese’s new movie is really long – and people are worried,” and “Killers of the Flower Moon will break Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio film record: It’s a long one.”
And, of course, there are tweets.
For me, well, it depends. Am I seeing this movie at one of those theaters with recliner seating, a full menu of good food (sorry, nachos and pump cheese, I’ll see you at the ballpark) and validated parking? If so, sure, I can probably do this in the theater, the way god (by which I mean Scorsese) intended.
But do I want to? Four hours is the time it takes to fly from San Francisco to Chicago, or to get my hair fully straightened, both activities I’ve endured while sitting in one place without much enjoyment. Will four hours of movie stars playing murderous Oklahoma ranchers fly by any faster? This might be a streaming-only play for me, how about you? — EB
Wednesday on Best Evidence: Sharing names with the notorious.
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