My Sweet Pepper Land

In My Sweet Pepper Land, director Hiner Saleem uses Western imagery to trace the survival of two idealistic outcasts in Iraqi Kurdistan. The film does not parody the American Western, but rather suggests that with Saddam Hussein’s ouster Cowboy Dubya left the area like the lawless frontier of 19th Century America. A tribal warlord rules like the old gang boss. Horsemen appear beside modern cars and under airplanes. But the “honour” to be viciously defended here is the Code of the East, as teacher Govend’s brothers assail her on rumours of sexual activity.

The hero Baran was a Kurdish war hero who accepts a frontier sheriff job so he doesn’t have to put up with his mother’s matchmaking. He has the strength and stolid character of the standard Western hero from Bill Hart to our Clint. But there’s a difference. He likes music, like Elvis, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. This inflection raises him above the standard US cowboy hero and reminds us this film is about a cultural invasion. Hence Elvis’s “You’re so square, but Baby I don’t care” and “Rockabilly Man,” which contrast to the teacher’s deft play on a traditional percussion.
     In one telling variation on the American western, here it takes a gang of militant Kurdish women rebels to wipe out the criminal gang. The one American-style hero doesn't do it. Realistically, he probably couldn't. The movement has to arise from the people themselves and women need to be liberated and developed to assume full civic responsibilities, even revolution. This puts paid to the Bush delusion that America can by fiat grow blooming democracies in the tribal lords' desert.

     The title refers to the inn from which the heroine is first turned away by the macho sexists, an augur of the symptomatic persecution she will continue to suffer, especially from her own brothers.