JD Salinger in Iran

The Iranian government does not have any copyright agreements with the United States. This has inspired interesting Wikipedia articles where one can discover that a copy of Microsoft Windows can be purchased in Tehran for less than US$3.

But it also means that there are homegrown film adaptations of J.D. Salinger stories in the Islamic Republic. Enter the world of Darius Mehrjui’s Pari, which is a full-on adaptation of Franny and Zooey:

Mehrjui was able to get away with it because Iran doesn’t have any copyright agreements with the U.S., although the director did reportedly send Salinger an e-mail before making his film, asking for permission for his adaptation. (Salinger didn’t respond.) Of course, Pari is not exactly easy to find in the U.S.: When it was slated to open an Iranian film festival at Lincoln Center in 1998, Salinger sicced his lawyers at the last minute and prevented its screening.

Which is a shame, because Pari manages to be quite faithful to the Salinger stories, while effectively retrofitting the characters and situations to modern-day Iran. So, the Martinis that Franny and her boyfriend (now fiancée) Lane have at lunch may be gone, along with “the Yale game,” but Franny’s spiritual dilemma remains mostly intact, as does her disillusionment with the phonies and the non-poet poets at her school.

The film’s official description reads: “Pari is a student of literature at a university in Tehran. She is a confident yet angry girl who is projecting her inner struggle by outwards aggression towards her tutor, her fiancé and her brother and she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown or a mental suicide. An old sufi book by the name of “solook” helps take her on a journey to find herself and discover who she really is. Her brother helps her accomplish this goal.”

Salinger, of course, was vehemently opposed to film adaptations of his work.