Sects, Lies, and Videotape: On Wings of Fire (Bharucha, 1986) and The Path of Zarathustra (Irani, 2015)

Special thanks to Mandy Albert for suggesting this month’s theme. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments or on Discord. I’ll feel free to accept or ignore them.

Hello, and welcome to the sophomore edition of the sophomorically titled Sects, Lies & Videotape, where we look at religion in film. Last month took us to Islamic Spain in the Middle Ages. This month, we are journeying to the other side of the pre-Columbian world, to India, Iran, and all the Stans in between. Our topic is Zoroastrianism, which, according to the two films under discussion, is the world’s oldest revealed religion as well as the first monotheistic religion. Those are highly questionable claims. If you learn anything about Zoroastrianism from school, PBS, or Wikipedia, it’s that Zoroastrianism is a dualist religion, meaning they believe in two opposing principles, one good (Ahura Mazda or Ohrmazd), the other evil (Angra Mainyu or Ahriman). They are in constant cosmic conflict, and the duty of Zoroastrians is to aid the good side through their thoughts, words, and deeds.

In keeping with this dualist theme, I have chosen two movies: one good, the other bad. In one corner we have On Wings of Fire (1986), the controversial docudrama traversing 3500 years of history in about ninety minutes. The other is the more recent yet more obscure The Path of Zarathustra (2015), a work so hard to find that I had to pay for physical media. That one is a fictional narrative but also an internal critique of India’s Zoroastrian community (the Parsis). It flies higher and falls farther than Wings. Good or bad, what we have here is a pair of complementary films. Not only are they the only films about Zoroastrianism that I could find, but Zarathustra has the audacity to talk about subjects that Wings will not touch. Let’s begin!

Sects!

As the religion of ancient Iran, Zoroastrianism is inextricably tied to the three major Persian empires: the Achaemenids (550 BCE–330 BCE), known to us from Greek literature and the Bible (Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, etc.); the Parthians (247 BCE–224 CE), about whom little is known; and the Sasanians (224 CE–651 CE), who ruled up to the Muslim Conquest.

The sacred scriptures of Zoroastrianism bracket this long period. The first of these, the Avesta, was composed in an archaic language comparable to ancient Sanskrit. According to tradition, it was transmitted orally before finally being written down in Sasanian times. The Avesta is complemented by the much later Pahlavi books, written in the Middle Persian language that falls between the Old Persian of Achaemenid royal inscriptions (the only writing they left for us) and the New Persian of the Iranian national epic Shahnameh and, well, all Persian literature until the present. If the Avesta is like the Bible, the Pahlavi books—compendia like the Dēnkard or the Bundahishn—are the Talmud, elaborate commentaries on the themes introduced in the Avesta.

You might have noticed that I have yet to mention the founder of the religion, Zarathustra (Greek: Zoroaster). He is the purported author of the Gathas, the collection of hymns that forms the most ancient part of the Avesta. The problem is that we do not know very much about him, including the meaning of his name, the basic details of his biography, or even when he lived. On Wings of Fire claims that he lived around 1700 BCE, but The Path of Zarathustra puts him in the sixth century BCE, more than a millennium later! This is a significant difference of opinion. It typifies the different attitudes the two films have toward Zoroastrianism. Both are historically oriented, but Wings is interested in apologetics and orthodoxy, while Path gives a voice to outsiders and heretics.

The periodization of Iranian history is actually a large part of On Wings of Fire. Zubin Mehta, a bigshot India-born conductor of Western classical music (no points for guessing which piece plays over the title), is our viewpoint character as he searches for information about his religious heritage. Along the way, he asks direct and sometimes combative questions to religious authorities. Most delightfully, his questions are frequently illustrated with badly acted historical tableaux, all taking place at an inflection point in Zoroastrian history and taking the form of religious disputations.

First, we see the life of Zarathustra, based on a poem written around 1300 CE (that is, a full 3000 years after this movie claims he lived). The dramatic high point here is not Zarathustra’s reception of divine revelation, or his moral triumph over the temptations of Ahriman, or his philosophical triumph over the establishment priests who oppose him, but his miraculous cure of the king’s favorite horse, instantly making him (the king, not the horse) a convert. That’s one way to establish a state religion.

Second, we are taken to the time of Cyrus the Great (d. 530 BCE), founder of the Achaemenid Empire and liberator of the Jews from Babylon. Wings plays up this second aspect something fierce, focusing on the emperor’s decree of religious tolerance. And there was much rejoicing.

We then skip from one Great to another, Alexander of Macedon (d. 323), who brought the Achaemenid Empire to an ignominious conclusion. His destruction of Persepolis, in particular, earned him the moniker “Alexander the Accursed,” not only on account of the extensive property damage but the wholesale slaughter of Zoroastrian priests, which, in a culture that highly values oral transmission, was tantamount to annihilating their entire heritage. The film mostly portrays Alexander stumbling around drunk and lamenting the destruction of his CITY STATE, meaning Athens, which the Persians burned to the ground over a century ago in 300 times.

What about the Parthians? Who cares, let’s skip ahead 550 years to the Sasanians. The up-and-comer Ardashir has decided the empire, long divided, must unite, and he sends his enforcer Kartir to the dissident Parthian kings. This was very exciting for me. Kartir was a zealous defender of Zoroastrian orthodoxy and left an inscription where he brags about all the different non-Zoroastrian religions he persecuted, including the Jews, Shamans (Buddhists), Brahmans (Hindus), Christians, “Nazoreans,” Makdags, and Zandīgs (heretics, meaning Manichaeans). As this list exceeds the number of religions most people can name, you begin to wonder if he left anyone out. Kartir claims he got rid of them all, but this is obvious braggadocio. Good work on the Makdags at least, Kartir.

Where was I? Right. You see Kartir. I had never seen Kartir, this little piece of specialized nerdiness, depicted dramatically in any capacity, so obviously this was my favorite part.

The fifth and sixth tableaux are about the Muslim Conquest and the response to it. In the middle of the seventh century CE, the Sasanian Empire collapsed, and Zoroastrianism gave way to Islam. The subsequent persecution of Zoroastrians in their own homeland led to a mass exodus of believers to Gujarat in India. Neither this film nor Path of Zarathustra—whose main characters are Indian Parsis—make any reference to the Zoroastrians still living in Iran in less-than-ideal conditions. On Wings of Fire, in fact, is extremely critical of Islam in a way I found surprising and perhaps a little indelicate considering the effects it could have on their co-religionists.

Christianity, at least, comes in for a beating in the final tableau, which skips most of the second millennium until the days of the British Raj and the work of Christian missionary John Wilson (d. 1875), author of such tomes as The Parsi Religion Unfolded, Refuted, and Contrasted with Christianity and The Doctrine of Jehovah addressed to the Parsis. Here we see him preaching to a captive audience, urging them to reject the absurdities of their religion and accept the absurdities of his own.

And that’s… kind of how the movie ends, barring a roll call of famous contemporary Zoroastrians, except for the most famous, Farrokh Bulsara. You might know him by his stage name.

The Path of Zarathustra is similarly historically obsessed. The film begins with a young woman, Oorvazi, played by the director (also named Oorvazi), who is given a magical book by her grandfather on his deathbed. She returns to the Parsi community of Mumbai in order to find someone who can decipher the book and, in the process, meets three figures from Zoroastrian history: Mani, the religious reformer that you, the educated reader, might better know as a Christian heretic; Mazdak, a social reformer who promoted a kind of proto-communism; and Zurvan, a deity, the embodiment of Time and the progenitor of both the good and bad gods. All three figures are associated with heresies from the Sasanian period. This instigates the appearance of Kartir (again!) in a dream, warning Oorvazi to stay away from these dissidents. To be clear, this was also my favorite part of this movie.

The thrust of the movie seems to be: Zoroastrianism is dying; it can be rekindled through reform; paths for reform can be found in the past. The result is a film with a very different orientation than On Wings of Fire.

Lies!

Despite their differing perspectives, both films present Zoroastrianism as the world’s oldest revealed religion and the oldest monotheistic religion. As mentioned above, these claims are questionable. What, exactly, is a revealed religion? Or, rather, what is an unrevealed religion? I imagine they mean something like the classical religions of Greece and Rome, which are inherited ancestral traditions (like all religions) but have no stated founder. One day, some guy just started worshiping the sun and called it Apollo. Then his kids invented a kinky sex life for him.

If we take at face value the claim that Zoroastrianism is a revealed religion—meaning that it has a founder (Zarathustra) and a sacred book (the Avesta)—then is it the oldest? I already mentioned that the date of Zarathustra is a problem, with estimates ranging from 1700 BCE to around 600 BCE. The first date is based on the ancient language of the Avesta; the second one is a traditional date based on the received dictum that Zarathustra lived 258 years before Alexander the Great. Without the maximalist date of 1700 BCE (and some Greek writers date him older still—5000 years before the Trojan War—but this is pure fantasy), Zarathustra is not the founder of the oldest anything.

Compounding the problem is a strange contradiction called out in The Path of Zarathustra. The Achaemenid kings, who talk up Ahura Mazda in their inscriptions, never mention Zarathustra! For this reason, scholars are apt to call the Achaemenids “Mazdeans” instead of “Zoroastrians” (contemporary Greeks, however, including Plato, mention Zarathustra by name).

Another question: Is Zoroastrianism monotheistic? Muslims say no. Christians say no. Modern scholars are divided, of course. Zoroastrians living in the West or under Muslim domination are apt to say yes. The impetus is to find common ground with the dominant culture and avoid persecution. That hasn’t worked out well so far, but it brings up an interesting point: Zoroastrianism can have just one or multiple gods, just as the Buddhist cosmology can have an infinity of gods or no gods at all. You have, at the very least, the two opposing cosmogenic principles (god count: two), although some disagree that Ahriman is a true god (god count: one). Placing Zurvan above the two adds a new wrinkle: Is there only one god now, or three?

In any case, ancient Zoroastrianism, certainly in the Sasanian period, featured a hierarchy of divinities (yazatas) under Ahura Mazda who can, in a pinch, be demoted to angelic status. Among them are Sraosha, a Gabriel-like messenger; Anahita, a goddess with traits of both Aphrodite and Artemis; and Mithra, the sun. I should probably also mention Adur, the god of fire, or perhaps the sacred fire itself, which is venerated but not worshiped (so Wings). Confused? It shows how slippery the notion of divinity can be.

On the opposing side are Ahriman’s demons such as Aeshma Daeva (Asmodeus) and other ranking members of the Dungeons and Dragons bestiary. None of these figures—good or bad—are so much as mentioned in either film.

The checkered history of Zoroastrianism means that there are a lot of unresolved questions about it. Like, for example, the question of burial. Zoroastrians do not bury their dead. They place the deceased in a “Tower of Silence” (dakhma) where they are devoured by vultures. At the same time, Wings waxes poetic about the tomb of Cyrus, without noting the blatant contradiction between ancient and modern practices.

Oorvazi’s film draws explicit attention to this discrepancy, arguing that the Achaemenid tombs are grounds for dispensing with the dakhmas, which sit on an expensive piece of real estate. The community could use the funds and, besides, vultures are in short supply these days.

Another sticking point is the question of conversion. According to The Path of Zarathustra, the Parsi community of India is endogamous—they only marry among each other. Oorvazi (the director, but also the character) seems particularly disturbed that children of Zoroastrian men and non-Zoroastrian women are rejected from the community. Her solution, placed in the mouth of Mazdak, is to accept, at the very least, female converts (and also to artificially inseminate non-Zoroastrian women with Zoroastrian seed—I am not making this up). The non-creepy part of this solution is based on ancient practice, the alleged permissibility of conversion during Sasanian times.

There are other minor things about each film that annoyed me. One unforced error in On Wings of Fire is a point where one of Mehta’s interlocutors claims that the Hebrew Bible calls Cyrus the Messiah (True!) in Isaiah 44 (False! Literally the first verse of Isaiah 45). This forms part of the unprovable hypothesis that Zoroastrianism exerted an undue influence on early Judaism and, hence, the entire Abrahamic tradition. That’s a hefty claim based on the fact that when the Judeans went down to Babylon they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead or messianic saviors, but they did when they came back, and then they started writing weird books about it. I do like that The Path of Zarathustra namedrops the Zoroastrian savior(s), Saoshyant, without explanation or apology, a good indication of its intended public.

Videotape!

So much for the history lesson. How do these two function as movies? In the introduction, I said that one was good and one was bad. On Wings of Fire is the good one. The information is largely accurate, if a bit basic and confessional in orientation. It’s definitely the tourist brochure version of Zoroastrianism. These bits are intermixed with scenes of high camp, which are a riot. They are filled with bright colors and energetic performances. I can’t recommend the film unreservedly, but if any of the preceding piques your curiosity, it is available on YouTube.

That leaves The Path of Zarathustra. In the first place, good luck finding it. I haven’t found it on streaming in the usual places, and it’s hard to obtain on DVD. You might find it freshly fallen from the back of a truck, if you understand my meaning. Or among the buried treasure of a merry band of pirates, if you catch my drift. Or on a site where you can illegally download it like a common criminal.

If you go to the trouble, you will be treated to an excruciating slog of bad acting and worse writing, which is a shame. It was a clearly a passion project for the director, and I don’t want to bag on it too harshly (although offended parties can send complaints directly to contact@alternateending.com). But since the film, only seven years old, is already at the height of obscurity (two views on Letterboxd, one of which is mine), I feel I owe it some publicity, whether good or bad.

So let’s dive into this film’s eccentricities. One is the choice dialogue. When the grandfather of Oorvazi (the character) dies, she heads to the big city at the behest of Ahura Mazda himself, after he whispers echoes of the Gospel of John like “In the beginning was the Word” and “Let there be light… and the light drove out the darkness,” making me wonder if Oorvazi got her wires crossed and forgot what religion she was supposed to be promoting.

Once in Mumbai, she connects with an old flame—my notes say his name is Perseus Yezdigard Doongri—and they talk about what she did with her grandfather’s body. Naturally, he asks if she buried him. She says no, she left him out for the animals. He responds, “Christ!” Then, when they discuss the absence of Zarathustra from royal inscriptions, they have this philosophical exchange: Him: “Does it matter?” Her: “I don’t know.”

Here are some more choice pearls without commentary. Mani, when speaking of the distinctiveness of human beings in the created order, begins: “The moth and the monkey have instincts…” Oorvazi, while discussing Mazdak, with Mazdak, before she realizes it is Mazdak, asks: “Didn’t he lead a rebellion?” He responds: “Does that deserve a death sentence?”

Finally, at the end, Oorvazi explains that her visions of the past are part of her imagination. Perseus, who has been stalking her while she visits strange men and deities, asks why he can also see them. Her response, unremarkable on the page, is an incredible line reading. In fact, you should watch the movie just to hear it: “Because they’re part of your imagination… … …too.”

The movie was seriously impacted by its budget. The first casualty is the magic book, the special effect that isn’t. Perseus pages through it and exclaims: “The letters move around by themselves!” Will we see it? Nope!

Then there is the issue of the three visitors. Before watching the film, I was most excited at the prospect of seeing Mani on film. There isn’t a strong iconographic tradition for him (due to the moribund status of his religion), but there are images:

Here, he’s just some guy:

The same is true of Mazdak and Zurvan. The film’s premise is intriguing, but the execution is just not there at all.

If it’s no good as a movie, why should you care about it? Well, there are some howlers in the dialogue. I laughed out loud several times. Mostly, though, it’s worth watching for the same reason historians of religion need to read the dogshit literature of the past (I call them moches lettres). Such works give us, however obliquely, insight into the beliefs of their authors. The Path of Zarathustra is a fascinating window into the social realities confronting contemporary Zoroastrians, the kind of social realities that On Wings of Fire tries to paper over. That’s the kindest thing I can say about it.

Gavin McDowell is a Hoosier by birth and French by adoption. He received his doctorate in “Languages, History, and Literature of the Ancient World from the Beginning until Late Antiquity” and is currently investigating Aramaic translations of the Bible. He is supremely unqualified to talk about film. For more of his unprovoked movie opinions, see his Letterboxd account.