'Rosewater' review: Jon Stewart's earnest, well-acted directorial debut

Anyone who doesn't know that Jon Stewart directed a movie this year hasn't been watching enough "Daily Show": The political/comedy talk-show host took the summer off to make a film, probably doing more for John Oliver's career as a comedian than for his own as a film director. Still, the results -- "Rosewater," a credible exercise in suspense and righteous indignation -- say a lot for Stewart, mostly as an architect of narrative.

By beginning his story with the arrest of Maziar Bahari -- who had been a guest on Stewart's Comedy Central program before heading to Iran as a Newsweek reporter to cover the 2009 Iran presidential elections -- Stewart plunges us into a gripping situation, one rife with outrages and cultural collisions. At the home of his mother (Shohreh Aghdashloo), Bahari (Gael García Bernal) is accused of having a stash of "porn" (video copies of "The Sopranos" and Pier Paolo Pasolini movies) and is hauled off for interrogation.

Stewart, who wrote the script, then flashes back 11 days to London, where Bahari's wife (Claire Foy) announces she's pregnant and we learn that Bahari's late father and sister had been imprisoned by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Bahari flies to Iran in time for an election that seems too close to call, falls in with radicalized students, realizes there's a Green Revolution underway and shortly thereafter the narrative catches up with the film's opening scenes. It's effective, propulsive storytelling.

It's also incredibly earnest, and to a large degree obvious, a lesson in dignity, bravery, resilience in the face of totalitarian oppression and, to a smaller degree, guilt. Bahari's appearances on Stewart's program are used against him by his captors, including the Rosewater of the title (Kim Bodnia), a slightly inept interrogator about whom the scariest thing is his ignorance.

Stewart might not have blamed himself for Bahari's ordeal -- 118 days in jail -- but it got him involved in a film that will surprise no one, except those who assumed its director was just a guy who told jokes.