In Hamoun (1989), a portrait of an intellectual whose life is falling apart, Mehrjui sought to depict his generation’s post-revolutionary turn from politics to mysticism. Hamoon was voted the best Iranian film ever by readers and contributors to the Persian journal Film Monthly.In 1995, Mehrjui made Pari, an unauthorized loose film adaptation of J. D. Salinger’s book Franny and Zooey.
Though the film could be distributed legally in Iran since the country has no official copyright relations with the United States, Salinger had his lawyers block a planned screening of the film at Lincoln Center in 1998. Mehrjui called Salinger’s action “bewildering,” explaining that he saw his film as “a kind of cultural exchange.”His follow-up film, 1997’s Leila, is a melodrama about an urban, upper-middle-class couple who learn that the wife is unable to bear children.
