By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 March 2026

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 1 November 2022

The late Bernard Lewis recorded in his memoir, Notes on a Century: Reflections of A Middle East Historian (2012), meeting the Shah of Iran “a year before” the Islamic Revolution that felled him, thus, some time in early 1978:
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on May 18, 2014

Let us stipulate that getting a thing like this correct is basically impossible: there will never be enough time in three hours—the most a film hoping for commercial success can last—to adequately cover in proper detail and nuance the facts of such an inherently complicated and contested period in history. And if effort is made to go even some of the way to doing a proper job on this score, it only underlines all the things that were left out and alienates the section of the audience that has no interest in the history and wants an entertaining movie. Caveats in place …
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