The Mysteries of a Harmless Room: Exploring Amir Motlagh’s Three Worlds.

Jamie Toth, The Somewhat Cyclops
7 min readFeb 22, 2023

Amir Motlagh has a knack for making films that leave me feeling moved and raw. They also challenge me to evaluate my connections — or lack thereof — quite keenly. When I sat down to re watch Motlagh’s film “Three Worlds” so I could write something meaningful and cohesive about it, I had three questions written down that I wanted to write the answers to:

What is Three Worlds about?

What’s a memory worth?

What can science fiction be?

Let’s explore what some of my thoughts were when I tried to answer these questions.

Image Source: Amir Motlagh’s Three Worlds. Used with permission.

What is Three Worlds About?

Three Worlds is, on the surface, about a man who gets a procedure that changes his perception of everything.

But really, Three Worlds is a three-part melody about memory: a tone poem in film form.

How’s that?

I’m not going to engage in a plot synopsis. This isn’t that kind of film.

The clues are there, and much like I believe I know what happened in the film Eraserhead, I believe I know what happened in Three Worlds.

From the opening, with its intimate framing of a memory recounted, Three Worlds is enveloping in…

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