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Dr. Mashayekhi discussed the complexity of life in contemporary Tehran from the vantage point of urban sociology, which has long since enumerated the problems of the metropolis. Louis Wirth of the Chicago School held that, in the city, traditional social bonds are loosened because people are less reliant on each other. This leads to feelings of isolation, insecurity, and loneliness. Countless impersonal interactions and around-the-clock nervous stimulation compound this problem. The civic ethos, Wirth concluded, is one of indifference and numbness. In this sense, Tehran suffers from a typical case of urban malaise.

The city is unique among world capitals, however, in the alacrity with which its population has exploded in the past half-century. When the shah was ousted in 1979, Tehran’s population was 5 million and climbing. It now tips the scales at upwards of 12 million. This mercurial expansion reflects the trend of rural urban migration in Iran, an exodus that has its roots in the land reforms of the 1960’s. At that time, the shah began subsidizing agriculture to the tune of $1.2 billion dollars, commercializing farming and outsourcing many of the existing agrarian communities.

The convergence of ex-peasants on the city destabilized traditional rural authority and class structures, and created a lost social category of urban poor, Dr. Mashayekhi explained. Two decades later the Iran-Iraq war displaced further scores of rural workers, who ultimately suffered the same fate in Tehran.

Mismanagement of the population influx, the revolution, and the eight-year war with Iraq left Tehran’s decimated, and the city’s middle class suffered a decline in its standard of living. Stretched thin, families’ adherence to customs and traditions took a backseat to pragmatism. Contrast, for example, the relative importance of a child’s education to the observance of the custom of donor, or family get together. Approximately 1.5 million Iranian youths take the college entrance exams annually, but the nation’s universities can only accommodate 300-400,000 of these, leaving 1 million students in the lurch. There is intense pressure on families to ensure that their child passes the exam, and so they invest much fiscally and emotionally. In contrast, the donor has fallen to the wayside for lack of money and time.

The sense of isolation and loneliness underscored by Tehran 7:00 AM is linked to the waning of familial, religious, and community norms. Characters are nervous and distant from each other, and are continually frustrated. Most conversations meander listlessly, eventually reverting to gossip and rumor. Unfinished dialogues offer no conclusion, as if the speakers are at a loss for metaphor, telling of a city and a people in transition. In one such instance, a runaway girl and an Afghan worker rhapsodize on survival, demonstrating a sense of placelessness within their respective social groups.

Tehran 7:00 AM accentuates the pitfalls of urbanization in the city to such a degree, however, that it reduces life in Tehran to metropolitan vaudeville. Limited in its scope, then, the film presents a necessarily negative view of life in Tehran. Instead, Mashayekhi maintained, Tehran should be apprehended as a city whose unique history, culture, and composition have ushered in an era of social and ethical revolution that deserves a more particularized analysis than Tehran 7:00 AM offers.