A View Inside Iran from Alan Taylor.

Yes, we're grateful for such intimate views, given that we only see Iran through the scrim of headlines about possible nuclear war and the revolution of 2009 seems to have died down on Twitter, or at least the Western intellectuals lost interest in it, distracted by the next bright and shiny thing.

Even so, I sort of rebel. Are people only available in their costumes with their colourful objects? Hooded wedding gowns and multicoloured draped headscarves and tambourines. There are just too many scenes where the Iranians seem like walk-ons to mass Hollywood productions, making patterns that are a delight to the eye but make us wonder what the individual thinks.

Then there is the scene of the dog-lover and the shelter, meant to help us find empathy with our Western dog-loving ways vis-a-vis this tyranny where dogs are viewed as unclean and pets a Western affectation. OK, that worked — but what happened to the dog and the woman on the next day?

Then the scenes of more veils and corn and a pretty girl in the mountains — and Tehran at night, lots and lots of lights in the smog, who could possibly bomb this teeming place of life?

Then a grim scene of young men with their especially-manufactured flagellators for use in the violent Ashura holy day — seriously looking metal devices that were deliberately made in uniform fashion for this purpose. Somehow, seeing that, you feel more troubled than anything. If people flagellated themselves with their own home-made whips, you might feel the legitimacy of personal faith. But with these uniform, manufactured devices, you feel the state is keeping alive a cruel custom.

Then there's this statement:

Iranian Jewish men pray during Hanukkah celebrations at the Yousefabad Synagogue, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, December 27, 2011. Iran's population of 75 million includes about 20,000 Jews, the largest community in the Middle East outside Israel, and they face no restriction on their religious practice, though they must follow Islamic dress codes such as head scarves for women. They have one Jewish representative in the parliament under the constitution.

That doesn't work for me — Ahmedinajad has urged that the state of Israel, homeland for the Jews, be wiped off the face of the map. I'm not so certain in fact this Jewish community in Iran has quite the delightful time of it as indicated with this photo and brief caption. Maybe they get to practice their faith under very strict confines that aren't some technical restriction but that don't include basic things, like traveling back and forth freely to Israel.  Something is wrong with this picture…

Stained carpet-makers hands, Christians at prayer, some youths with waterguns — well, what happened to those demonstrators and those revolutionaries? Did they all get arrested? Well, some are still left in an Internet cafe, headscarves and baseball caps — and presumably a blank page for Facebook but communicating in other ways…