Jafar Panahi

I don't want to contribute to stupid stereotypes, but there are some things about the Iranian movies I've seen (many of them banned in Iran) that set them apart. The natural feel of the dialogue, intriguing depictions of urban Teheran - not to mention the gentle, subtle sense of humour that is present in many of these, often bleak and politically critical, contemporary Iranian films. During the last few weeks, I've watched some films by Jafar Panahi. On this blog, I've talked about one of his films, Offside, before. The film, which depict the eager attempts of female football fans to sneak into an important soccer game unnoticed, is still one of my favorite Panahi film. Oppression of women, its day-to-day expression, is also what is the central theme of The Circle (2000). I liked the principle of storytelling in that film, how the camera follows the story of one or several women, only to switch its attention to others. the women characters were quite mysterious, and many of the circumstances of their lives were left untold (we learned that several of the characters were on a temporary leave from prison, but their crimes were not revealed). But I had some doubts about the first part of the film. I was simply never really absorbed in the story. But that said, the film is well worth watching. Offside felt like a much more forceful statement (even though not in a traditional sense as "serious" as the other), while I, at times, felt that The Cirle lost something of its importance/immediacy by lumping women's life together, so that they, to some extent, were portrayed exclusively as victims of oppression and not as individuals fighting their ways through life. As much as I am a bit critical, I also understand that one of the cruelties Panahi wanted to comment on is the way women's lives are weaved together in a common fear of the police, and other things. It is a mark of oppression that it makes people into a gray mass, that people are made to believe that's what they (and others) are. Perhaps I had better say that the lumping together, the, if I may say so, anonymity of the stories, were not the problem, but the artistic realization was not completely satisfactory.

I was much impressed by two films by Panahi in which the protagonists were (female) children. The best of these two, The White balloon (1995), revolves around a girl's desire to purchase a fish for the new year's eve celebration. A fair comparison may be made to The Apple by Samira Makhmalbaf, an equally simple and forceful story about children in Teheran, but it is worth pointing out that Makmalbaf's film is much more political. The story of The white balloon takes place "in real time". The temporal range of the story equals that of the film, the result being energetic; a steamy portrayal of new year's eve in Teheran. The gist of the story? Razieh asks her parents for money to buy a goldfish. She insists that the fish should be a fat one. On her way to the fish monger's, she looses her money a few times, but regains it. But then there is the accident of the money falling down on the street, into the store owner's cellar. The kid's wanderings in Teheran contain many interesting encounters, great location, and dialogue filled to the brim with life. This could just as well be a film for kids, not only about them.

The temporal principle of The Mirror (1997) is the same as in The White balloon. Here, we see a little girl waiting for her mother outside the school building. She has enough of waiting, and tries to make her way home all alone. Somewhere in the middle of the film, the "actor" playing the kid getting lost on her way home says she is tired of acting. After that the crew follows the "real" odyssey of making one's way home as a (female) kid in Teheran. Of course, Panahi plays with quite a few film conventions ("what is real", pictures as representations, "mirrors", "plot" etc) but I simply enjoyed watching it, and put most of the theoretical questions aside (for better or for worse, I don't know).