April 21, 2008
The Circle; director, Jafar Panahi
Recently, in a discussion about the film Leila, the Self-Styled Siren reminded me of the 2000 film The Circle, with its overt critique of the plight of women in Iran ; it was a movie I had seen in the theatre, and was stunned by, so I put it on the Netflix queue to have a look at it again.
Jafar Panahi's 2000 film The Circle is a shattering and unflinching piece of work dealing directly with the overall restrictions on the lives of women in Iran. Panahi's most recent project was 2006's Offside, a comedic film about a group of tomboys in Tehran dressing up as boys and trying to get into a soccer game (my review here). In Offside, Panahi treats the restrictions (women not allowed to go into a stadium) with humor, pointing out how unbelievably absurd it all is, even laughable. The tone of Offside is light, frantic, and hilarious. Sometimes the best resistance to a stupid rule is to laugh at it. It may not change the rule, but it certainly takes the edge off.
In The Circle, that hilarious atmosphere is gone. Panahi pulls no punches, from the first devastating scene to the last devastating image. But, in true Panahi fashion, the issues are not presented in a maudlin Lifetime Movie Of the Week style. He launches us into the chaotic loud streets of Tehran, using handheld cameras, which circle the participants in the drama (there are very few hard edges in the film, something to take note of when you're watching it: look for all of the circles and curves). It appears that the film crew are just grabbing shots, filming their actors in the midst of a real-life busy street, using non-professional actors for most of the roles. Panahi is not interested in detailed character analysis, he says as much himself. He is more interested in "types," or perhaps "archetypes" would be more accurate. Characters are drawn in bold primary color strokes, and we can recognize them within moments: the crybaby, the bitter one, the sassy one ... Panahi casts based on looks. He does exhaustive casting sessions, casting a wide net, and then also has been known to just approach a woman he sees in the park, who has the perfect look - and asks if she would be willing to do a screen test. (This was how he found the wonderful Nargess Mamizadeh, one of the main characters in The Circle. She's the one in the poster. She's not an actress - at least not professionally, but her looks - her deep kind of scrunched-up beautiful face, with thick eyebrows, was just what he was looking for for that character. She has a black eye throughout the entire film, and it is never explained. It gives a backstory to the character, and makes us wonder from the get-go: Where did she get that? What is she running from?) Panahi only used two professional actors in The Circle, the rest were people he found who had the right "look". It's quite amazing, because everyone is great. There isn't a huge gap between the non-professionals and the professionals. Granted, Panahi is not looking for big cathartic scenes or delicate character development - something that is best in the hands of professionals. He's going for the message, and for the hyper-realistic atmosphere. And also, it seems to me, the pace. It's breakneck.
The women of The Circle tear their way through the streets of Tehran, coming across obstacles and problems, hiding in alleys, crouching behind cars ... the sense of being hunted is palpable. The women are right to be afraid.
There is not just one story in The Circle, we get many. And sometimes they intersect, we're following one group, and then suddenly another woman walks by and we find ourselves following her, and she takes up the story. Panahi's points are clear: this is not just about one individual woman. It's about Women(tm). And the circle of restrictions that make up all of their lives.
The film opens starkly. The screen is black, with the credits rolling. And throughout, we hear the sounds of a woman in labor. She's screaming and grunting and howling, and the nurse and doctor are saying encouraging things. In the last moment of the credits, there's a pause - and we hear what we have been waiting to hear: the indignant yowls of a newborn baby. Next thing we see is a blinding white wall, with the back of a woman's head standing there - and she's draped in the full black chador. You can hear the screaming newborns behind the wall. There's a tiny slot that can be opened by the nurses - and our chador-ed figure knocks on the slot. A nurse's head peeks out. The black chador asks for the status of Solmaz's baby. The nurse says, "It's an adorable little girl!" Black chador has no response. Says again, "A girl?" Nurse says, "Yes!" and closes the slot. Black chador doesn't move. She stands there, still, a domed black figure ...
She knocks on the window again. A different nurse opens it. "Yes?" Black chador says, "I'm here for Solmaz ... I know she had her baby but I don't know what kind ... could you check?" A chill went through me when I saw that. If you ask enough times eventually you'll get a different answer? Suddenly a girl will become a boy if you ask a different nurse?? Apparently the ultrasound said it would be a boy, and everyone had heaved a sigh of relief in the family. Phew! A boy!! But now, with the baby being a girl, it's valid grounds for divorce, the in-laws will be furious, the black chador lady is the woman's mother ... There is no joy at being a grandmother. Just terror at what the in-laws will do now that it is apparent that the ultrasound was wrong and it is a girl. The casual-ness with which this despicable attitude is portrayed - in pretty much everyone (except the nurses who are just happy the baby is okay) - is brutal. Of course no one is happy it's a girl. Of course. But as Panahi's film goes on, fast and furious, girls in chadors running through bus stations, yearning for a smoke, huddled in a doorway peeking out ... you begin to see another side to the "Oh no, it's a girl" phenomenon. It is quite subversive, and really comes to fruition in the heartbreaking story of the single mother planning to abandon her 3-year-old daughter on the streets of Tehran. She says she hopes that she will be adopted by a rich family who might take her away from this life: "How can she have a future here? What is there for her in this life?" The woman had tried to abandon her child 3 times before getting up the guts. It rips her heart out. But watching her scenes made me go back to that first scene, with the open dismay at the baby being a girl. The critique is circular, as well as the structure of the film. With the world welcoming your birth with disappointment, what chance does a girl have? A baby absorbs love. Why wouldn't a baby absorb that attitude as well. We may be horrified and pissed at the attitude, but by the time we get to the woman abandoning her daughter, we have to admit: we see her point.
The Circle is not a soap opera-ish litany of complaints, and the fact that I even have to make that clear is just evidence of how privileged I am. 5 or 6 women skulk through the streets of Tehran. They are unconnected (or so we think, at first). It eventually becomes clear that all of them have one thing in common: they have spent time in prison. The repercussions of such a stain on your life are long-lasting (in this country and in others!) Only in the world of The Circle, you can't be sure that these women didn't do hard time for, you know, hitchhiking, or letting her scarf fall off her head, or driving in a car with a man who is not a relative. These aren't people who've murdered someone.
A couple of them have just got out. A couple of them broke out of prison with a larger group and are now on the run.
One was in prison, but she is now a nurse, and married to a Pakistani man who has no idea of her past, and he can never know. He doesn't know why she won't go to Pakistan to visit his family, but she knows she will be stopped at the border.
These are women who are on their own, even when they are married. And the restrictions of their society makes it nearly impossible for them to survive and be self-sufficient. They need to travel with IDs at all times. They cannot travel alone. They cannot board a bus without a male companion who is also a relative. They cannot check into a hotel by themselves. The pace of the film is frantic, like I said - nobody has time to linger or cry self-pitying tears. Things are urgent. The police appear to be everywhere. Everyone has problems.
One of the women comes home once she gets out of prison and it is clear that her brother means to do her harm, for the shame she has caused her family. She flees. But where can she go? She has no money. She can't check into a hotel. She can't jump on a bus and move. To make matters worse (unbelievably worse), she is pregnant. And not married. And she wants to have an abortion. Her lover was executed. What is this now-homeless woman supposed to do? Her family members are just as dangerous as the authorities. She has nowhere to turn.
One woman spent 2 years in prison and when she got out found that her husband had taken a second wife. She is grateful to the second wife, because the second wife took care of her kids while she was inside ... and we meet the second wife, and she seems like a nice woman. But the betrayal is clear. NOWHERE is safe.
Meanwhile, it appears that everyone in Tehran is getting married that day. Cars decorated with flowers and streamers meander by, we see a nervous groom spilling water on his nice shirt, we get a brief glimpse of a veiled bride in the back seat.
What is there in marriage that can offer sanctuary? This question is not asked overtly in the film, but it doesn't need to be asked. All we need to see is the procession of blushing veiled brides in the backseats of cars, viewed by women on the sidelines who have nowhere to turn.
One of the things that Panahi is so good at, and I noticed this in Offisde as well, is that on an individual level - person to person - things aren't so bad all the time. Man and woman can greet one another without all of those restrictions between them. The sales guy in the shop in the bus station, who helps Nargessa with her purchase, teasing her about her boyfriend, and doesn't she know what size he is? The bantering is good-natured, easy, friendly. In Offside we had the characters of the guys hired to guard the girls, and we watch as they slowly break down their authority, and finally the guys just succumb to the fact that this is a stupid rule, and we're all soccer fans, and Iran just won, hooray!! The girls did not cower in fear at the sight of the males. They basically thumbed their noses at them. Even the spectre of the morality police and their scary van doesn't dim the girls' spirits. Or if it does, it is just because now they can't hear what's happening in the game in the stadium. So tyranny - and a "regime" - can never ever so atomize a population that human beings cannot connect. They may try, and boy, they do - but Panahi, in his subtle way, shows how the restrictions are not just bad for women, but bad for men, too. Because aren't we all just human beings? And aren't women our sisters, mothers, wives, sweethearts? They aren't a scary "other" - not face to face. They're just chicks we either like or are indifferent to. But the top-down rules cannot let this stand, and so morality itself is policed. And of course morality means: "How Women Behave". That's it. That's all morality is. If women would just act like LADIES, and keep their LEGS CLOSED, and did what they were told, so that none of us men would ever EVER be confronted with our own animal instincts and have to actually negotiate them, as opposed to denying them outright, we wouldn't have such problems in our society! Men have to police themselves as well, but because sex is at the heart of the morality issue, women are the focal point. The "morality" of women becomes a national concern. Women can't be allowed to drive in cars with men they aren't related to. What would happen next? Open anarchy!
But like I said, Panahi is not a black and white kind of guy. He messes with our assumptions and preconceived notions. In this wonderful interview with Panahi (highly recommended), Stephen Teo writes:
Like the best Iranian directors who have won acclaim on the world stage, Panahi evokes humanitarianism in an unsentimental, realistic fashion, without necessarily overriding political and social messages. In essence, this has come to define the particular aesthetic of Iranian cinema. So powerful is this sensibility that we seem to have no other mode of looking at Iranian cinema other than to equate it with a universal concept of humanitarianism.
Yes. That is just right.
When a woman's hair tumbling out of her headscarf becomes a national concern, it concerns all of us. And so while the men in The Circle are few and far between, they also are omnipresent. The women are either running from men who want to trap them and punish them, or mourning men who have also been persecuted by the regime. The circle continues.
The evolution of the film's journey is clear. We begin with black and white - black chador against white wall. Quiet and still. No movement. But soon we are out on the streets, and then we have nothing but movement, for most of the film. People running and waiting anxiously and hiding and whispering and hugging. At the end of the film, we come across a girl who has been arrested for prostitution probably, although it sounds like she was just hitchhiking. But there must be more going on in the scenario. We have never seen her before. She's a new character. She's been hauled out of the car and is made to wait for the morality van to show up. She's kind of a hottie, truth be told, with sassy red lipstick. She calls the cop "honey", in a contemptuous way.
The van arrives, and she takes a seat. She goes to light a cigarette and she is told there is no smoking in the van (the whole smoking thing is an ongoing theme throughout the film. Everyone wants to smoke, but she, at the very end, is the only one who actually gets to the point where she can light up). I saw an interview with Panahi and he was laughing, saying, "In the West, of course, smoking is seen as dangerous - but here, in this film, smoking is seen as the ultimate freedom." The one other prisoner is a man, and he cajoles the guards to let him smoke. And they cave, say "sure". All the men light up. She glances around her (oh, so it's okay that they smoke, and it's not okay that I smoke?), and with a "Fuck this" expression, she lights up. For the rest of the drive, the camera is on her. The men all talk to each other, bantering, laughing, whatever, it's unimportant. She has a flowered headscarf on, her face is impassive, she stares out the window, and smokes. It's a long scene. It struck me, as I watched it this last time, how quiet and still the film got. No less brutal, but no more movement. She's a statue in profile. Archetype. Her situation is frozen. Stasis.
What will be next?
Panahi says in that interview, revealing that what I perceived in the movement of the film as a whole was (of course) deliberate:
Coming back to your first question: why is Iranian film so beautiful? When you want to say something like this and then you add an artistic form to it, you can see the circle in everything. Now our girl has become an idealistic person and thinks that she can reach for what she wants, so we open up a wide angle and we see the world through her eyes, wider, we carry the camera with the hand and we are moving just like her. When we get to the other person, the camera lens closes, the light becomes darker and it becomes slower. Then we reach the last person, there's no other movement; it's just still. If there's any movement, it's in the background. This way, the form and whatever you are saying becomes one: a circle both in the form and in the content.
An important film. Banned in Iran (naturally), but look. "It" got out. The Circle got out and found its audience worldwide. It doesn't make a difference on the ground, not yet (although, in reference to one of Panahi's other films, Offside, there were protests outside of soccer stadiums last year, with women holding up signs saying "WE DON'T WANT TO BE OFFSIDE", demanding that they be allowed into the game). Obviously the authorities are right - in their warped world view - to ban Panahi's stuff. It's subversive, in the truest and best sense of the word. Movies like this have the potential to change the world. "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."
So perhaps it's like a message in a bottle. A time-traveler. A flashlight in the darkness (a little candle throwing his beams far!). And so all I can say to Panahi is, "More, more, more, more."
