In Jafar Panahi’s entertaining yet pointedly critical film Offside, about five or six girls who dress up as boys in order to enter the Tehran soccer stadium for the World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain (filmed in 2005 during the actual soccer match in question). Girls are not allowed to enter stadiums. But they are soccer fans. Fanatics, even. They do what they have to do. One by one, they are busted by the eagle-eyed security guards, country bumpkin boys a little awestruck by the big city, and rounded up into a pen behind the stadium, while they wait for the Vice Squad to take them away.
Serious subject, yes? Yes. But Panahi’s touch and tone is one of mockery and levity, even more devastating in its ability to critique, the film moves at a zip zip zip pace (and if you ever get a chance to see it in a theatre with an audience: do it. It plays like a bat out of hell). Many of these awesome girls have no other credits to their name. In the film, they strain and lean against the barriers trying to hear what’s happening in the soccer game, arguing with the guards about how stupid it is to not allow girls to go to games.
They’re trash-talking smart-aleck city girls – who were brave enough to put on boys clothes and paint the colors of Iran on their faces and try to bust into a space where they’re not allowed – and the more traditional security guards are shocked but intimidated. Serious heated conversations between the girls and the guards suddenly cease when the roar of the crowd reach them – and the girls all start clutching each other in excitement about this or that play. They force the intimidated security guard to go around the corner and give them a play by play what is happening. He’s overwhelmed. He’s not strong enough to throw his weight around. He is no match for these girls. He does what they say. And stands at the corner, peeking at the game, and narrating it like a radio announcer.
In the film’s best scene, one of the girls – who plays on a girls’ soccer team and is probably the biggest soccer fan in the bunch – has to go to the bathroom. the guard says “Sorry. No bathrooms for girls in the stadium.” The girl begs and pleads. It’s an emergency. Does he want her to piss her pants right there where they stand? He finally caves and takes her off to go to the bathroom – but he makes her put a huge poster of one of the soccer players over her face. She doesn’t want to. It is so stupid to make her do this. She and the guard argue about it.
The guard wins this battle, so off they go to find the bathroom.
So you are treated to the absurd sight of a guard and this weird little person with a huge “mask” on trotting through the stadium (and remember: it was filmed during the actual game, on the fly). Humorously, as he hustles her through the stadium, she – who is in so much trouble, having been arrested – keeps stopping to peek over the crowds to see what’s happening on the field. The guard loses her behind him because she’s stopped, and he has to race back and yank her in line. I love her. Yes, I am arrested but FIRST THINGS FIRST, what’s going on on the field? The guard goes into the cavernous bathroom and orders every man in there to leave. The men are like “who do you think you are??” but the guard throws his weight around and the guys all leave. The poor girl, now hopping up and down in agony (with a huge poster wrapped around her face), races into one of the stalls while the irritated security guy stands guard at the doorway.
While she is doing her business in one of the stalls, a small group of rowdy boys enter the bathroom. They’re in a hurry to get to the urinals. They don’t want to miss a moment of the game. The guard stops them. “Sorry. you can’t come in here.” The boys : “The hell we CAN’T. Get out of the way.” (The class issue is present as it always is in Panahi’s films. These are all city kids and the guard has been shipped in from his family farm: he feels inferior to these more sophisticated people he’s supposed to boss around.) The guard holds his arms out to stop them from passing by and a scuffle ensues. It is five or six against one. The boys try to push him out of the way. They all start fighting.
It is at this moment that the girl – poster wrapped around her head – comes out of the stall. She is a sight to behold. I mean … one look at her and you think …. “wtf” – which is what all the boys do. First of all, it’s instantly obvious to them what is going on. She’s a girl. In a stadium filled with thousands of men. She may be wearing a baggy flannel shirt and baggy pants but … come on, that’s a girl. But … why … how … and what’s with the poster head …
The situation is humorous but it is also dangerous. Everything pauses. She’s already in danger. What might happen now? These are young guys, vibrating with testosterone and energy and they are segregated away from girls in their lives and a girl is right there in front of them. What if … I mean, it’s a distinct possibility. Things could get out of hand. The guard freaks out because now HE might get in trouble for allowing this girl to wander around willy-nilly in a sea of heaving men. He starts pushing at the boys to leave. The scuffle starts up again. Their fighting is blocking the doorway. She can’t squeeze past. She stands there, not sure what to do. She feels trapped and terrified. But everyone’s in the way. No way out. It’s a perilous moment for her.
The boy with the flag wrapped around his head like a bandana notices in a glance what’s happening, and he’s in the middle of fighting with the security guard, but he sort of leans his body inward, pushing the rest of the bodies in the scuffle inward, which gives her a small corridor in which to escape. And he gestures at the space he opened up like: “There you go now.”
And she flees.
It’s my favorite moment in the film. A moment of kindness, yes, but also a moment of something much more important: solidarity.
The hierarchy is clear: he is “above” her in status even though they’re about the same age, but that “status” is not IN him. It hasn’t infected his spirit or psyche. Status/hierarchy may be imposed from on high, but his small gesture of, “Go on, you can get by behind me” is eloquent. He’s not corrupted.
The boy might be perceived as an enemy since he’s a boy, and he can go into the stadium and do whatever he wants. But he’s not an enemy. He lets her run by him, he makes room for her. There’s room for her here. The space is already hers. No one should keep her from it. And he knows it.
This moment, for me, is like Bernstein’s glimpse of the girl in the white dress on the ferry in Citizen Kane: “I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.”
I think about that boy in the green bandana all the time.
