Thank you, Sheila, for giving me the opportunity to write about Offside<\/em>, a film directed by Jafar Panahi. I\u2019m not a film critic, much less a connoisseur of Iranian film, but I think that is okay. The film doesn\u2019t feel like an esoteric art house \u201cimportant\u201d film where one must be an expert to comment on it \u2013 it feels a lot like Breakfast Club<\/em> or Pretty in Pink<\/em>\u2013 a young rebellion movie. I think that\u2019s part of the seduction \u2013 it is approachable, and feels like an ordinary film from middle class life in Tehran.<\/p>\n Offside<\/em> is the story of five girls who want to see the Iran-Bahrain soccer game at the stadium. It\u2019s an important game \u2013 it will determine if Iran is going to the 2006 World Cup. But girls are not allowed to attend the games. The sexes are very much divided \u2013 though there are exceptions which I\u2019ll get to in a moment. So what\u2019s a girl to do?<\/p>\n Our five ladies \u2013 who do not know each other \u2013 dress up as boys. Not very successfully, however, since they\u2019re all caught as they try to enter the game and are sent to a small prisoner area to wait out the game. Occasionally, one of the other soldiers will report on the game, and the girls will come alive. Their enthusiasm for the game reminded me of Twilight<\/em> tweens at the mall, though they\u2019re a little older than those American girls. The community of like-mindeds gives some degree of gravity to their obsession and it is fun to watch any group become intense about their passions, arguing over the best players, acting out little bits of the game. <\/p>\n While corralled outside the stadium, where they can hear the crowds cheering, the girls manage to get the guard, an earnest soldier who only wants to get through his duty and back to his cattle, to discuss some of the hypocrisy in the fact that they can\u2019t go inside. Some Japanese women were permitted inside, and so were some Bahrain women too. But because these are Iranian women\u2026 well, the rules are different, that\u2019s all. <\/p>\n One girl needs to use the restroom, and a soldier reluctantly agrees to escort her to the bathroom. There is no women\u2019s room, so she must go to the men\u2019s room. The soldier tries to keep out other men while she\u2019s using the facilities, but you can see, in this rowdy crowd, how dangerous it truly is for her to be there. The boys seem wild, and they far outnumber the women. I found myself at one point actually thinking, well she well and truly doesn\u2019t belong there.<\/p>\n And I was right. Iran is just not set up<\/em> for women. This isn\u2019t a shocker, but it\u2019s surprising when you see how utterly comprehensive that exclusion really is. In one scene, a grandfather tries to hit the friend of his granddaughter who has come to the game and is somewhere in the crowds. The soldier grabs his arm and says, \u201cYou don\u2019t hit women!\u201d<\/p>\n But you know, if the soldier hadn\u2019t been there, you really could. There would have been no societal repercussions for striking a young girl. Girls just don\u2019t really matter in the culture and Panahi has a cold, objective eye on this fact. <\/p>\n A few notes about the filmmaking itself:<\/p>\n I noticed that during the daylight hours of the movie, when the girls are still prisoner, I was eye-level with them. The men were shot from a slightly upward angle. I felt like I was looking up at them, seeing their shoulders and faces, whereas with the girls, I would have been perfectly eye-level. Later, after dark, the camera is suddenly over the girl\u2019s heads. The men are eye-level. It\u2019s a jarring change.<\/p>\n I also noticed that there is a lot of movement in this movie. From the first scene until the very last, something is moving. Even in scenes where the characters are still, the background is moving (such as cars driving in the highway behind the stadium). The graffiti on the bathroom walls looks like it is moving too. There is a sense of life in this movie, that Iran is a place just like your own hometown, moving, bustling, living. But it isn\u2019t Houston or Providence or Tulsa. The fact that I am an American watching this movie makes it a \u201clesson\u201d about the cultural differences \u2013 but it\u2019s actually more than that. It\u2019s an entertaining movie about national pride, and the rituals and games that bind us all together.<\/p>\n Thank you, again, Sheila, for opening my horizons just a little bit by suggesting this movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is my good friend Cara’s contribution to the Iranian Film Blogathon. She’s an incredible writer, with a couple of novels in the pipeline (we are both ambitious writers, we support each other), as well as a Sylvia Plath fanatic … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/offside35.jpg\" "\\"offside35\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/offside43.jpg\" "\\"offside43\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/offside5.jpg\" "\\"offside5\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/offside49.jpg\" "\\"offside49\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/offside83.jpg\" "\\"offside83\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/offside76.jpg\" "\\"offside76\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n