☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
The
Circle (2000) – J. Panahi
Jafar
Panahi is an Iranian humanist filmmaker currently serving a 20-year ban on
making films and forbidden to leave Iran; despite this he has made several
films in guerrilla fashion, often winning international awards. His first film, The White Balloon (1995), won
a prestigious award at Cannes. However,
it was with this film that Panahi caught the attention of the Iranian
authorities because it is clearly a protest film, showing the constraints
placed on women in that society and the suffering that results. For example, women are forbidden from travelling
or staying in a hotel alone, they have to wear specific articles of clothing in
public places and they certainly can’t have an abortion without their husband
or father’s permission. The signs of
control are everywhere and Panahi often documents them casually, in passing,
even as the overt focus of the plot is on other actions. The film itself turns
out to be largely episodic: we follow a series of different women in intersecting
but incomplete stories as they suffer a variety of travails (stigma after
leaving prison, an unwanted pregnancy, inability to support a (female) child,
and finally, prostitution to make ends meet), for which Panahi refuses to blame
the victim. The women we see may vary in
their level of understanding of and resignation to the plight of women in Iran
but, in any event, what they experience is brutal and upsetting. It is no
surprise that the film opens with a family’s disappointment that a baby born to
them is a girl. In the end, this is a
masterwork of subtle style and subversive intent from a great director.
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