Dayereh, The Circle is Jafar Panahi's Masterpiece
Added 8/13/2008
This movie could be viewed as a political statement (it was banned in Iran) or a purely artistic work. Either way, it works, and it is Panahi's masterpiece in a filmography that has been dedicated to the disenfranchised (Crimson Gold) and women's secondary status (The Mirror, Offside, The Circle) in Iran. It should be mentioned that the dvd includes an interview with the director, who makes it a point to mention that some of the Iranian laws depicted here (restriction from traveling with the accompaniment of males) have been abolished since the making of this film. However, the familiarity with the customs are still intact.
This is a superb piece of work both in craft and emotion. Beginning in a long circular tracking shot from a hospital window, a family learns a newborn is a girl when they expected a boy. From here, it moves in a continuous shot out onto the street (Iranian filmmaking tradition is intertwined and indebted to the Russians as the Bolshevik Revolution forced Russian filmmakers to flee to neighboring countries, one of which was Iran. The Russians are famous for their long continuous tracking shots).
A baton relay "race" is set up as the story of one disenfranchised woman is passed on to the next. Three women who have escaped from prison are attempting to move through the city with the least of means. We go from one to the other, as we learn of their personal histories and events that have led to their present hour of desperation.
Non-professional actors and professionals share the relay. Nargess Mamizadeh, whom Panahi came across in a park one day, was enlisted to play Nargess (the first girl with the thick handsome eyebrows and black eye). She's extraordinarily pretty, to the point that Panahi had to "dress her down" with an unexplained black eye. Fereshteh Sadr Orafai as Pari who searches for a doctor to abort her child (the father was killed in prison and she has no way of providing), and Fatemeh Naghavi as a mother who dresses up and abandons an adorable daughter in hopes someone with better means can take her in, are both professional actors.
Circular motifs and circular settings get reiterated throughout the movie, illustrating an allegory of the vicious circle in a society that puts restrictions on women. Panahi mentions that his film is an attempt to compress an entire lifetime of a woman into one day, using eight women's circumstances as a conduit. The movie begins with fast, jittery hand held pacing, and eventually decelerates into stasis, before ending in the same window first shown in a hospital, but now belongs in a prison
cell.
Fatemeh Naghavi's desperate mother and her forlorn five-year old daughter was absolutely heartbreaking to watch. When I watched the abandoned child crying, something inside me broke, and remained unmendable for weeks.
I never like recommending these types of movies to friends, because I shudder at the thought of them coming back afterwards with a review I see often about The Circle: "It's depressing." Not all films are meant to entertain and make their audience walk out "feeling good." But as much as Dayereh shows the miserable oppression of Iranian women by men, it's inspiring that as an Iranian man himself, Panahi is boldly speaking out for those whose voices have been muted.
I have Middle Eastern friends who often tell me that how they are represented throughout the world is not accurate. "We're not all like that. It's just that the ones who have the loudest voices get heard." Panahi's work is a testament and tribute to the sensitivity of Iranian men who are concerned with the injustices dealt to the other half of the human race.
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Four women in Tehran . . .
Added 4/4/2008
Regardless of their awareness of conditions in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Western viewers will find this portrayal of the lives of four women on the streets of Tehran bleak and disturbing. Knowing is one thing; seeing another. Unmarried and without supportive families, each of them has served time in prison for unspecified offenses -possibly for violating the fundamentalist strictures prescribing and proscribing their behavior.
Director Jafar Panahi uses a documentary style of filmmaking to follow the events of a single day in the lives of the women, often relying on long, long takes captured with handheld camera. Using both professional and nonprofessional actors, he balances a gritty realism against visually lyrical moments played out in settings reflecting the symbolism of the film's title - the circularity of the women's efforts to flee the circumstances of their lives. The DVD includes an interesting interview with Panahi, who claims that he does not watch movies, is unaware of the French film "La Ronde," whose structure his film resembles, and does not make films for an audience, in order to preserve the integrity of his own vision. Essential viewing for anyone concerned with women's rights in the developing world.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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The Iranian quotidian reality!
Added 4/13/2007
The circle is a struggling movie; the inner codes that feed the script turn around the lives of three women, oppressed by the masculine universe in a society that overlook with overwhelming indifference, those minor disgraces that may mean nothing for you and me, who live on the other side of the world, but what reflects the aberrant distortion and the abusive repression around the feminine world. Jafar Panahi reminds so much to Mira Nair, the talened Indian filmmaker, in what has to do with this nervous directorial style; cinema veritè with the camera moving untiringly, to make us authentic trip' s partner of these unlucky women.
A bold and acidic film that securely will disturb you due we regard unthinkable these things may happen in this Century, but that are part of a way of thinking, feeling and living of certain societies around the world.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Circular plot (probable spoiler review)
Added 6/3/2006
This movie is a congregation of tales, where each tale is like the bead of a necklace, independent in itself and strung to the next bead through a thread, and whence one has traversed the various tales or beads, one finds oneself where one started - thus living out the title of this move
I saw this movie immediately after seeing my first Iranian flick, Hamoun. Thus I came with all expectations, and found myself briefly disappointed, which is not to say that this is a poor movie. Rather, the entire aspect of this movie seems to work towards its title. The characters are well created & are all women, having said that - the director I felt, was overkeen to ensure the cyclic theme's emergence and has in some parts of the movie, not done complete justice to the characters she has created. Thus when the movie hurtles to its closure, one sees the circle emerge and feels a sense of abruptness as the movie ends.
For those interested in checking it out, remember that this is a slow slow movie with little conversation, and well defined characters.
2 out of 5 people found this helpful.
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Outstanding movie-A real eye opener
Added 6/6/2005
As an Iranian woman I can really understand the movie. However I am not sure that many non-Iranians will be able to understand this movie. This is a true story of situation of some women in Iran. Of course this can not be generalized and majority of Iranian women don't live like this. However this movie clearly shows the situation of thousands and thousands of young women in the streets of Tehran.
The Circle is not one story but a series of fictional vignettes. The opening scene is of a mother at a window (the hospital delivery room) who is being told her daughter has given birth to a girl. She refuses to accept that her grandchild is a girl because she is afraid that his son-in-law divorces her daughter for giving birth to a girl. Then, suddenly, the camera has moved into the streets and into the story of three women just out of prison. The director drifts from one protagonist to the next. We follow one woman escaping to somewhere on a bus, then without warning, we are following her friend's wanderings, then the story becomes that of a women she meets in the street, and so it goes. The final scene also shows a window (the cell door) where the guard is calling for the same woman that had given birth in the very first scene. The movie clearly shows how women are trapped into a hopeless cycle due to an Islamic totalitarian regime in Iran.
This is a movie that makes you think for hours and days.
6 out of 7 people found this helpful.
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