Director: Janef Panahi
"I don’t want to be seen as a politcal filmmaker. A political filmmaker commits to a certain ideology, tries to propagate that through his work, and attacks opposing ideologies. In The Circle I am not attacking or supporting anyone. I am trying to look at everyone from a humanistic point of view and hold a mirror that reflects social realities." Janef Panahi
Janef Panahi’s The Circle is thus far the years most heart wrenching film because it shows us that what we fear about the plight of women in Iran may be true. But it can’t help but undermine its message because it is TOO obvious and a bit heavy handed.
The film’s message will be lost on no one when in the first scene an older woman shows regret that a woman in her family has given birth to a girl rather than a boy as the family had expected.
Taking a circuitous narrative route (like La Ronde) the film interconnects five stories about outcast woman each of whom have been or are going to prison. In the first story a woman who has just been released from prison is heading home but cannot buy a ticket because she has no ID and is not accompanied by a man. She manages, through a good lie, to get a ticket but when she sees that they are doing baggage searches she runs away in fear. This segues into the second story about a woman who has escaped prison so she can get an abortion; an
almost impossible operation in Iran. The next story is about a woman who has just left her four-year-old daughter on a street corner in front of a fancy nightclub in hopes that someone will take her to a better home. In a short time she is arrested. The last story is about a woman who has been picked up allegedly on a charge of prostitution. The irony is that the man she picked up
is let go -- since of course he is a man with a family.
The title refers to the circular structure of the story but it also is meant to be taken literally for the tumultuous route that woman, mainly in these particular conditions (unless you take it metaphorically to mean all women) endure from the womb to the tomb. Once they have been in prison there is little chance of redemption or escape from the circle of returning back to the brink.
Last year there was an Iranian film called The Girl in the Sneakers about a teenage girl who runs away from home. The whole movie showed that she had two options; one she could become a street urchin, which would lead to drugs or prostitution, or she could go home to get yelled at by her father. She took the easier route back to her house. The Circle takes the same type story to a further extreme and shows what happens when a woman only has one option.
The Circle is shot in drab outdoor locales with little diffuse lighting. The camera though moves a lot in circular motion thus tying together form and content quite well. At times heavy handed and devoid of much hope, joy or redemption it stands as a reminder that we in the United States don’t have human rights abuses that affect an entire gender like they do in Iran.
- Matt Langdon
