The "circle" in Jafar Panahi's great film is many things: the
structure of the film itself, which ends with the same image it
begins with; a location in Teheran, where a character meets a
friend in a movie theater; the circular stairs so many other
characters run up and down; the circling, hovering camera
movements that bring us face to face with the women in these
interlinked stories and the world they are caught in. Most of all,
perhaps, it is the constricting circle within which Iranian women
must live their lives, the tightly circumscribed rules and
expectations of a rigidly masculine universe. None of Panahi's
characters can escape this circle, though some try and one, at
least, believes that she can. The more experienced know the truth;
all they can do in running is map out the circumference of their
shrunken world.
It's easy to see The Circle as a film about the oppression of
women in Iran, but that would reduce it to the merely political--and
we should not forget that the film was made by an Iranian man,
and that three quarters of the Iranian electorate recently voted to
reelect President Khatami, a deeply intelligent voice for freedom
and dialogue who has had his own difficulties being heard.
Panahi's subject is far larger; a woman who grew up in an abusive
household told me that no other film had so accurately depicted
the experience of her youth, when the constraints on women's
lives were so much taken for granted that she was unaware there
was anything outside them. But those constraints are fatal. We
make our world together, through dialogue and interaction. To
deprive someone of voice and the chance to participate in that
process is to kill them, whether it is done through religious and
social sanctions or by a husband beating his wife. Panahi's
women are neither dead nor silent, even though their only
listeners are other women. Their tragedy finds echoes everywhere;
but in this film where theme and expression are so intimately
joined we, at least, can hear them.
structure of the film itself, which ends with the same image it
begins with; a location in Teheran, where a character meets a
friend in a movie theater; the circular stairs so many other
characters run up and down; the circling, hovering camera
movements that bring us face to face with the women in these
interlinked stories and the world they are caught in. Most of all,
perhaps, it is the constricting circle within which Iranian women
must live their lives, the tightly circumscribed rules and
expectations of a rigidly masculine universe. None of Panahi's
characters can escape this circle, though some try and one, at
least, believes that she can. The more experienced know the truth;
all they can do in running is map out the circumference of their
shrunken world.
It's easy to see The Circle as a film about the oppression of
women in Iran, but that would reduce it to the merely political--and
we should not forget that the film was made by an Iranian man,
and that three quarters of the Iranian electorate recently voted to
reelect President Khatami, a deeply intelligent voice for freedom
and dialogue who has had his own difficulties being heard.
Panahi's subject is far larger; a woman who grew up in an abusive
household told me that no other film had so accurately depicted
the experience of her youth, when the constraints on women's
lives were so much taken for granted that she was unaware there
was anything outside them. But those constraints are fatal. We
make our world together, through dialogue and interaction. To
deprive someone of voice and the chance to participate in that
process is to kill them, whether it is done through religious and
social sanctions or by a husband beating his wife. Panahi's
women are neither dead nor silent, even though their only
listeners are other women. Their tragedy finds echoes everywhere;
but in this film where theme and expression are so intimately
joined we, at least, can hear them.