SYNOPSICS
Dayereh (2000) is a Persian movie. Jafar Panahi has directed this movie. Maryiam Palvin Almani,Nargess Mamizadeh,Mojgan Faramarzi,Elham Saboktakin are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2000. Dayereh (2000) is considered one of the best Drama movie in India and around the world.
In a hospital waiting room a woman learns her daughter, Solmaz Gholami, has just given birth. The ultrasound test had prepared the family for a boy. The baby, it turns out, is a girl. The joy the mother anticipated turns to terror for she knows her son-in-law's family will abandon her daughter. The old woman flees as the in-laws arrive. On the crowded streets of Tehran - a place where women are not permitted to stay out on their own or smoke in public - two women are also on the run. Arezou and Nargess have just been granted temporary leave from prison but they have no plans to return. They manage to scrounge together enough money for the bus trip to Nargess' hometown, but she lacks proper identification, and the police are searching everyone at the station. Meanwhile, their friend Pari has just escaped from prison in order to have an abortion. Threatened with death by her brothers, she flees from her father's house and meets with a former inmate, Elham, who is now married to a doctor...
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Dayereh (2000) Reviews
A Few Western Observations
While Jafar Panahi's previous feature films dealt with children, with Dayereh he delves into the contentious issue of women's issues in a highly restrictive society, his native Iran. The film uses a narrative device that Tarantino might be proud to steal, with Panahi's camera following various women through their specific plights, often chasing them through the streets in handheld mode. At any moment, the camera may decide to follow a different character, and although the specific details of the various women's situations may differ, the oppression which is a part of their daily lives is consistently omnipresent. One feature of the film that is part and parcel of its roving camera approach is that there is very little in the way of exposition or denouement in any of the narrative threads. This however, seems to be the point of the entire exercise; in a society that treats women as a lower class of citizen, individual details and circumstances have no bearing on their ability to achieve anything without the presence or authority of a husband or father. veryday occurrences such as the purchase of a bus ticket to the simple act of smoking a cigarette in public can (and does) result in mandatory incarceration for any woman at any time. The structure of the film gives the impression that literally any woman you might bump into on the streets of Tehran is caught in such a comprehensively prohibitive society that could lead to what could only be considered unconscionable drama in Western society. Although there are no significant male characters in this story, Panahi uses the entire gender en masse to illustrate the peculiar double standards that have insinuated itself through the fabric of this society. Men are constantly harassing women with inappropriate lewd remarks to which there can obviously be no response to. Simultaneously, if a woman behaves in a manner anything less than perfectly virtuous, her liberty is instantly forfeit. In one scene, a woman starts to stand up for herself against a casually tossed piece of innuendo, and the audience can do nothing except anticipate the unjust retaliation that will surely be endorsed by the dozens of common passers-by. There are certain elements of the film that no doubt owe to the nature of making a film under these conditions; extras occasionally can't avoid staring at the camera crew, but strangely enough, this gives the film a feel of documentary film-making that somehow enhances the narrative. Nevertheless, there is nothing amateurish about the acting of the principal women, all of whom behave so convincingly that the film conveys a sense of constant danger. Furthermore, this nervous energy never lets up, as we move from story to story at a speed that allows us to experience discomfort, without reaching closure until the final scene, which in itself is a cause for distress. It is unlikely that Dayereh will ever be a very popular film, as it has many of the 'feel-bad' qualities of films such as A Time For Drunken Horses, with even less sympathetic sentimentality. On an even sadder note, Dayereh has been banned in Iran, where a film of this nature most desperately needs to reach an audience. However, this seems to be the underlying message of the film; not that there are a great many injustices against women occurring in Iran on a daily basis, but that there is no indication of how or when it will stop. Only why.
The Repressive Situation Against the Women in the Iranian Society
A baby girl is born, and the grandmother regrets for the sex of the baby. Three women are released under probation from the jail and get lost into the crowd, without courage to come back home and having no money. A woman escape from the jail to make an abort and is expelled from her own home by her family. Another woman left her daughter of about six years old alone on the street. A prostitute is arrested with her client in his car, and the man is released by the police later while the woman goes to jail. All of these individuals and disconnected situations are presented to show the repressive situation against the women in the Iranian society. In the end, like in a circle, all of them ends arrested in the jail. I am not aware of the behavior of the Iranian society with their women, but this movie portraits a horrible picture. The women are showed without freedom, depending on her husband or her family even for simple actions, like traveling in a bus. If their society works this way, how are these actresses daily treated after their performances in this movie? The camera and the direction are excellent. It is amazing the capability of the Iranian filmmakers in making simple but touching films. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): `O Círculo' (`The Circle')
Not much I can say that hasn't been said before, but I wanted to say it anyway.
While reading the various interviews with Jafar Panahi concerning his latest film "The Circle", I noticed that he always stresses the fact that his film is not a feminist film, but a humanist film. I'm reminded of the times I've been in a political conversation with someone and they've said "I'm no feminist but..." and then said something in defense of women's rights. Well, whether he intended it or not, Panahi has made a feminist film, because after all, feminism in its most basic form has nothing to do with hating men, but is merely a desire for the fair and equal treatment of women, and equal human rights is of course a cornerstone of humanism. I'm no scholar (and that I can say in all honesty) but yes, I would say I'm a feminist. I've never been on a march, and I've never read the works of any great feminist theorists, but to the core of my soul I believe in the equal and fair treatment of women, and if that doesn't make me a feminist I don't know what does. Of course, all this discussion about feminism wouldn't matter if "The Circle" wasn't such a strong film. Panahi's film, almost universally praised, will receive no negative criticism here either. His use of narrative (most reviews compare the narrative style to "La Ronde" [1950], but I suppose comparisons could be made with "The Phantom of Liberty" [1974] and "Slacker" [1990], for that matter) might be perceived by some rob the characters of their individuality, but of course that is part of the point. In Iran today women are all grouped together, Panahi is saying, and they are seen as no more that a collective problem for men to deal with. Ultimately, there is nothing I can say about this film that hasn't been said before, but I wanted a chance to express my appreciation for this extraordinary myself.
heart of starkness
*some potential spoilers below* This film raised a lot of questions for me...including Where was this filmed? It seems in Iran for much of it. Why does Nargess not board the bus at once? Would she still have been subject to the official search that we see from above later? When she purchased that shirt was that to tie her back to the "flirtation" with the man who earlier was seen decorating the wedding car? Are Iranian doors really so narrow? I'm specifically referring to Pari's house, also was it obvious to other viewers that the men that stormed that place after Nargess visits were Pari's brothers?? Was that orange soda an Iranian product placement? Okay, that last question is not in earnest. I'll take the scourge of crass commercialization over invisible imprisonment (but it would be estimable to avoid both as a society ultimately.) However my first question stands. For this film to be made (partially?) in Iran suggests to me a less draconian presence of persecution. Did the actresses (and non-actresses) all have proper ID cards and clearance themselves? Are the various inquisitors too busy stopping women, to peruse the dailies? I have no desire to defend a country wherein clerics get to decide who can and cannot run for office. But in another film, I would almost like to see some attempt to show complex characters who do defend the need for ID cards and chaperones and women living in the shadows of their chadors. When I interview Firoozeh Dumas regarding her universally enjoyable book "Funny in Farsi" I made the mistake of thinking that returning to Iran was prohibitive for her and her Iranian-American family. She corrected me on that. And I recall Western attitudes about Russia in the 1980's that proved to be misguided (or perhaps very truly guided towards misinformation.) While I had questions, I do think director Panahi is one who invites open questions to this film. His avoidance of back histories to the women featured here helps us to feel as if we are on the lam with them. The hand-held camera (its shakiness on the large screen I think would pose some trouble for folks like my wife) also helped the audience to share the worried nature of the characters. The approach to this film struck me as the approach of an auteur. Thus, this film is more likely to stand aside Eisenstein than Weinstein...more likely to be shown at the Pacific Film Archives than the "arty, upscale" multiplex. I do think this will prove to be a favorite in classrooms, I get the feeling that Panahi achieved a lot with very little to start with. Women are often shot behind bars, cleverly so. At a cinema ticket booth, through a hospital window screen, outside by a gate. The film starts with a woman screaming in agony, and I did not know *right* away that it was a woman giving birth. It did become clear pretty quickly, but as I reflect back it could be that the pain for women is not just confined to labor. The camera travels like a virus from one woman, one story, at a time. As one other reviewer mentioned this reminded me of "Slacker" (I've not seen "La Ronde.") I referred to the chadors above, while I still don't know a chador from a burkha...there seemed to be different ones worn by different women throughout. I suspect some sort of significance. The all-white one of Elham really stood out for me. The contrast of that, and her apparent success in getting out of the societal prison she was stuck in versus the strife her circle of sisters still must endure was stark. As stark as the white versus black garments, as stark as the wedding procession that runs blithely through the film and as stark as the footage provided here. I'm glad I saw this...and suspect you will be as well. I look forward to watching more of Panahi's films and hope there will be more artistic exchanges between the U.S. and Iran. Indeed the film I probably want to see, would be the one that *both* governments would like to ban. Has our Attorney General Ashcroft seen any Iranian films that disturbed him recently?? 7/10
Great artistry and even greater power
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.