"The Circle"
In a nation where a woman cannot even buy a bus ticket without her husband's permission or smoke a cigarette in public, much less obtain an abortion, director Jafar Panahi delves into the lives of women on the wrong side of the law in Iran in "The Circle."
>From the very start of "The Circle" we are thrust into the alien, male-dominated society of Iran that treats its women as possessions, not people. An old woman stands outside the small door to a hospital maternity ward. The door slides opens and a nurse tells her that her daughter has had a beautiful baby girl. The door slides shut. Obviously agitated, the woman knocks at the door and asks another nurse about the baby's sex. Again, "it's an adorable girl," she is told. "They'll want a divorce!" she moans about her in-laws as she dejectedly leaves the hospital.
This extended scene of despair summarizes the film's theme of the harsh life for women, especially an ex-convict, in Iran. The old woman's misery is just the lead into one of the most powerful, thought-provoking and eye-opening films to come to the screen this year. Iran's Islamic society stridently keeps women in a second-class, subservient role where the men running the country define a woman's "rights". Conditions, from a western viewpoint, are severe, at best, for the average Iranian woman. Panahi's "circle" of women is an even more harshly treated subgroup - the sisterhood of women who served time in Iranian prison.
As the old woman leaves the hospital, she crosses paths with three younger women, dressed head to toe in the black robes and the ever-ready chadir required by Islamic law. There is something wrong as they try to make a phone call to a friend who can help get tickets for the three to flee the city, hopefully to a place where the air is not so oppressive. But, no one answers the phone. Desperate for money, one of them takes their one valuable possession, a slender gold necklace, and tries to sell it on the street. A scuffle ensues and she (though not the men she tries to sell the trinket to) is arrested, as her friends look on helpless to intervene.
Arezou (Maryiam Parvin Almani) and Nargess (Nargess Mamizadeh) now must fend for themselves. The older Arezou takes the little money they have and gets Nargess onto a bus that she hopes will bring her young friend back to the wonderful world of her childhood. It doesn't and Nargess must seek out another convict, Pari (Fereshteh Sadr Orafai), for help. The story shifts to Pari, who has her own set of problems. She's a prison escapee, single and pregnant, not a safe combination for a woman and Pari goes to another prison sister for assistance. The story then weaves in a heart rendering tale about a pretty little girl, dressed in her best clothes, abandoned by her unwed mother (Fatemah Naghavi) in hopes that she'll be taken by good and kind people.
The end of the film bookends the beginning with another small door sliding shut. The finality of this action closes out a story that leaves you pondering just how it would feel to live under such repression, always fearful and always vulnerable. It's a story about a man's world shown from the woman's view and it's not an appealing picture of life in Iran. But, it is a beautifully made film by the maker of the wonderful childhood story, "The White Balloon," showing Panahi's deft versatility as a world-class filmmaker.
The cinema verite-style camerawork helps carry forward the tension these women live with, day to day, as they strive to survive and stay out of prison - and it doesn't take much to get sent to prison. The look of the film, coupled with the natural efforts by the actresses, makes it feel real, almost documentary-like, and brings us to see a very different social order. "The Circle" is a powerhouse of a film and I give it an A.
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