The Circle [DVD]

This is a sad but true movie and I reccomend it to anyone interested in human rights and learning about Sharia law and life in Sharia governed countries . Every sociology class and political science class should be studying it

If you are used to American movies, don't be upset with this one. It's a different kind of movie from a culture very different from the one westerners are used to. A lot of this movie was just watching these women, and seeing their sad lives intermingle. If you want to see a good Iranian film, try The Hidden Half or Leila. They were much more interesting.

This Iranian film, is banned in Iran, consists of several intertwining stories of women, all living the sad realities of the circle of life that traps them again and again. I understand it was filmed at night, in secret, using non-professional actors and smuggled out of Iran for the Venice Film Festival where it won the Golden Lion Award.The camera is obviously hand held as it follows these non-professional actresses around. Their faces shine out from their chadors - real, unpretty and blemished. One of the women has a huge discolored bruise on the her face. Another woman's face is deeply creased. There eyes are huge and expressive. The film begins with a woman's offscreen screams behind the title and credits. At first I think she is being tortured. And then there is a cry of a baby and we know she has just given birth. "It's a girl" says the hospital nurse to the grandmother who is immediately saddened. "The family will insist on divorce," she says. "They expected a boy." Thus sets the tone of the film which now shifts to three women huddled together in a phone booth desperately trying to call someone who is not at home. They are worried and afraid as they hide from authorities, especially since one of them gets arrested. It takes a while for the audience to find out that they have just escaped from prison. Their stories are never clear. We don't know what their crimes were. We don't know much about them at all. But we do follow them through the city as they try to cope with all the restrictions around them and interact with other women in equally awful circumstances.Without the proper papers, or without a man by their side, women can't travel. Certainly they can't raise a child alone. One woman tries to get an abortion but is turned away because she needs a husband's permission. One woman actually abandons her small daughter on a city street. The audience sees pieces of stories such as the woman who buys a man's wedding shirt although the audience never finds out what the back story is or who the shirt is for. And we never get to meet the woman who has borne the child in the first scene. The city is filmed as a bustling but hostile environment without any hope for these women. There is no joy in the film. Only sadness. And the script seems nonexistent with pieces of conversation that don't seem related to any of the stories. Everywhere there is misery without one bit of relief for the women or the audience.I saw this film in a theater and found it extremely difficult to watch. Indeed, so did other people because many of them just stood up and walked out. Without a specific story to follow, I felt strangely remote from what was happening on the screen. but perhaps that was the director, Jafar Panahi's intent. The film does work as a political statement but I needed more details in the script to be able to identify with these sad and remote women. This is obviously a worthwhile film, but it is just too confusing for my tastes.

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 prisoncell.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.

We have a circle of connected women's stories about life in modern Iran,filmed with great audacity and confidence. Iran is a city of intimidating bustle and restless energy,a city of men trading,hawking,playing music,riding motorbikes,swooping in police vans to arrest people.This circle of women struggle against restrictive male power structures that makes their lives a prison,a patriarchal theocracy,designed to marginalize and crush them.Bullied, intimidated,excluded by male chauvinism and at the mercy of arbitrary rules and ID checks,petrified by rigid dress codes,they dart and hide from passing police cars and policemen.At the start we hear the birth of a baby girl from a prison hospital,striking doom in the mother,whose in-laws will abandon her.Three other women leaving prison have to fend for themselves,They don dark chadors at moments of danger,fearing rearrest,Arezou and Nargess run away looking like huge crows.We are given no back stories,we are uncertain about their fates and plans,this compounds their mystery.Their untold lives formalised in a series of incomplete narratives.We often find out their names when they have to identify themselves to male authorities:Nargess to be sold a bus ticket,Nayereh when she faces arrest.They can enlarge the circle of restrictions through female solidarity.One wife finds her husband has remarried and gets on with wife 2 because she has looked after her kids.Another,Pari, whose husband was executed 4 months before finds an old prison friend who has married into respectability and can't help her with her abortion.She can't get abortion without a man's permission.She has been cast out by her father and brothers onto the streets.A mother abandons her daughter on the street,unable to support her.She is picked up like a prostitute. Banned in Iran,dealing as it does with prostitution,abortion,family violence,the abandonment of children.What makes it riveting,is the way it depicts women as most deprived,living in a big prison,as if each woman could replace another in a circle.Society is the bigger prison they can't escape from.Society has them within a circle,which will cost them to get beyond and these characters are trying to get out of. Throughout the film women look out at the world through bars, and windows and doors slam shut; they are forbidden to smoke in public places; they fail to complete their journeys to a place of safety.The spirit,strength and courage of this circle of women cannot be extinguished.We pass from one woman to the next as in a relay race, passing the baton on.If one succeeds they all succeed,if one fails they all fail.Finally,a woman placed in apolice van for soliciting,the sum of all the others who get to the dead end,is allowed to light a cigarette,before she is shut in a cell,along with the others we saw earlier,still trying to escape,completing the circle.Panihi's courage and opposition to the government has seen him imprisoned for 6 years,banned from film making for 20 more years, banned from travelling outside Iran.In this film he has given birth to hope through his art.

What a brilliant film! It really brings the characters to life! One of those that has you thinking about what becomes of the lives of the people in the movie! Having recently become entranced with all things Arabian I thought I would give this film a try as it had good reviews. I am so glad I did because it is a brilliant piece of cinema! It shows the harsh realities that Iranian women face on a daily basis! It did leave me wondering what happened to each girl but knowing what I know about women's rights in Iran I assume few of them had a good outcome! Who needs Hollywood when Iran is producing movies like this?!

thought provoking and worthwhile.

Very good movie. Just shows the real face of these women life who live in fear and injustice.After watching it, you realize and see Western world in another light. And feel only appreciation for the people who fought for our freedom hundred years ago.

Completely satisfied.