The Circle

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 Rus... Read more

Regardless of their awareness of conditions in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Western viewers will find this portrayal of the lives of four women on the streets of Tehran bleak and disturbing. Knowing is one thing; seeing another. Unmarried and without supportive families, each of them has served time in prison for unspecified offenses -possibly for violating the fundamentalist strictures prescribing and proscribing their behavior. Director Jafar Panahi uses a documentary style of filmmaking to follow the events of a single day in the lives of the women, often relying on long, long takes captured with handheld camera. Using both professional and nonprofessional actors, he balances a gritty realism against visually lyrical moments played out in settings reflecting the symbolism of the film's title - the circularity of the women's efforts to flee the circumstances of their lives. The DVD includes an interesting interview with Panahi, who claims that he does not watch movies, is unawar... Read more

The circle is a struggling movie; the inner codes that feed the script turn around the lives of three women, oppressed by the masculine universe in a society that overlook with overwhelming indifference, those minor disgraces that may mean nothing for you and me, who live on the other side of the world, but what reflects the aberrant distortion and the abusive repression around the feminine world. Jafar Panahi reminds so much to Mira Nair, the talened Indian filmmaker, in what has to do with this nervous directorial style; cinema veritè with the camera moving untiringly, to make us authentic trip' s partner of these unlucky women. A bold and acidic film that securely will disturb you due we regard unthinkable these things may happen in this Century, but that are part of a way of thinking, feeling and living of certain societies around the world.

This movie is a congregation of tales, where each tale is like the bead of a necklace, independent in itself and strung to the next bead through a thread, and whence one has traversed the various tales or beads, one finds oneself where one started - thus living out the title of this move I saw this movie immediately after seeing my first Iranian flick, Hamoun. Thus I came with all expectations, and found myself briefly disappointed, which is not to say that this is a poor movie. Rather, the entire aspect of this movie seems to work towards its title. The characters are well created & are all women, having said that - the director I felt, was overkeen to ensure the cyclic theme's emergence and has in some parts of the movie, not done complete justice to the characters she has created. Thus when the movie hurtles to its closure, one sees the circle emerge and feels a sense of abruptness as the movie ends. For those interested in checking it out, remember that this is a slow slow mo... Read more

As an Iranian woman I can really understand the movie. However I am not sure that many non-Iranians will be able to understand this movie. This is a true story of situation of some women in Iran. Of course this can not be generalized and majority of Iranian women don't live like this. However this movie clearly shows the situation of thousands and thousands of young women in the streets of Tehran. The Circle is not one story but a series of fictional vignettes. The opening scene is of a mother at a window (the hospital delivery room) who is being told her daughter has given birth to a girl. She refuses to accept that her grandchild is a girl because she is afraid that his son-in-law divorces her daughter for giving birth to a girl. Then, suddenly, the camera has moved into the streets and into the story of three women just out of prison. The director drifts from one protagonist to the next. We follow one woman escaping to somewhere on a bus, then without warning, we are following h... Read more