Product Details

• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Format: NTSC

Amazon.com
It's a girl. The first words spoken in Jafar Panahi's The Circle should be celebratory, but instead the mood of the scene is mournful. The relatives will be furious. Director Jafar Panahi leaves the innocence of his delightful The White Balloon behind in this harrowing, passionate portrait of the plight women endured in Iran before the easing of strict Muslim law. His vision of women scrambling through streets and dodging cops like fugitives in a police state is more of a nightmarish fable than a realist drama, but no less affecting for it. Panahi drifts through the stories of a handful of women recently released from prison (their crimes are left ominously vague) with an easy grace and an angry sense of injustice that brings us full circle: back to prison, where a cell door shuts with a deafening clang that reverberates through the credits and beyond. --Sean Axmaker

From The New Yorker
Anonymous women on the streets of Tehran crouch alongside cars to avoid police, dart down alleys, and flee from dangerous places with black chadors held over their heads, as if flying under dark wings. At first, we may be puzzled by the frenetic rushing about-the women, seen one or two at a time, don't seem to have any clear goal. But after a while, we realize that this is exactly the point. They have either spent time in prison or are heading straight there, and they are looking for a place to hide in a society in which single women have no more than provisional legitimacy as citizens. The director, Jafar Panahi, offers echoes of the Italian neorealist cinema in the general forlornness and pained humanism of his approach, but he's created aesthetic strategies all his own. Despite a longueur here and there, the cumulative power of "The Circle" is extraordinary. In Farsi. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Worthwhile but confusing film about women's lives in Iran
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.

Wonderful, daring movie!
This movie easily became of my favorites. Along with Abbas Kiarostami's "Taste of Cherry", this one of the most daring films to come out of Iran in recent years. Director Jafar Panahi skillfully depicts the ever worsening condition of Iranian women under the Islamic regime. This is a very realistic telling of the everyday lives of Iranian women, especially those who dare to defy the repressive measures they have been forced to endure in the past 22 years. This is one movie that does not stick to cultural relativism or try to give religious justifications for how the characters are treated. It shows each of the characters as human beings with dreams and aspirations who are trapped in circumstances beyond their control. No wonder this movie was banned in Iran by the Islamic republic's board of censorship.

The cast is great, the dialogues are great and the overall setting is very realistic. The cinematography is also good. This movie may seem slow or boring to those who are not familiar with the current political setting of Iran. There are several intertwined stories in this movie and this may seem confusing to impatient viewers.

Also, the subtitles are not great (as is the case with "Taste of Cherry".)

* In Persian with English Subtitles

Four stories , one ending and a circle which comes to an end
Iranian movies are truly a challenge for a viewer who is not used to Middle-Eastern cinematography : made with only the basics , with no special effects or soundtrack in most cases , they tell their stories with shocking simplicity and with an anything but polished way . The verdict of what have you seen is based mostly on the essence of the screenplay . The Circle follows various women in Tehran in their effort to runaway , each one of them from something different . Besides telling the tragic tales of these individuals , Panahi manages to make sharp additional comments on Iran's daily reality on the moments you least expect : while one of our female heroes sits at a waiting room at some hospital in the city , a dialogue between two women is being overheard....

- " She has just been brought in . She's a suicide victim "
- " If she survives it will be a huge scandal !... "

These women are constantly trying to find a saviour in a reality which seems to be able to provide none . As for the meaning of the tittle , a horrific ending scene will give you the answer .