The Circle

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spencer p It's certainly a powerful cultural window with emotional piercings, but it also has moments that are clear of common sense. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Audience Member Simultaneous to Marziyeh Meshkini's symbolic masterpiece <i>The Day I Became a Woman</i> (2000), Panahi applies his trademark, engrossing style of striking realism, lively urban environments and hypnotic tracking shots to direct this furious denunciation against gender inequalities against women in contemporary Iran, a society that prevents women from having an abortion, that prevents them from making a shocking amount of formalities without police authorization, that forbids them to travel without male company, that makes women endure physical, psychological and domestic violence, that forbids them to accept car rides from men and to buy tickets alone, and that makes them endure unfair marital regulations that ultimately increase paternalistic and chauvinist tendencies inside the families and empowers men to legally ask for a divorce for inhuman reasons. <i>Dayereh</i> is credited with having the narrative structure of Max Ophüls' <i>La Ronde</i> (1950), given that, as literally suggested by the title, the film comes full circle. Besides, all of the events are interconnected, similarly to Meshkini's testament, but instead of being separated vignettes, they are connected in real time in the lapse of one single day. Perhaps this is a way to state that these kinds of injustice can be seen "everywhere you turn your head". Panahi scores again with his most straightforward commentary directed for worldwide masses, especially aimed at similarly sexist and oppressive societies around the world... And with the abandoned little girl featured in this film, we might just have a reason of why Mina's mother in <i>The Mirror</i> (1997) never came to pick her daughter from school... 97/100 Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member Panahi's The Circle' is just about the most depressing Iranian film I've ever seen. It begins in a maternity ward with the birth of a daughter to a woman called Solmaz Gholami, whose mother is worried that the young woman's in-laws will insist on a divorce now that, against what was suggested in the scans, the child is not a boy. And it goes on through a group of recently released female prisoners and their insurmountable problems and a woman who cannot afford to keep her little girl and leaves her in the street, watching until the social services take her away to be cared for. Among all these women it is only the prostitute who seems uncowed by the constant repression. The last scene is in a cell where all the women are now gathered. A phone rings. the guard comes to the cell door asking for Solmaz Gholami, the woman who has given birth in the first scene. This is one hell of a powerful film and conveys no hope whatsoever. Had it been made in the West, it would probably have been considered anti-Iranian propaganda. But remember, this was made over ten years ago, and there are many Iranian films with a more positive view. Times change. I hope. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/13/23 Full Review Audience Member A film I have been meaning to see for years and one that tells the all too familiar tale of most Iranian cinema. Horribly oppressed women struggling to eek out a happy existence. These stories need to be told. This is wonderfully directed as each woman's story is passed to the next and then comes back full circle. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/19/23 Full Review Audience Member Un cerchio narrativo sulla condizione delle donne in Iran che vivono in un'eterna prigione. Il cinema iraniano sembra vivere negli anni 2000 lo stesso momento di forte intensità esperessiva tipica del neorealismo italiano di 60 anni prima. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Audience Member Powerful study about the treatment of women in Iran. Hail Panahi! Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Circle

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