THE CIRCLE (Dayereh)
Directed by Jafar Panahi
Script by Kambozia Partovi
Plot Summary:-
The movie starts with the opening of a hatchet shutter in a maternity ward announcing the birth of a baby girl born to a woman called Solmaz Gholami. Solmaz’ mother is utterly disappointed hearing the birth of a girl child and has problems in accepting the birth, since earlier sonography have confirmed the foetus to be a boy. She is worried about her daughter’s fate with her in-laws and apprehends a divorce. She leaves the place without announcing the news of the girl child to her daughter’s in-laws and asks another girl related to her to call her uncle.
This girl rushes to the phone booth where she meets a group of three girls. The story then focuses on these three girls. The girls Nargesse, Arzou and a third one, were frantically trying to make a call. In the meantime, one of girls goes off to sell a gold chain and gets arrested. Nargesse and Arzou flee from that spot. These three girls were prisoners released on that very day, who were trying to collect money to travel to Rizalq, Nargesse village. Finally Arzou manages to collect some money and sends Nargesse off to her home-town. However Nargesse although manages to get a ticket without an I.D card by lying to be a college student, she has to abandon her journey plan, finding the bus being searched by police. She escapes and come to find Pari, another girl who had sneaked out of the prison with them.
Pari’s father refuses to allow her to meet Pari. Now the story once again leaves the track of Nargesse and takes up that of Pari, who leaves her house in a bid to escape the tyranny in the hands of her two brothers and her father. She first meets an old friend, who works behind a Cinema ticket counter and then goes on to meet Elham, an old friend she had met at the prison. Pari needs Elham to help her terminate her pregnancy. With her boyfriend getting executed at the prison Pari hardly has a choice but to secretly abort her child. Elham is now married to a doctor and is too worried to help Pari, lest her husband finds out about her past. Pari leaves the hospital and wanders onto the streets of Teheran, unable to move into a guest house or a hotel without an I.D card.
It is then when she traces a little girl being abandoned by her mother on the street. Pari gets hold of the fleeing mother and then again the story abandons Pari and focuses on the mother. She leaves her child thinking she will have a better future getting picked up by some other family or the welfare. The mother is first caught as a prostitute, but she later manages to escape. Then another woman who was picked up as a prostitute is taken to prison. She is placed in a cell with other women we met so far in the movie, and the phone rings outside the metal door. A guard answers and comes to the window, calling for Solmaz Gholami, the woman with a girl baby in the first scene. So is the circle closed. Hence the movie too ends showing the hatchet, (this time of the prison cell) being pulled down.
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Constant visuals showing railings, iron hatchets, closed doors of small cramped rooms, bodies cordoned with meters of flowing garment aka “chador”, bars, rods etc. everything which gives a feeling of claustrophobia and repression. Shot with a hand-held camera, following a technique of plan-sequence, Jafar Panahi’ s “The Circle” tells a poignant tale of the constant claustrophobia and suppression that Iranian women face throughout their lives. The use of such items and visuals in the movie therefore add special contours to the plot.
The story-telling is unique. It starts with one character with a story and jumps on to another with another story. None of the stories are started or ended. What we get are passing glimpses, which are powerful enough to give you a true sense of the impending threat these women are living in and their daily transactions with life and others amidst this constant state.
The film starts with a stark black screen, with sounds of a mother screaming in labor pain. The first shot is the glimpse of white when a hatchet shutter opens and the nurse declares the birth of a baby girl born to Solmaz Gholami. The next few scenes make it clear how un-welcome the birth of the girl is.
This story moves on to capture the goings-ons of lives of three girls, just relieved from prison. The youngest one, Nargesse is still shown to be vulnerable and has not lost all dreams of a better life in her village Rizalq. So much so, that a Van-Gough landscape painting reminds her of her village at Rizalq. In fact when the elder Arzou was busy managing money for her travel back home, Nargesse seemed busy to drown herself in the bits and pieces of the Teheran city life be it in the form of road-side cosmetic shops, a nervous groom or Music played by three girls. In one interview Panahi mentioned that those of us who watch movies in subtitles obviously cannot make out the different tunes and accents. That music was Azerbaijani in origin; Nargesse speaks in an Azerbaijani accent as well. So the music attracts her as reminiscence from her hometown which she thinks is a place away from her daily woes. Arzou is too matured to get lured by any such dreams or beliefs. Her only constant struggle seems to be to have a smoke, which she is unable to do due to the constant bans issued to single woman. Nargesse although coaxes a ticket out of the ticket counter, but her travel is halted due to police check-ups in the bus. Here Nargesse’s story gives way to that of Pari’s.
Pari’s house is shown to have an extremely narrow door, giving a feel of the cramped-ness and claustrophobia. The more vocal her brothers’ abuses seem to grow the more burgeoning becomes the sense of suppression over Pari which eventually leaves her in abandoning the house with her purse and a packet of cigarettes.
Pari is pregnant and her boy-friend has been executed few months back. She cannot have the child and needs a secret abortion. She reaches out to an ex-prison mate Elham. Elham, settled in a new life post marriage to a Pakistani doctor is too wary to help her friend lest she arouses any doubt in the minds of her husband, who is oblivious of her past. Elham is too afraid to get out of this secure life she has bargained for herself. This seems to be her only way to survive. Monir, Pari’s other friend has also accepted her husband’s second marriage while she was in prison. She in fact is sympathetic to the other woman, who inspite of quitting her career and taking care of her house and children would still be called “second” socially.
These are some stark bold moments in the movie which shows that in spite the constant threats and tyranny the indomitable spirit of these women and they draw their courage from within their own circle of other empathetic women friends.
Pari’s story gives way to the story of a single mother, who abandons her girl child and then to another woman, who is imprisoned as a prostitute. Finally she ends up at the prison where all the other characters are already present and the search of Solmaz Gholami is on and the hatchet shutter closes.
The ending note is that of inside or outside the lives of all these women is like living in a prison cell.
All these women at some points are seen to covet for one chance of smoking a cigarette which is prohibited. Smoking here refers to all those small chances of a free life without male intervention, the women dream to live and are constantly denied.
Also it’s the story of one single day which seems to be a day of wedding at Teheran. The last woman, who was taken into the van, gives one contemptuous yet sarcastic look at the blushing veiled bride, thinking of her entry into this circle to bargain a life out of one prison and inside another.
No-where in the movie one gets to know why the women have been jailed, what happens to them, and somehow that becomes irrelevant. The continuous sense of insecurity and threat, and the constant seizure of any sort of liberty to their spirit is what come across and that is what the director also wanted to reach the audience.
The ending scene seems to be the signature shot where the camera pans the whole room showing all the faces you have seen, in a circular view and the iron hatchet shuts down with a bang closing their world into darkness.
