Defying the Islamic Republic, a Director Keeps His Cameras Rolling

The Islamic Republic of Iran in July arrested the filmmaker Jafar Panahi on the charge of being an unrepentant gadfly. That wasn’t the official indictment, of course, but Iran’s government has never taken kindly to Mr. Panahi’s independent brand of cinema.Mr. Panahi has a track record with the authorities in his home country. He was arrested in 2010 for supporting the protests that erupted after a much-disputed presidential election. Convicted on a charge of “propaganda against the system,” Mr. Panahi served two months of a six-year sentence that forbade him both from making films and traveling abroad. Although he has kept within the boundaries of Iran, Mr. Panahi, ever headstrong and not a little cunning, continued to keep the cameras rolling.The recent arrest occurred upon Mr. Panahi’s visit to Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison to check on the status of fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad, both of whom had been imprisoned for being signatories to an open letter critical of Iran’s security forces. The attendant prison guards took Mr. Panahi into custody in an action that one observer likened to kidnapping.Anyone with even a cursory interest in contemporary events knows that Iran is a country in turmoil and, perhaps, transition. The release of “No Bears,” the latest film from Mr. Panahi, follows on the heels of, among much else, the United Nations expelling Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women, a World Cup in which Iranian footballers protested silently and figured significantly, and a number of state-sponsored executions.“The history of Iranian cinema,” Mr. Panahi writes in a statement accompanying the picture, “witnesses the constant and active presence of independent directors who have struggled to push back censorship and to ensure the survival of this art.” Mr. Panahi knows whereof he writes: His 2011 film “This is Not a Movie” was made while under house arrest and smuggled to the West on a USB flash drive hidden in a cake. “No Bears” brings the action outside, to consternating effect. Like its predecessors, “Taxi” (2015) and “3 Faces” (2018), the film is adamantly self-reflexive, its director being front-and-center throughout the proceedings. When we’re not watching Mr. Panahi as a character, we’re made aware of his role as a filmmaker. This approach may be an extension of political and existential necessity, but there’s also a degree of hubris involved. Like Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Mr. Panahi plays a fictionalized and often disagreeable version of himself.“No Bears” begins in a Tehran sidestreet wherein two lovers talk of stolen passports, leaving Iran, and the 10 long years they’ve waited to do so. Zara (Mina Kavani) and Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei) are, it would seem, desperately attached. An argument ensues when Zara learns that Bakhtiar hasn’t managed to acquire a passport for himself. She refuses to leave: “Either we go together or we don”t.” Zara storms away.The camera slowly pans from the cafe where Zara is a waitress to Bakhtiar left alone on the street, pensively lighting up a cigarette. As he turns to descend the steep thoroughfare, a cherubic figure wearing a yellow hoodie hops into the frame, faces the camera, and asks, “How was it?” Whereupon we hear a voice — Mr. Panahi’s, as it turns out. The scene shifts slowly from Tehran to a laptop from which the movie is being directed.We are, as you may have surmised, watching a movie within a movie. Mr. Panahi has sequestered himself in Jabbar, a tiny village situated just outside the Turkish border, where a good internet connection is less vital than local traditions, one of which seems to be holding outsiders in suspicion. Mr. Panahi’s host, the ever-fawning Ghanbar (Vahid Mobaseri), does what he can to paper over tensions that arise due to the famous director’s presence.His presence and, it should be noted, his actions. Mr. Panahi’s tendency to photograph and film just about everything within his purview prompts a village-wide panic. Did “dear sir” accidentally capture an illicit moment between two ill-fated lovers? The township’s sheriff (a hirsute Naser Hashemi) attempts to forestall threats to their visitor’s well-being even as he wants Mr. Panahi out-of-here already. All the while, the travails of Zara and Bakhtiar continue, albeit in a peripatetic manner.Movie-goers forgiving of meta-cinema — that is to say, pictures in which we are constantly reminded of their abiding artifice — will applaud Mr. Panahi’s continuing examination of the reliability of images and the ideas they may (or may not) be capable of embodying. Those of us who like a good story told well will concede that Mr. Panahi has a gift that succeeds in spite of his over-intellectualized machinations. As such, “No Bears” is inherently imperfect, often frustrating, but considerably involving all the same.

Defying the Islamic Republic, a Director Keeps His Cameras Rolling

Defying the Islamic Republic, a Director Keeps His Cameras Rolling

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