In
an attempt to archive some academic papers I've written over the
past few years (relying on the hard drives of sometimes faulty PCs
has left me tired and frustrated), I will be uploading some of my
old work to this blog over the next few weeks. Here is one I wrote
for a class on New Directions in Documentary in the Spring of 2012.
A digital recollection of a filmmaker's
undeterred passion and need to share stories, Jafar Panahi's much
acclaimed, microcosmically distributed This Is Not A Film makes
a political statement by challenging the boundaries of his
artistically-castrated sentence. Described by some as a home movie of
sorts, This Is Not A Film is perhaps more enlightening given
the background information you bring to it. Panahi, a successful
Iranian filmmaker known for challenging narrative films about the
common man, has, as the film begins, recently been put on house
arrest for speaking out against his native government. With that
comes, of course, a plethora of additional restrictions and do-nots:
given an impending court decision, Panahi could be withheld from
making films for up to twenty years, as well as being forced to carry
out a six year prison sentence. Although it goes without saying that
the government wants to increasingly limit Panahi's output, they also
are doing greater personal damage; by being cut off from using his
collaborative art-form (and by being kept in the dark as to the
information on his near future), they silence the man's voice and
deaden his spirit. For the first time in the prime of his career,
Panahi's tentative verdict issues undesired unemployment.
The documentary form of narrative
filmmaking is something more of a style than a genre, using a
supposed snippet of reality in which to extract a greater sense of
the ideological and methodical problems a director faces when
crafting his story. An "objective artifact" can be
considered a death of a description for a documentary striving for
personal integrity. In her book, "Documentary Film: A Very Short
Introduction," Patricia Aufderheide, an academic at American
University in Washington, D.C., notes that "a documentary film
tells us a story about real life, with claims to truthfulness. How to
do that honestly, in good faith, is a never-ending discussion, with
many answers. Documentary is defined and redefined over the course of
time, both by makers and viewers. Viewers certainly shape the meaning
of any documentary, by combining our own knowledge of and interest
with the world with how the filmmaker shows it to us."
Aufderheide's description serves as a good "definition"
here, admitting that a documentary is as much about audience's
expectations as it is its own onscreen content. When moviegoers see a
film listed as a documentary, they typically expect and demand much
of the same they would of a feature fiction film. They are attracted
to plot, characters, drama, and accessibility, all with the added
benefit of being guaranteed that what they are witnessing is a series
of real events, life uninterrupted, unfolding effortlessly and
without outside forces imposing onward. Documentaries are supposed to
make a promise to their audience and uphold their end of the bargain.
This common belief stems from, as
Aufderheide points out, marketing purposes. Why alter audiences’
expectations of documentary filmmaking and risk the chance of
upsetting and turning them off all future nonfiction works? Better to
supply for the masses, repeat the style and expect repeated business.
This Is Not A Film is thus unconventional in that its story is
not of the commercial documentary variety; the film is not a problem
of the week melodrama. The fact that it was released in theaters (and
debuted in France at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival) may prove to be
more of a defiant political mode of expression than the events
depicted in its seventy-five minute running time. Viewed side by
side, the making of the film and its distribution stand together as a
cultural event, a moment that represents the ability of a documentary
not easily categorized.
This Is Not A Film was shot with
two cameras contrasting in size, one an expensive HD device manned by
Panahi’s reliable friend, and the other being Panahi’s phone —
the film features numerous Apple products, including a Mac, Iphone,
etc. The equipment used is suitable for this impromptu production, as
Panahi, once able to get his hands on the finest professional cameras
and film stock, now finds himself bound to the nearest technology
available to him. High production values matter little to a
production that Panahi eventually doubts people will even want to
see. On the surface, This Is Not A Film is not necessarily
trying to actively promote change to the Iranian government. There is
never an off-screen narrator providing additional information on the
political hegemony of Iran, and rather than criticize the
authoritative higher-ups directly, Panahi’s apparent on-screen
boredom, anger, and personal sadness with the anti-art sentence
bestowed upon him are made apparent via a mere means of observation.
The film’s setting never changes because, well, how could it?
By editing the footage obtained by the
two available video devices into what ultimately makes up This Is
Not A Film, the feature’s aesthetic value plays a central role
in acknowledging Panahi’s exclusion from the outside world. This is
a man who still retains a mind for filmmaking but who can only do a
limited amount with what he has (or at least one gets the sense that
what he has is limited). Setting up the shots for an unproduced
screenplay — of which we will get to shortly — he wishes to act
out, Panahi has humorous concerns about the lighting available to
him. Too much? Too little? He also sticks to his natural leadership
tendencies, announcing “Cut” when he wishes for his friend to
stop filming. He understands the need for a particular flow to a
scene, even when no script is readily apparent. Surprisingly,
Panahi’s adjustment to being in front of the camera provides
This Is Not A Film with some light-hearted moments, and his
incessant need to film while being filmed comes full circle
near the documentary’s conclusion as the two men capture a
shot/reverse shot exchange between each other in Panahi’s kitchen;
the Iphone’s video quality serves as quite a contrast to what we
had previously been exposed to in the film’s first half.
The film's primary issue and question
of concern, heavily promoted as the film's tagline on posters and
other marketing materials, stems from an attempt to to define the
limitations of Panahi's restrictions. Lawfully unable to make a new
film, Panahi is nonetheless credited as co-director of This Is Not
A Film, a documentary he stars in, while also serving as
co-cinematographer and being the sole reason for the work's touted
existence. Is this not an illegal act, a show of defiance against a
system which has tried to theoretically stop him from producing art?
When does the craft of motion picture-making declare itself as a
separate — and in Panahi's predicament, legal — entity from still
photography and hand-constructed examples in the fine arts? Must a
film be defined as a piece of fiction? Of possessing a recognizable
narrative? Lacking details, Panahi decides to record his life and
work out the staging of an unfilmed screenplay in the confines of his
living room. As long as he doesn't make that
film, should the recording of his one-man rehearsal act constitute
government discretion? While he does
act out the moments and blocking of the piece, he is not a
professional actor, has not been hired by anyone, and does not intend
to widely distribute the footage. He is documenting what would
ideally be his next film by making one about his present struggles.
Free
to let his mind wander, Panahi's storytelling impulses get the best
of him when he is alone and his family is out for the day. Taking
place primarily on a native holiday known as Fireworks Wednesday,
This Is Not A Film opens with
Panahi sitting down and preparing lunch. He calls his friend, Mojtaba
Mirtahmasb, and tells him to come
over right away (although he cannot mention why over the telephone).
Panahi's wife and children have gone to visit his mother for the day,
and he has been assigned the thankless tasks of having to water the
plants on the porch and to entertain the family's consistently
active, sharp-nailed iguana. A few cigarette breaks help to break the
monotony. Panahi's interest in acting out his cherished screenplay
thus serves as a therapeutic, self-referential practice, becoming
ever the more clear when the work of fiction's plot becomes
thematically apparent. In many ways mirroring his own woeful
predicament, Panahi's screenplay is, at its core, about an artist
under lockdown, having to come to terms with being cast as a punished
outsider and being refused a communicative connection with the world.
Neither is respected nor heard out by their prosecutors, and both are
refused time and time again to establish an engagement with their
passions.
The
lead character, in essence embodied by Panahi, is a teenage girl
wishing to attend an arts university in Tehran. Refused by her
parents to take the upcoming entrance exam, the girl is placed under
house arrest (the home is locked from the outside) while her parents
go out of town. Depressed and suicidal, the girl stays in her bedroom
and uses a nearby window as her personal vantage point. When her
grandmother, the only person other than her parents to possess a key,
decides to visit, the girl is given a cellular phone, which ends up
thrown on the floor and destroyed out of frustration. Teen romance
rears its head as she notices a boy outside her window developing an
attraction. The two will not be allowed contact, and Panahi's
concoction seems equal parts Romeo and Juliet and
Rapunzel. Later, when
her sister comes by to talk, the two girls sit on opposite sides of
the gated door, separated by steel but connected by their words.
As the
parallels begin to be drawn, viewers may start to question the
convenience of the similar plot conventions. Panahi's moment sitting
on the floor looking at his Iphone (representing the destroyed phone
of the girl's) provides the director with a dramatic moment of
reflection. Almost on the verge of tears — or on the verge of a
profoundly sophisticated discovery — Panahi again goes back to the
idea of defining filmmaking. Perhaps This Is Not A Film
is a cry for help and clarity.
Assuming
this to be the case, some viewers may begin to question the
documentary's authenticity. A late third act character, a family
oriented student interested in the arts, working a few days as a
custodian in Panahi's building, appears to also represent Panahi,
albeit with one crucial difference: He is a free man. Young,
intelligent, and enamored with Panahi's creative allure, this
artistically-centric student serves as a Panahi surrogate, much like
the young girl did in his screenplay. In a recent class discussion on
the film, some students expressed concern over the likeness of these
characters in relation to the Iranian director, claiming that it felt
too artificially set up. The plannedness of the situation, a work of
fiction (This Is Not A Film
perhaps) in a very reality-based situation (Panahi's house sentence),
does not necessarily detract from the plight of the filmmaker,
however. Much like the young girl, Panahi finds himself by the
conclusion of the documentary separated by the outside via steel; as
the student/temporary custodian goes outside to discard of tenant
trash, Panahi remains behind the gated door, just out of sight with
his camera in hand.
Writing
for Artfourm, film critic J. Hoberman wrote on the film, “This
Is Not A Film redeems the
welt-worn cliché that modern art should be largely concerned with
the condition of its own making. Not that it is a straightfoward
recording; although the action appears to unfold on the noisy eve of
the Persian New Year, which coincides with the first anniversary of
Panahi's arrest, it was actually shot over a ten-day period, and
hence is nonsequential." Sure to anger some real-time
appreciating purists and bring confirmation to the non-budging
skeptics, this production information is sure to prove worrisome to a
number of viewers. Returning to Aufderheide's belief that
documentaries should show off “claims of truthfulness,” Panahi's
no frills presentation would seem misleading. Fireworks Wednesday
plays a memorable role in the documentary, with sounds of evasive
blasts and deadening explosions harkening back to familiar sounds of
warfare and innocent causalities.
This
Is Not A Film would appear to
take place almost completely on this single day, and the film
provides viewers with basic narrative information which seems placed
for them to assume as much. We start the film early in the morning as
the fireworks are heard in the distance. We conclude with the sun
having gone down hours ago, people still actively starting fires and
lighting fireworks to soar beautifully across the sky, some right
past Panahi's high-rise apartment. His family has yet to return home
from his mother's. Once his friend grows tired and promises to
contact the director tomorrow, Panahi is saddened to see him go.
During their goodbyes, Panahi encounters the custodian, directing the
work towards an extended, one shot sequence which concludes the film.
And yet, while we are viewing pieces of a day in chronological order
(sun up, sun down), we are not being shown pieces of the same day in
the order in which they necessarily occurred. As A.O. Scott of The
New York Times wrote in relation to the film, “cinema is both a
transparent lens and a distorting mirror, and using it as a tool to
examine the facts of human existence makes it possible to take any of
those facts for granted."
Panahi
is very upfront about his unwavering need to tell stories, and
ironically This Is Not A Film
allows him to put forth another. Billed as a documentary, the filming
of the movie was planned out and did indeed take more than the
alleged twelve or so hours to shoot. There are also some questions
about the phone calls he receives, calls which would appear in
retrospect to be dishonestly portrayed, as they too imply the passing
of a single day. Did Panahi request that they call at specific times
or did he place the phone calls in key scenes by means of undetected
jump-cuts? Certainly going for a day in the life narrative
rather than a fragmented week of careful maneuvering, Panahi
creatively uses style to enhance content.
The
documentary also cleverly finds a way to incorporate a series of
recurring characters, the most humorous being that of a woman living
in the building with her obnoxiously loud and confrontational canine.
Attempting to find a way to celebrate Fireworks Wednesday in person,
the woman — never seen, only heard — pleads with Panahi to watch
her dog for a few hours in his apartment. She is relentless. The
director eventually agrees, but he is quick to change his mind before
she heads off to party. As the evening wears on and the woman remains
determined to persuade an unlucky sap to play babysitter, she asks
the custodian for help as he comes to collect her trash. When we hear
her voice in the second encounter, our vision restricted to Panahi's
camera in the elevator, we laugh out of habit. Here is this poor
woman who will stop at nothing to get out of the apartment; in an
ironic twist, her dog appears to have sentenced her to house arrest
as well. Were the two scenes involving this woman staged or
predetermined? Did Panahi, ever the notorious celebrity in the
complex, get his actors from within his confined space? Although one
can never be completely sure, her reemergence towards the conclusion
of This Is Not A Film
reinforces the concept of a seamlessly twenty-four hour or less
constructed narrative. She is a welcomed inclusion of comic relief
and her presence opens up the film to include a life outside of the
Panahi family apartment (although not outside of the apartment
building).
The reason Panahi
opts out of looking after the dog is because its unlimited energy
frightens the Panahi family iguana, another character which seems to
represent an entity restricted to a limited environment. Quite often,
dialogue scenes involving Panahi and his friend are intercut with
footage of the lizard, climbing up a tall bookcase and making the
most with the little it has (one of the film's key themes). It too
longs for companionship; as Panahi checks his laptop, the creature
climbs up on the couch and onto its master. As its nails dig deep
into Panahi and the director pushes him off, the pet simply lays
perched on the couch beside to him. The two seem to bond over the day
as Panahi develops a sense of solace with the creature. Being fed
over old head-shots of famous actors like Charlie Chaplin and Al
Pacino, the iguana represents less of a burden than a sense of
momentary peace.
In allowing itself to be more personal,
This Is Not A Film also indulges in the technicalities. In his
review for The Wall Street Journal, critic Joe Morgenstern touched on
one of the documentary's most revealing and deeply reflexive
sequences. “On a brighter note,” Morgenstern wrote, “Mr. Panahi
talks about how actors —
especially nonprofessional actors — can steer a film in unexpected
directions; he makes the point with clips from his own features." David Edelstein of New York Magazine further
describes, “....Panahi plays DVDs of his other films to show where
an actor’s instincts took over or the location, he says, became the
director. Now he has no actors, no locations that interest him." Ignoring Edelstein's interpretations of the film for a
moment, this sequence nicely serves as another form of documentary,
that of the historical overview, a retrospective of an artist's
documented oeuvre. As Panahi uses DVD copies of his film to reflect,
reanalyze, and reminisce, he is also shining light on his current
feature. One scene which Panahi chooses to play involves a woman
running frantically out of a building. Pausing it, the director notes
that the vertical lines of the wall surrounding the woman do all all
the acting for her. In another, he speaks about the happy accidents
that occur unexpectedly by casting the right people. Filmmakers can
take a person or space's individuality and incorporate it into the
narrative, and Panahi's admission seems to stand, according to the
filmmaker, for all of his work. It certainly doesn't seem to imply
that he not longer has “locations that interest him.” If
anything, his current location has inspired this latest venture and
has forced him to incorporate a number of mediums into the result.
Even detractors of the film would be hard-pressed to downplay the
significance of its mise en scene.
The line between fiction and reality
has a right to be blurred in This Is Not A Film, as the
documentary is essentially grounded in truth and wishes to show the
confined space in which Panahi is held. It creates a story out of
being unallowed to tell one. By showing a man going through the
motions, often unhappily reliant on others, Panahi is consciously
contextualizing his situation, at one point informing us that his
screenplay is based on a work by Anton Chekhov. A terrible
opportunity but an opportunity nonetheless (and with several plot
elements not withstanding), Panahi's documentary faced serious
consequence — in a bit of trivia
that is becoming rather widespread in film circles, This Is
Not A Film was transported out
of Iran via a USB device placed inside a birthday cake. Alerting his
readers to the fact that the controversy had yet to die down, Richard
Brody of The New Yorker recently wrote that “the entire movie is an
expression of freedom, and, as you watch it, you sense it will lead
to more trouble for both Panahi and his friend (and it did:
Mirtahmasb was jailed for three months and is currently out on bail." And even though the film implies that Panahi is well aware
of the overwhelming support he has received from notable directors in
the United States (and that the support could pressure the government
into taking time off of his sentence), the director's nervousness is
palpable. By making this new film, or video essay, or digital
document, Panahi's creation is, if a stunt, one with purpose and
gravitas.
It
should come as no surprise that much has been written about the
film's mysterious title, its various meanings providing critics with
the the daunting task of placing a genre label on the film, and thus
what is required from it. Here is a film which purposefully invites
rather than defies description. It is a documentary that may remind
some of Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North
for its retelling of realistic situations and Banksy's Exit
Through The Gift Shop for its
playfulness of the real. Is it a coincidence that on the corner of
Panahi's DVD shelf stands Rodrigo Cortes' Buried,
a one-location film about a man trapped inside a claustrophobic
wooden box possessing nothing more than a barely working cell phone?
The character in Buried
had the extra disadvantage of having been buried under feet of soil,
his reach of the outside world even more dim. At the end of that
film, right before the weight of the dirt above him proves too
drastic and takes his life, the man sends out a video message to the
media using the cellphone, a last ditch effort to remind the world
that he exists. Jafar Panahi's This Is Not A Film may
have served a similar reason for being.
No comments:
Post a Comment