The Circle Critical Analysis - Movie Review Example

The film The Circle is one of those films that leave a lasting impression on its audience. It pops up casually, again and again, as the viewer continues with his or her life. After all, if the viewer has the luxury of watching a movie at all, her situation is probably much better than those of the women featured in the film. Those women are hard to forget. This film won the Golden Lion Prize at the 2000 Venice Film Festival and was on Time Magazine's top ten list for international films. Printed reviews are astounding in their praise for this enlightening look at the plight of women in Iran. The images and sounds are equally pitiful and terrifying for the viewer. In quick summary, the movie begins with a miraculous event- the birth of a child. Unfortunately, the joy never follows because the child is a girl, even though the doctors told the family it would be a boy. Then the viewers meet Arezou and Nargess who have escaped from prison. They try to find their way to what they hope might be a country paradise. Another woman, Pari, is pregnant, but since her husband has been executed, she cannot get approval for an abortion. She is trying desperately to get one anyway. Yet another woman is trying to abandon her young daughter with the hopes that another family will take pity on her and give her a happy home. A prostitute, a luckily remarried woman, and a woman whose husband remarried while she was in prison round out the cast. It should be noted that the cast was not one of Hollywood starts, but of real Middle Eastern women. This lends a feel of authenticity and reality to the film. All of the women in director Jafar Panahi's film suffer from two things: their gender and their marital status. Single females in Iran are open to torturous and demeaning treatment every day. Their dress, travel, work, and hobbies are all subject to male approval. Their struggles are incomprehensible to women in the western world who alternate between voicing dismay at their plight and conveniently avoiding it. For these reasons. Panahi's film stings so deeply into the cores of viewers everywhere, especially women. Western society cannot understand, let alone justify, these treatments of women. Fortunately, two Middle Eastern women can provide explanations about the substance of this film as it relates to life for women in Tehran and the Middle East as a whole. Suad Joseph is currently a Professor of Anthropology of Women and Gender Studies and the Director of Middle East/South Asia Studies at the University of California at Davis. She is a native of Lebanon and has spent years researching women, family and children in her native land. Her research focuses on their concepts of self, citizenship and rights. She has written several books on the subject including Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East and Intimate Selving in Arab Families. She is the founder of the Association for Middle East Women Studies and of four American universities in the Middle East. Shemeem Burney Abbas is a native of Saudi Arabia. She has taught at colleges in both Islamabad and in Texas. She spent the years from 1987 to 1992 at the University of Austin in Texas and then at the Allama Iqbal Open University in Islamabad from 1992-1999 and then again from 2002-2003. She has given lecture of her article "The Female Voices in Sufi Ritual: An Ethnography of Speaking at the University of Texas, the University of North Carolina, Duke University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. She currently holds a Ph.D. in English Language. According to Joseph, in Gender Citizenship in the Middle East, an examination of the legal documents related to citizenship has revealed that citizenship is extremely gendered in all arenas, particularly the political, economic and cultural. Joseph argues that the struggle for women to gain a sense of self and identity through citizenship has been compromised by the nations' struggles for identity themselves. The nations of the Middle East, on the one hand, possess a fierce desire for nationalism, which seems to need the female gender as its universal, rallying cry. Terms such as the "motherland" and "mother earth" perpetuate the idea of the female as a symbol, or icon, for the very essence of the nation. On the other hand, the individual states, composed, at times, of several groups of individuals who may or may not share a common political or ethnic background are focused on the strength and stability of a patriarchal society and strict obedience to that framework (Joseph). This conflict ensnares the woman in the middle of a male conflict. In the following excerpt, Joseph suggests that the use of the female gender as a symbol of the nation leads to the state's view of them as in need of strict control, as synonymous with the boundaries of the states themselves: "The bodies and behaviors of women have become critical frames for weaving together national tapestries for people who are highly diverse-explosively divided by 'national' religious, ethnic, tribal, linguistic, regional and class differences.The iconic category of 'woman' as a stand in for 'nation,' throughout the region, has been deployed oppositionally to mark 'national' boundaries. Across the area, the usage of 'woman' has meant the imposition of forms of bodily discipline and behavioral control on 'women,' in the name of the nation, in the name of liberation and progress, and in the name of God" (Joseph 6). As a result, the film The Circle reveals the result of this gendering. The women who are married in the film are happy and lucky. They are the mothers that the nation sees as a symbol. The viewers see this most clearly in the scene in which Pari meets again with Elham. Elham has remarried and become a nurse. She refuses to help her friend get an abortion out of fear that she will risk her new marriage. Elham seems to forget her previous struggles which had landed her in prison with Pari earlier. Beyond this, the treatment of the women throughout the film speaks for itself. The state of Tehran must control the women by dictating nearly all areas of their lives. They must have a male escort while traveling; they can't even smoke in public. The fact that all of the women have been in prison (though their crimes are never revealed, indicates that these ultra strict boundaries are punishable by law. Only the prostitute with her rosy red lipstick and dangling cigarette seems to be establish an "in your face" sense of identity. However, he end result does not differ from the other five women, indicating her failure to escape along with all of the other featured women. Even though Joseph argues that the Middle Eastern idea of family and kinship care and respect women more than most Western societies, which she terms as 'individualistic,' the film seems to suggest that once a women is removed from the home she is no longer eligible to receive this support. An example would be the woman who is trying to abandon her little girl. She knows that her daughter will be safe and happy in a family and that she cannot provide that family. Because the girl is young, the mother has hope that a family will take her in and raise her. When Pari attempts to return to her own home, her father refuses to allow her in. Next, the viewer witness a scene in which Pari must escape from her own brothers who attempt to turn her in to the authorities. Clearly, the respect and love within the family circle has its boundaries; women outside of this circle are not included. In fact, the circle seems to have two different symbolic meanings in this film. In inner circle of the family is safe and nurturing, but the outer circle represents the rigid boundaries for behavior and even identity for women, especially single women. In spite of the bleak outlook for women presented in the film, Shemeem Burney Abbas presents the value of women in the Middle Eastern Sufi culture in her book, The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India. The Sufi culture is derived from Islam and is referred to as a mystic tradition of Islam. Sufis focus more on spiritual truths through mystic practices of singing, poetry and dancing that are based on God's divine love (Abbas, 2002). Abbas says that Sufism has become extremely important to Middle Eastern women because its practice gives them an opportunity to become central figures in religious practices. She says, "In the Islamic world, the mosque is primarily an arena for male activity, with little visible participation of women in the rituals. In the major mosques in Pakistan, for instance, there is a small space where women can go and pray on Friday or on religious festivals such as the Eid. In the local mohalla mosques there is no possibility for a female to offer her ritual prayers. The domain is exclusively for male participation. Thus, the important spheres of religious and spiritual participation for women are the Sufi shrines. There, their input is visible and they are significant participants in events" (Abbas, preface). Abbas argues that the presence of women is important to Sufi Islam because of their contributions as singers, musicians and poets. She is attempting to battle the Western misconceptions of Islam as a male-dominated religious by introducing the readers to a part of the religious Sufi culture that celebrates and elevates women. After all, as Abbas says, Sufism is almost completely unknown in the Western world (Abbas). While she may, indeed, be right, the beautiful world of song, dancing and poetry, if anything, contrasts with the images presented in the movie. For example, the only scenes of music and dancing, particularly the wedding scene observed by the young girl, are, once again, reserved for those women safely ensconced in the family unit. The feeling of the viewer is not joy at the ritual, but sadness for the young girl, as he or she realizes that this child seems to be doomed to a life without that joy and security. Had Abbas been involved in the making of this film, she surely would have attempted to insert more positive scenes of the contributions of women to Sufism. However, Abbas was not involved in the film. The female voice she speaks of is drowned in the images presented by Jafar Panahi. Clearly his purpose was not to celebrate women's advancement in this one small segment of Islamic practice, but to almost indict Iran on its treatment of all women, particularly those on their own. This film does elevate the plight of women to a level of scrutiny and inquiry that may lead to a change for them. The use of the circle metaphor contrasts brilliantly with more contemporary, and happy, ideas. For example, the circle of the wedding ring reinforces the idea that women are only safe and respected within the bounds of family and subject to the approval of the males in the family. The broader circle of containment subjected upon all women is continuously apparent, especially at the end of the film when the viewer fully understands that none of the women will have a 'happy ending.' For that reason, Iranian officials sought to block this film from showing in Iran. Because of its international status, lack of a big star name, and limited release, not as many Americans saw it. This is unfortunate. The world will have to wait and see. . References Abbas, Shemeem Burney. The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2002 Joseph, Suad, Ed. Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000 Wikipedia online encyclopedia used for background information on Joseph, Abbas, and Sufism. Read More