Pardeh

Closed Curtain ("The Movie") unrolls tactfully an intramingled flow of mind games and the real scenario of the director in an ingenious sense that the audience is highly confused to recognise this bilayer of plot line.

It surprisingly bundles the audience up with the feeling of being lost in a labyrinth within the overwhelming atmosphere of sanctions imposed by the oppressing political regime reigning in Persia. Walking hypnotizedly to the rough Caspian Sea may be a sarcastic symbol to yearn for salvation; the movie, however, leaves the audience with an open question of whether the events virtually happened when they watch the final scenes of the movie which are almost alike with the ones in the opening scene.

I knew from This Is Not A Film that Jafar Panahi is not an ordinary filmmaker. Maybe he was beforehand, but at least now is different. He bends the lines between fiction and documentary in a way I've never seen before, in both artistic and expositional ways. The first 15 minutes of Closed Curtain is some of the most expressionistic filmmaking of the year as co-director Kambuzia Partovi silently closes curtains symbolising the oppressive isolation, physically and mentally, Panahi must feel under house arrest. Unfortunately, the film stumbles in the introduce of drama. There's little believable in the execution of the young criminal couple who disrupt the writer. Then it takes a really interesting turn. The way Panahi manifests the difference between this fictional story and his own pathos is fascinating and crushing. If it didn't have that emotional frustration to it, and recursion that his own writing is being disrupted, then it wouldn't work. Clunkiness in the filmmaking and ambiguity in certain sequences leave it feeling incomplete but Closed Curtain certainly meets This Is Not A Film's match when it comes to unexpected thoughtfulness.

7/10

Riveting first half. Surrealist, indulgent, narcissistic second half. A lovely "dog-film" (first half).

It is possible that writer/director/actor Kambuzia Partovi contributed more to the first half.

Beautiful actress Maryam Moqadam gives a noteworthy performance.

Panahi has talent. But there is an element of disbelief that exudes from most of his interesting projects. (Dogs on the open beach in daylight at the end of the film, which contradicts earlier statements.)

While the situation Panahi currently is living by, is crazy at least and not worthy of a man of his class (considering his movie about women and soccer/football a few years ago), him trying to make a movie about it (even though he actually isn't allowed to, which in itself does not make any sense) does not entirely succeed. At least that is how I felt about it, but others seem to have found things they liked.

And I hope the rating represents what people feel about the movie and is not just a support for Panahi. I'm pretty sure there are better ways to show that. Although showing this movie at the Berlin Film Festival hopefully did help him rather than brought him into a situation where he might have more to worry about. Whatever the case, the movie starts off with one thing and goes off into another direction. And while the mind can be deceiving like that and it's obviously a metaphor (story-wise and framing wise), this doesn't succeed to pull you in (if you excuse the pun)

Like the other review on this film's page said, the first half is exquisite. In fact, it changed tones so much that at one point I had to check that I was actually seeing the same film. The performances are fine, no doubt, but there's really something to be said about how the script is structured and ultimately sort of collapses on itself. As seen by my rating here, I don't dislike the film completely. No, it has too much ambition for that, and the first half is fine, but it's extremely disappointing where it goes in its second half and instead just becomes a middling, ho-hum tale that seems to be stalled in no knowing where it really wants to go. What a shame indeed.