Cortinas Fechadas

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

I saw this film at the Berlinale 2013 film festival, as part of the official Competition section. In October 2011 I saw a predecessor "This Is Not A Film" in the Ghent film festival 2011, made by the same film maker under very constraining circumstances, among which a pending 6 years prison sentence, plus a 20 years ban on making films. In spite of some reviewers who found that one a bit boring, I was positively surprised that someone was able to make a compelling film within the confines of a single apartment. Nothing much happened but still enough to maintain my attention span, and more importantly forced me to think about judicial systems in some countries where I don't really want to live.

Given that, I may have expected too much and must admit my disappointment in "Closed Curtain". Nevertheless, the first ¾ hour was promising. It pulled you in the story at once, as per the outline in the synopsis on the festival website, in which situation anything can happen.

Our main character had every reason to hide, and particularly the dog he owned. These reasons were very obvious, clearly demonstrated on a TV program where we saw what happened with dogs, being declared contraband by the regime, showing that harsh measures were taken to kill them all.

The intruding couple was hence not very welcome. But he could not send them away either, apparently also on the run like himself. The "brother" half of the couple disappeared after a while, promising to come back soon, and he got stuck with a woman he knew nothing about. She could be a spy or have an otherwise hidden agenda, especially when she started talking about "having made reports about people like you" (but immediately lowered the tension, by stating it was her former job). For what reason she was on the run, did not become clear. Same applies to her "brother" who disappeared shortly after their intrusion.

Suddenly, after an hour, we find ourselves in a frame story, aforementioned two people now becoming just actors in a play. At that moment, I lost track of what the film maker was trying to get across. The Berlinale website links to a press conference, where was mentioned that he had trouble writing scripts, which was his reason to hide in the remote villa in an attempt to get some progress. He had good ideas but could not put these on paper. But (as per the press conference) the intention of the frame story was to serve as a vehicle to visualize the screenplay, rather than putting it in words, something he always had trouble with.

As a take away, I heard a notable dialog with a friendly neighbor, who says "There is more to life than work There are other things too." His response: "Yes, but those things are foreign to me." In a nutshell, this speaks volumes about the drive of this film maker, who continues with making films against all odds and defying all constraining circumstances.

All in all, I understand that many of us feel with film makers and other creative people who have to work under conditions unlike in our Western nations. This I see reflected in most other reviews and articles about this film. But still, though I found "This Is Not A Film" surprisingly full of content, contrary to many reviews I've seen at the time, this "Closed Curtain" one left me stuck in the middle, after a compelling ¾ hour that demonstrated very well how people live in a suppressed country. But a script writer with a writer's block as a subject does not appeal enough to fill the rest of the running time. I may have missed an important clue, however. That must be the case, since this film received a Silver Bear award for best script from the 2013 Berlinale International jury.

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.

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)

Pull the curtains, hide yourself, don't open the door, be afraid, you are being watched! A real portrail of a what it is like, when you are imprisoned. Panahi, wisely avoids making the movie overly political, thus letting all of us able to relate. No matter the issue in your life, fear locks you up. And it is fear to blame not the outside world. Sometimes we need an intruder to break us free, so that we can tear the curtains apart. Panahi, in line with the artistic tradition chooses a woman to be the bearer of liberty.