Did you like the documentary feel of this film? Panahi talks a lot in the special feature section of the DVD about how it was made and why the documentary "style" was important to him. One thing he said that I found very interesting was that all his movies are oriented toward public life, with a preponderance of street shots, because women cannot be filmed in domestic settings without the hijab, even if they are alone in the house with their family or sleeping or in some other situation where it would not be illegal for them to have their hair uncovered. Panahi refuses to film "a lie," so he reoriented himself and his cameras artistically. Similarly, the women at the game could not actually see the game, so in an effort to align himself with their point of view, the movie contained no game shots except for what the women themselves could see (on the way to the bathroom, for example, or on the TV on the street). To make this movie he had to present it to the Iranian film authorities as something other than what it was. His crew submitted a fake script and the authorities did not know of his involvement in the project until very late in the day. He used a very small camera, not a 35 mm, so he would blend in at the stadium with news reporters. His film was largely made in real time. Most of the stadium shots were from the actual game, as was the celebration shot at the end, and he did not know the outcome of the film until the game was over. He also noted that the movie is the same length as a soccer game. ... Did all this work for you? Or would you have preferred something a little more featurey and less documentary?
5 comments:
The documentary feel wasn’t so bad. But I’m guessing that the restraints on filming kept him from doing multiple takes, which was unfortunate. And much of the acting was rather self-conscious and wooden and didn’t fit the documentary feel at all.
Panahi didn't use professional actors. He talks about this extensively on the DVD extras. These were all just real people. He thought using actors would introduce an element of "falseness" that would counter the documentary feel. I think the people in the film did a fine job playing their "roles." Some of it was damn fine when you consider they had no training whatsoever but were just receiving direction on the spot from Panahi.
I think this was just inexpressibly brilliant, because he could not make an actual documentary about this issue in Iran. He could not make a documentary that appeared to be in real-time, that had that immediacy. So he told the authorities he was making a film about some young men at this soccer match, and submitted a script to the censors to that effect, then he gathered all these people off the street and in the stadium and made this! And he couldn't even release this movie in Iran. But it became wildly popular anyway, circulating through private households all over the country on blackmarket recordings.
He thought using actors would introduce an element of "falseness" that would counter the documentary feel.
Precisely the opposite is true. Non-actors trying to act gives a much greater feeling of falseness than using good actors who can be true to the characters. That's why I said the self-conscious, wooden acting didn't fit the documentary feel. Because of the poor actng, it didn't have a documentary feel, it had a bad movie feel.
I was greatly impressed by the sense of realism in the film, and for that, the acting had to be a seamless aspect of the experience. I would have to agree with kc, and I think the best results were achieved by using real people responding in the natural way that they did.
I thought a couple of the actors had reactions that seemed natural, but I thought most of them did not.
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