Greg Ng
The Pundit 2006 Reviews »
Film-maker Jafar Panahi’s The Circle is a bleak but beautifully rendered account of life for a group of women in Tehran. Beginning in darkness, the audience hears the agonised sounds of a woman in some kind of distress. It is only when we hear the cry of a newborn that it’s clear her wails have emanated from childbirth, not some form of inflicted cruelty.
However, the mother’s circumscribed world is immediately apparent’the hospital seems unusually restricted and an elderly woman, waiting outside the door, is dismayed to learn that the newborn …
The Pundit 2006 Reviews »
I must admit, I was taken by the notion of the supposedly edgy, unflinching portrait of Copenhagen’s ‘seedy underbelly’ that Pusher purports to be. I’m a sucker like that’I’ll usually go to see a film based on such a description. But I’m thinking that maybe those days are over.
Pusher was a clich‚àöÔøΩ riddled nothing. There were moments of humour’I had a few chuckles’but they were infrequent enough to make the film seem confused, as though it didn’t know what it wanted to be.
I can’t help but think that Danish director …
The Pundit 2006 Articles »
You went through the revolution in 1979. You must have seen a lot of changes in Iranian society then. For such a sensitive observer, that must have had a great impact on you.
At the time of the revolution I was 18-years-old. I was one of those who came to the streets and participated in the demonstrations that would lead the schools to closure. We thought then that we were achieving a great goal. We were nae’ve of the fact that any revolution in the world that is ideology-based can lead …
The Pundit 2006 Reviews »
Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s 2003 follow up to The Circle is another exploration of the pressures and limitations that come to bear upon individuals in modern society. Panahi’s recurring motif of the circle’that which circumscribes, limits and defines’is once again applied in a poetic depiction of life for ordinary Iranians.
The opening scene is dramatic and tense, made all the more so for Panahi’s clever visual constructs’we are treated to frames within frames, often bearing witness to multiple points of view, both foregrounded and backgrounded, adding complexity and subtlety to his …
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