Nov 9, 2019
Hi everyone!
Welcome back for our second entry in Under the Kanopy, a new series of films exploring the critically acclaimed, if not commercially successful offerings on Kanopy, a library-funded streaming service. All you need is a library card at a participating library, and you’ll get access to stream up to six movies per month free from some of the better independent distributors, like A24, Kino Lorber, and more...
Today’s film is from the Iranian film scene, and better yet, focuses on the lives of three Iranian actresses – one before the Iranian Revolution, one currently starring in Iranian cinema, and an aspiring young woman who wants to be an actress. It’s a wonderful prism to explore both the Iranian film scene, and female representations within that scene. The only other film partially funded by the Iranian film scene we’ve covered is “The Other Side of the Wind” (Episode #310), Orson Welles’ lost work that was recently reacquired from the producers and distributed by Netflix. However, don’t miss Jafar Panahi’s “Taxi”, his previous feature-length film, or Ava Lily Amanpour’s Iranian Vampire Western “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night”. Both are top quality!
You know what else is top quality? The BiCurean podcast, starring Aicila and Erik, who cover a host of topics from new and old perspectives. We’ll be playing their promo before the review, but be sure to check out their guest review of “It Follows” (Episode #608) as part of Reign of Terror 2019. I certainly appreciated their sage wisdom and guidance.
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Here we go!
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Today’s movie is “3 Faces”, the Iranian drama directed by Jafar Panahi and written for the screen in collaboration with Nader Saeivar. The film follows semi-fictionalized versions of Iranian actress Behnaz Jafari and director Jafar Panahi, who venture into the Iranian countryside after receiving a suicide video from an aspiring actress named Marziyeh (Marziyeh Rezaei). However, once they arrive in the area, they find it’s not as easy to leave.
No spoilers.
One of the drawbacks of living in any one country is the extent to which propaganda can affect the way we look at other countries, particularly those the people in power do not consider allies. Anyone who has studied history knows the power of that propaganda, especially efforts to simplify or stereotype countries, and by extension their citizens. As someone who has lived in the Unites States, one of those countries that faces this propaganda is Iran, which dates back to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when the Shah backed by Western countries and corporations was thrown out of power by a popular uprising, which later installed a quasi-theocracy, and decades of strained relations with the United States. It also created a huge diaspora of Iranians across the world, with their own feelings and impressions of Iran then and now.
Of course, the revolution was forty years ago, and Iran has changed a great deal since then, even if their relationship to our government has not. One of my favorite news segments in recent memory was when “The Daily Show” sent Jason Jones to see what life was like in Iran. Turns out it’s a great deal like the United States. The economy is divided by class. Religion has a moderate influence on society and government. The people are quite diverse, with a spectrum of opinions on their society and the world, with divisions between urban and rural life, traditional versus modern ideas. And women are still trying to catch up in society, often against their male counterparts and conservative interpretations of religious dogma. Propaganda teaches us the differences between our countries, but filmmaking can help us cut out the governmental middleman to help us understand each other on a human level. Which is what Jafar Panahi has been doing for years.
Jafar Panahi has been giving us his unique perspective on Iranian life, associated with the Iranian New Wave movement, which straddles the Iranian Revolution in terms of timeline. Panahi is no stranger to his country, conscripted into the Iranian army, working as a cinematographer developing films, and eventually enrolling in film school after finishing his service. He worked as an assistant director for his mentor before his 1995 debut feature film, “The White Balloon”, winning multiple awards and beginning his overt oversight by the Iranian government. With each success, and with each poke or prod at the government, Panahi became more and more restricted in his activities, until eventually going to prison for his convictions in 2010. And for those that remember, a huge outpouring of support from the international filmmaking community followed.
All of this prelude is to establish Panahi as someone who understands his country, on multiple levels, and knows how to work within the various restrictions placed upon him throughout his career. While imprisoned, and banned from making films, he produced “This is Not a Film”, smuggled out on a flash drive in a cake. After given more leeway, he has continued to work within any restrictions placed upon him, developing semi-experimental, semi-autobiographical films that both document and challenge Iranian society. His previous feature, “Jafar Panahi’s Taxi” tells a wide-ranging story from his vehicle, on a decidedly pedestrian level. And with “3 Faces”, Panahi takes parts of the same approach for a different kind of tale with the same unique perspective.
Panahi’s style in his later work, incorporating himself and quasi-real life characters, reminds me a great deal of Jonas Carpignano’s small shared-universe of films, the most recent of which was “A Ciambra”. Film actors are pulled from existing communities, playing characters surprisingly close to themselves. “3 Faces” uses this quasi-real casting to tell a story that looks at the rural vs. urban, male vs. female experience, using a great deal of steady-cam and fixed-cam shots that capture unique perspectives and vistas. And as in “Taxi”, we find the car windows often act as frames for the stories to be told. Longer scenes play out, letting scenes and characters breathe, devoid of almost all jump cuts.
Jafar Panahi plays himself, in a surprisingly similar role to “Taxi”, but so also does Behnaz Jafari, an Iranian actress playing herself, the middle of the three faces we examine in this film. So too does Marziyeh Rezaei, whose first acting credit is this film, but hopefully not her last. Each actress acts as a generational view of women in Iranian society, with the woman we never see representing those silenced much like Panahi, although usually to greater extents. We also get to see all the weird gendered double standards on display, similar to many double standards in western society. The story works so well that it not only documents Iranian society in very honest ways, but also points out the cracks that will bring future changes.
“3 Faces” is the fourth film from Jafar Panahi, after he was banned from filmmaking in 2010, and is a meditation on different generations of women in Iranian filmmaking. Using his unique style, and his unique perspective, Panahi delivers an insightful and thought-provoking film beyond state propaganda, and on an exceedingly human level. Fans of independent cinema, or folks looking for a peek into Iran without governmental filters, should definitely check out this film.
Rotten Tomatoes: 98% (CERTIFIED FRESH)
Metacritic: 78
One Movie Punch: 9.4/10
“3 Faces” (2018) is not rated and is currently playing on Kanopy.