The masterful subtlety found in 2011’s A Separation was completely elided in 2012’s documentary This is Not a Film. In the commercial sense, the title is accurate. There is no arc. There is no closure. There are no twists or turns. And, legally, it’s not a film, but it lands like a sledgehammer.
On the surface, Iranian writer and director Jafar Panahi is the victim of Iranian politics. Under what appears to be house arrest, Panahi is banned for twenty years from screenwriting, acting, directing, and giving interviews about his films. While the decision is currently under appeal, we see Panahi wander from room to room of his flat and carry on ambiguous conversations with his lawyer, who twice emphasizes that his sentence is “political not legal.”
We saw shades of this in A Separation when Hajjat and Simin’s divorce is caught in bureaucratic limbo, being levied much more by religious rigor than anything rational.
And we see it here as Panahi reads from the screenplay for which he was arrested, his cameras and film confiscated, and his punishment imposed. The film in suspicion is titled Mirror, and it tells the tumultuous story of a girl and her struggle in Iranian society.
I could take some time to discuss the gravity of events in the film and discuss why it should or shouldn’t be banned. I could talk about the restrictions on and censorship of Iranian cinema, but This is not a Film caused me to think less about Panahi’s troubles (which are, unequivocally unfair) and more about how we treat our own cinema.
First off, it’s impossible to make this a blanket statement, so I in no way intend to castigate all filmmakers or their works.
At the same time, there seems to be a paucity of politically charged cinema. And, when there is, it is often overlooked – not necessarily by audiences, but by academies, guilds, and organizations that deem them worthy by handing out golden carrots.
In 2011, A Separation was one of the best films, and it was honored with the award for Best Foreign Language film. Take Shelter, a film about schizophrenia and fearing the Earth, was snubbed; the beautiful Tree of Life, about child rearing and sanctioned violence, was overlooked; as was Midnight in Paris, which – despite its saccharine comedy – was about revisionist history and the dwindling supply of American artists and auteurs.
While 2011 will probably not be considered a banner year for films, the most politically charged cinematic releases were overlooked in favor of the cutest film of the year, The Artist. My intent here is not to degrade The Artist. It’s cute; it made me smile; I never really need to watch it again; and, it’s a fine way to lift the spirits of those who were at the death rattle of the recent recession – much like Slumdog Millionaire was a fine fairy tale to help everyone momentarily forget about the sudden stock market and housing crash. But, it certainly wasn’t the best anything.
The same might be said for 2012. Granted, there were a number of better films this year, but The Master and Zero Dark Thirty (the two most socially and politically incendiary) were left high and dry. Moonrise Kingdom, this year’s Midnight in Paris, was equally overlooked in its examination of bureaucracy, cultural meaninglessness, and madness. As was Silver Linings Playbook. While the comedic moments of the film might detract from its gravity, Russell’s film took an unblinking look at coping with mental health issues, both public and private.
This is not necessarily a knock on Argo. It’s a solid film, but it’s safe. It’s well-directed and tense, but – despite its coincidental setting in Iran in 1980 – it is surprisingly uncontroversial and apolitical. A more important film with a similar subject matter would be Zero Dark Thirty, but this film fell prey to its polarizing subject matter.
This brings us back to This is Not a Film, a documentary inspired by the Iranian government’s reaction to polarizing / taboo subject matter. Admittedly, Kathryn Bigelow’s cameras weren’t confiscated; however, up until the Academy Awards, John McCain and his ilk were investigating the validity of the source material and launching investigations into both Bigelow and writer Mark Boal. And The Master suffered from its apparent criticism of Scientology.
We are not Iran. I’m not trying to suggest that we are.
However, the lauding of safe movies and our infatuation with reality television echo Panahi’s plight. Take the wealth of reality television that occupies networks. It is reality only in the sense that the players are relatively unknown. But a one hour program (forty-four minutes minus commercials) is the result of an edited 168 hours, or 10,080 minutes. Each show is crafted to limn some sort of arc, some sort of hero, some sort of villain, no matter how manufactured or fabricated.
Our concept of reality has been cleverly altered to crave melodrama, not reality in its basest, or least hyped, sense. The same goes for the movies we fawn over – or at least, the ones that receive the highest acclaim. Even Argo, a film based on a real event, was sanitized and whitewashed of political controversy, leaving a fine, tense journey through airport security. I’m glad the Americans got out; I’m intrigued by the scheme that broke them free; I am not convinced that it went so seamlessly and politically smooth.
This is Not a Film is a statement that embodies the truest form of reality television. We watch Panahi move about his flat. We watch him take an elevator, and we watch him interact. And in this, we find satire, condemnation, and commentary on an obstructive, pervasive government.
In the end, we’re left wondering of closure. We’re left digging for an arc. We’re left wondering what we saw. Much like we did with The Master. Both were overlooked, and both were more akin to reality than those that garnered statuettes and high IMDB ratings.
