This Is Not a Review of “This Is Not a Film”

This Is Not a Film, the 2011 documentary by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, recently and belatedly worked its way to the top of my Netflix queue. The film was smuggled out of Iran for submission to the 2011 Cannes Film Festival before Panahi’s six-year prison sentence and 20-year ban from filmmaking was upheld late that year. The film has gained prominence as a portrait of artistic censorship and a peek through an iPhone behind the Iranian curtain. It is both, and more. Anyone interested in watching a creative intelligence imagine its way around constraints to tell a story will find this compelling on an purely artistic level. Add in the politics, however, and it is impossible not to draw parallels with between life in today’s America and the small window the film provides on today’s Tehran. It is surprising how many parallels there are.

In the film’s opening moments, Panahi speaks to his lawyer on his iPhone about his appeal, which was in progress at the time of filming. His attorney sees a reduction in his sentence as likely, but jail time as unavoidable – setting the tone for the film as a portrait of the director’s idleness and captivity. Pahlavi explains that since he is prevented from shooting his next film, he will “tell” scenes from it himself. He even marks out a small set; a section of his capacious living room stands in for his protagonists’ entire house. Stripped of his formal filmmaking powers, Panahi resorts to storytelling. The initial impression is some kind of one-man Canterbury Tale for the digital age, and Panahi’s quiet, steady determination and command of his subject comes through. The segments are a reminder of everything modern film is not: not only are there no car chases, shootouts or busy jump cuts to stimulate the viewer, we – the audience – must participate in his work. The director is only sketching an outline; we must fill it in. An act of political protest, in this way, at the same time becomes an effort to reintroduce a simpler type of filmmaking with potent narrative power.

Much has been made of the fact that Panahi filmed parts of This is Not a Film on his iPhone. It becomes a supporting character in the film as a much as a medium. When you tally up the amount of time Panahi spends holding it, speaking into it, and sitting before his iBook, it’s clear that Iran sets loopholes in its anti-Americanism large enough for Apple to pass through. The technique is not intrusive, but it does have the unintended side effect of drawing attention to the trappings of Panahi’s success, which are numerous. The camera lingers on the fine Persian rug on which he lays out the small “home” of his invisible protagonist; he watches his own past films on a substantial plasma-screen TV; he sports designer eyewear; his apartment is comfortably appointed. Successful artists, we are reminded, are often elites. Panahi’s prominence as an artists, as the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei communicated in the film Never Sorry, lends power to his words and actions.

We become so aware of Panahi’s domestic standard of living, after all, because he never leaves his home. He lives in a self-imposed confinement that presages his pending imprisonment. One truly chilling sequence tracks a conversation in which Panahi’s colleague talks about the “chilling effect” the government’s actions against him is having on other artists. At least temporarily, Panahi crackdown is having the desired, broader, effect.

A government cannot edit the artists among its citizens, let alone silence them. Let alone imprison them. A filmmaker should not have to resort to smuggling his work out of the country in a wedding cake. The film never loses sight of these national political themes, but it ends up engaging others that are more universal. Near its conclusion, a young man who is studying art administration arrives to pick up Panahi’s trash. They discuss the young man’s prospects in Iran. In subtitled Farsi, the student says something like “you earn a master’s degree, and there is no job.” In recent years, that conversation’s been downright American.