[The latest feature from Jafar Panahi, who is currently imprisoned
in Iran, explores the subversive power and the ethical limitations of
filmmaking.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

‘NO BEARS’ REVIEW: A FILM THAT CRITIQUES ITSELF  
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A.O. Scott
December 22, 2022
The New York Times
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_ The latest feature from Jafar Panahi, who is currently imprisoned
in Iran, explores the subversive power and the ethical limitations of
filmmaking. _

Prior to its world premiere in the official competition category of
the 79th Venice Film Festival, "No Bears", the motion picture directed
by Jafar Panahi, had its poster unveiled in this cinematic event., No
Bears

 

Why make a movie? Why watch one? As banal as these questions are,
they’re also unsettling. The world is so flooded with images that
making sense of what’s already there can feel paralyzing; adding
something new can seem like the very definition of absurdity.
Sentimentality about the power of cinema — to raise awareness,
expand empathy, confront the truth, change the world — mirrors a
cynicism that insists on cinema’s triviality.

It’s only a movie! That’s as true of “No Bears” as of anything
else, but there may be no living filmmaker who has considered the
practical and philosophical implications of the art form — the work
of shooting and cutting; the pleasure and anxiety of watching — as
rigorously or as insightfully as the Iranian director Jafar Panahi.

He can’t be accused of taking movies lightly, or of taking himself
too seriously. He has continued to practice his craft, conscientiously
and playfully, at the risk of his comfort, his freedom and possibly
his life. When in 2010 the Iranian government banned him from
directing, he answered with “This Is Not a Film
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a feature-length video diary shot partly on an iPhone and technically
not “directed” at all.

In the years since, he has continued in that vein of clandestine
metacinema, playing himself (in “Closed Curtain
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and “Taxi
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less as a heroic auteur than as a curious, gentle, sometimes foolish
middle-aged family man who can’t break the habit of turning life
into film (or, to be precise, digital video). His movies are personal
and also political, as he aims his quizzical gaze at the petty
hypocrisies and large injustices of modern Iran, as well as at the
paradoxes of his own creative practice.

Not long after “No Bears” was completed — it was filmed in
secret earlier this year — Panahi was sentenced in Iran to six years
in prison. In the months since, mass protests challenging the
authority of the Islamic Republic have swept across the country and
have been answered with brutal repression
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The movie doesn’t explicitly address the unrest or any other public
matters; Iranian filmmakers tend to deal with potentially
controversial issues obliquely, walking the line between realism and
fable and trusting audiences to understand the implications of their
stories, subtle messages that censors might overlook. Panahi pioneered
this approach in the early 2000s — while also testing its limits —
confronting misogyny and class inequality in films like “The Circle
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“Crimson Gold
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and “Offside
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Since the ban, as his work has reflected his own predicament, he has
found new ways to combine social criticism with self-criticism.

“No Bears” finds Panahi (again playing himself) occupying rented
rooms in a village near the Turkish border, far from his home in
Tehran. In a small city in Turkey not far from the village, a film is
being shot under his direction — one apparently based on the
real-life story of two Iranian exiles, Zara (Mina Kavani) and Bakhtiar
(Bakhtiar Panjei), who hope to find asylum in France. Panahi
supervises the production on his laptop and his cellphone when he has
a signal, which isn’t often. His assistant director, Reza (Reza
Heydari), tries to convince Panahi to visit the set, perhaps with the
help of the smugglers and human traffickers who control the area. But
the border is a line the director won’t cross.

Back in the village, he finds himself mixed up in a complicated feud
involving a young couple (Amir Davari and Darya Alei) and a bitter
romantic rival (Javad Siyahi). It is the belief of interested parties
on both sides that a picture Panahi may or may not have taken will
have some bearing on the case. The village chief (Naser Hashemi) gets
involved, as does Panahi’s host, an unctuous fellow named Ghanbar
(Vahid Mobaseri).

Compared with the tense drama surrounding Zara and Bakhtiar, what
happens to the filmmaker seems at first like comic relief — a
fish-out-of-water caper about a big-city sophisticate snagged by
rustic brambles. Everyone in the village is unstintingly,
ostentatiously polite. Ghanbar never fails to address Panahi as
“dear sir,” and Panahi responds with fulsome gratitude, but mutual
resentment simmers beneath their interactions, and the rituals of
courtesy and deference that govern Panahi’s dealings with
Ghanbar’s neighbors are heavy with mistrust, hostility and even the
possibility of violence.

I won’t give anything away, except to say that when tragedy arrives
— in and behind the scenes of Zara and Bakhtiar’s story, and in
every fold of the film’s constructed reality — it feels both
shocking and grimly inevitable. It also seems to be, partially and
inadvertently but also unmistakably, the filmmaker’s fault.

At one point, Panahi is summoned to the village “swear room,”
where he is expected to testify about his suspicious photograph. It
isn’t a legal proceeding — a sympathetic elder tells him it’s
permissible to lie — but rather one of many local traditions
established to keep up appearances and rein in unruly behavior. Before
making his statement, Panahi asks that the Quran be replaced by a
video camera, which he believes will endow his words with
unimpeachable credibility.

But what if this show of faith — in visual evidence, in the
documentary record, in the moral prestige of the moving image — is
itself a kind of superstition? That’s the uncomfortable question
that “No Bears” faces, one that challenges not only its own
assumptions but also the piety of an audience eager to embrace the
film as a gesture of resistance and to bless itself for recognizing
the gesture. Panahi, whose courage and honesty are beyond doubt, has
made a movie that calls those very qualities into question, a movie
about its own ethical limits and aesthetic contradictions.

Maybe art can’t save anyone, or change anything. So why bother with
it? I’m tempted to say that “No Bears” answers that question
simply by existing, but to do so would be to understate Panahi’s
accomplishment.

The title refers to an encounter he has on the way to the swear room,
a meeting with a stranger that seems like something out of a folk
tale. The man cautions that there are dangerous bears lurking in the
darkness, and later dismisses his own warning. “Our fear empowers
others,” he says. “No Bears!”

That’s a good slogan, and a necessary belief in a very scary world,
but also, maybe, a consoling fiction. To insist that there are no
bears may just be a polite way of acknowledging that the bears are us.

NO BEARS
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters.

 

 

* Film
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* Film Review
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* No Bears
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* Jafar Panani
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* Iran
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