Story by Chris Knight • Friday
It may or may not surprise you to learn that there are no bears in No Bears, the latest provocative meta-fiction from profession nose-thumber Jafar Panahi.
Film review: No Bears is a movie within a movie, within Iran© Provided by National Post
Panahi is one of Iran’s most celebrated filmmakers, at least in the world at large. At home, he’s not at large – in July the regime reactivated an earlier suspended prison sentence, and he is now serving six years for “ assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security, and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” You know, movies.
But before that happened, he completed this latest work, which opens with a Turkish couple discussing their plans to forge passports and flee their country for Western Europe. But just a few minutes into this drama, someone yells “cut!” and we realize that it is in fact a film being made within the film. The on-set director is taking his orders from Panahi himself, working remotely from a rented house in a small village near the Iranian-Turkish border, which he is not allowed to cross.
No Bears is not quite a farce, but Panahi makes no attempt to disguise his cynicism over the (to him) weird local customs of the region. Seems every time he turns around someone is admonishing his behaviour, telling him: “We have a tradition! An old tradition!” It culminates in his visit to a Swear Room, which is not as fun as it sounds; he’s there to swear to God that he did not take a picture of a couple in a forbidden relationship. It’s all he can do not to roll his eyes.
Panahi (the real Panahi) has crafted a fascinating, multi-layered fable in which the storytelling techniques of film butt up against the realities of the world. In one scene, Panahi (the one in the movie) visits an unguarded section of the border with his assistant director. He asks exactly where the border lies. “Right under your feet!” He jumps back sheepishly. Or did he jump forward?
The next day, his contact in the small town wants to know why he went to the border. Panahi asks how the guy even knew, and is told his car is dusty. “All the roads around here are dusty,” he replies, but it turns out the border road has different dust. Not sure if that qualifies as an old tradition, but it’s clearly a detail the city-dwelling filmmaker had not considered.
It’s easy (and more than a little appealing) to imagine that No Bears contained one additional layer of fiction, and that the filming of the story of a director who almost escapes Iran was cover for the story of a director who actually managed to escape Iran. Unfortunately, Panahi remains in jail for now. It’s simple to break the fourth wall in a movie. In real life, not so much.
No Bears opens Dec. 23 in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Sudbury, Saskstoon, Edmonton and Vancouver.
4 stars out of 5
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