Movie: No Bears

I watched Jafar Panahi's No Bears with Monika last night on the Criterion Channel. This is a great movie that raises so many questions:

• What is the boundary between illusion and reality? 
• How different is village life and speaking Azeri from urban life in Tehran and speaking Farsi?
• What roles do women and girls play in modern Iran?

No Bears has been seen in the United States by most Americans. However, it has been noticed by film critics such as A.O. Scott. Here is the start of his review.

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,” a feature-length video diary shot partly on an iPhone and technically not “directed” at all.

You can read the rest at the New York Times.