The Mirror

Although this is no Hollywood, but just like another day in LA the poor director is having trouble with his temperamental star, save by quick thinking he somehow has turn this film into (perhaps) a far more interesting movie then he has intended.

Little Mina is a good actress, if not a very professional one, but one should consider that she is only in second year of her primary school and she has plenty of character to make up for it.

The film follows the day of Mina, and how she was trying to find her way home which mirrors the story of the film she no longer wants to take part in. The film lets us see the world from a little girl's point of view, hear her thoughts... it's a little reminder of how it was when we were little... being a child is not easy... no one wants to take you seriously, it takea you twice the time just to dial at a payphone, you don't remember those funny names grown up call those road.

It is a very interesting film, perhaps slow at first, but it will certainly make you laughs, make you think.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi recently got arrested, charged with propaganda. He is sentenced to six years in jail and is banned from making movies for twenty years. This makes his 1997 movie "The Mirror" ("Ayneh" in Farsi) all the more interesting. The movie depicts a girl wandering Tehran's chaotic streets looking for her mother. Suddenly, she decides that she doesn't want to play the part anymore! First time that I've ever seen that happen in a movie.

The only other Panahi movie that I've seen is "Offside", about women getting kept from attending a soccer game, officially because the men's legs are showing. Judging by that, and by the conversations that the girl hears on the bus in "The Mirror", Panahi is not a director whose films really please Iran's authorities. There should be no doubt as to why he now languishes in jail. And above all, I truly recommend this movie.

Monsieur Panahi cannot resist a bit of metafiction. In this case the metafiction becomes the subject of the second part of the movie, as his lead child actress finds herself in the exact same predicament as the girl she was playing, running through the streets of Tehran, talking to all sorts of people, trying to get home. Only it starts to feel a little too gimmicky and I lost interest. Plus the fact that they were watching her from a distance, but still I couldn't help but feel they were endangering her.

Anyway, Tehran traffic is hellish and I'd be scared as an adult, let alone a child. But this kid just cannot sit still to save her life. It's true we would not have a movie otherwise, but basically stay in the playground and wait for your mother to come pick you up.

This gimmick was so good that it has never been done again since. It's like going on after a fumble, you pick it up and end the play but it will not be the best, it will not be beautiful but this fumble will get you to score a point. It's an interesting exercise, one that will spark debates because you either go with it or no. I get either side of the fence.

It's not cinema, but it is a meta-commentary on fact and fiction. Don't we always say that "life beats film" - then why is this not the best film ever? You still have to separate the two - or you make a documentary. This feels like due to financial constraints you continue with a mistake, and double down...

This is a film about a girl going home. Apparently her mother failed to pick our little heroine up, and the feisty second grader sets out to find her way through the asphalt jungle all by herself. Well, there's more to it of course. It's the asphalt jungle of Tehran and the film was directed by Jafar Panahi, one of the innovative film makers of the Iranian New Wave. Not that his latest works are allowed to be shown in his home country, mind you. Sentenced to a six-year jail term in 2010 and banned from directing he nevertheless defiantly made an iPhone production called "This Is Not a Film" about his situation and managed to smuggle it out of Iran and tell the world.

The Iranian situation as such is already portrayed firsthand in Panahi's early 1997 film. A representative of the next generation, a child, in the center, we witness its abandonment by the adults. We eavesdrop on them complaining, but not really listening, observe the gender segregation on public transport (albeit through an innocent perspective in between as the missing link), but in a sea of scarves, uniform looks and the all encompassing everyday turmoil one can barely get a glimpse of something one could call "individuality"... In the words of Panahi: Everyone is wearing a mask, plays a role. Thanks to the stark realism present in Iranian movies we become part of the life and the hustle and bustle therein, get sucked in by following the odyssey through a child's eye. And we'll reach a point in the film where a clever twist cranks it all even up a notch. Thus a very real situation turns even more real and it results in a powerful reflection with a double meaning, within the film and outside of it. As in his preceding picture "The White Balloon", also centering on a cast of children, the tone in Panahi's "The Mirror" is light, and the film is entertaining throughout, yet layered and thought-provoking. There's someone who stands up to find a way, lost, but determined, wandering around in need for directions. But there's a fundamental difference between directions and direction, as the viewer might notice. No coincidence either that this someone we're talking about is a girl, the focus of some of Panahi's other works. Or let's say it that way: This is not a film... about a girl going home.