❝ In depicting the absurd constraints that he himself faces, Panahi exposes the absurdities of daily existence in Iran and the pathologies that afflict the population as a result of its misrule. He also displays, with a scathing severity, the guilt and the complicity that he bears in making movies and enlisting the participation—witting or unwitting, intended or incidental—of others. He carries, however unjustly, the mark of dissidence and (political) crime, and this turns out to be as contagious as it is dangerous. ❝ *
❝ Many of the film’s most dramatic sequences are night scenes filmed with daringly little light, as in remote settings illuminated solely by the interior light of Jafar’s car, the screen on his cell phone, or the full moon, or on desolate dirt roads lit only by headlights. Much is done in secret: important things are hard to see and the effort of discernment in high-stakes situations is crucial to the drama. Panahi relies on long takes without longueurs, many executed using pan shots that unite multiple fields of action and a varied array of characters in a single sweep, others featuring fixed-frame compositions in which the action is often multiplied by the presence of interested observers contemplating the dramatic events and extending them into an extra spatial and psychological dimension. ❞ *
❝ Jafar is the Heisenbergian observer whose presence, with or without cameras, perturbs his surroundings and adds to the troubles of those around him. As he makes his way through the village, he unleashes a Pigpen-like whirlwind of chaos, because what he’s really observing, more than any individuals, is the invisible net of unbearable surveillance in which they’re caught—and which tightens with fear, in menacing cruelty, when it’s in danger of being exposed. ❞
Jafar Panahi’s Ingenious, Tragic “No Bears” Is a Formalist Triumph
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