Much can be said about “Closed Curtain,” which is receiving a theatrical run at New York City’s Film Forum beginning July 9. But the most important thing, the most astounding thing, is that the film exists at all.
Technically, the film’s existence is against the law. Jafar Panahi, who wrote and co-directed the work with Kambozia Partovi, was arrested in March 2010 by Iranian authorities under suspicious claims. After a state prosecutor was quoted as saying the arrest was “not political” and “was linked to another case that was already under investigation,” Panahi spent 86 days in jail. After pressure from the media, he was released on bail. Later, it was revealed that Panahi, along with family and friends (most of whom were quickly released), was detained due to his work on an “anti-regime” film about the unrest surrounding the Green Movement in Iran. The official charge, or as official as any charge against a dissident artist in Iran can ever be, was, of course, creating “propaganda against the state.” For his crimes, he received a 20-year ban of filmmaking, speaking to the press, and leaving the country, effectively ending the career of the then 50-year-old filmmaker.
But the imposed silence ended up having the opposite effect. In the last four years, Panahi has made two films in secrecy, blatantly in protest. “This is Not a Film,” which was quietly smuggled out of Iran on a USB drive stuffed in a birthday cake, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011, just past the one-year anniversary of his incarceration. Shot partly by Panahi on his iPhone while under house arrest, it went on to be one his most celebrated films, a self-reflexive documentary about making movies under absolute power that obliterates the lines between the personal and political.
“This is Not a Film” was Panahi’s dairy of a moment of exile, with the director attempting to forge new ways to make a film from within his locked-down home. “Closed Curtain” is that film as it exists in his head or in his dreams, just as personal and political but more oblique, less directly confrontational. Shot with digital cameras at Panahi’s seaside home, it concerns a screenwriter hiding out with his dog (canines are technically against Islamic law), who unwillingly accepts a female intruder hiding out from police. A dialogue suddenly emerges within the space between the need to speak out against tyranny and the desire to accept fate. As the screenwriter closes the black curtains in the house, the female intruder follows him opening them back up, letting the daylight flood through the windows.
But “Closed Curtain” is more than just a simple allegory. Toward the end of the film, Panhai interjects himself into the narrative, a ghostly presence entering and exiting through the frame, examining the action unfolding, and complicating the viewer’s reading of the film on screen. Slowly, “Closed Curtain” becomes explicitly about Panahi and his constant struggle — a brave struggle — to create art with the heavy weight of state oppression pushing against him. It’s the only film Panahi can make in his current condition, and it’s a film that needs to be made, over and over again.
