Jafar Panahi - Style

Style

Panahi's style is often described as an Iranian form of neorealism. Jake Wilson describes his films as connected by a "tension between documentary immediacy and a set of strictly defined formal parameters" in addition to "overtly expressed anger at the restrictions that Iranian society imposes". His film Offside is so ensconced in the reality that it was actually filmed in part during the event it dramatizes – the Iran-Bahrain qualifying match for the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

Where Panahi differs from his fellow realist filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, is in the explicitness of his social critique. Stephen Teo writes that

"Panahi's films redefine the humanitarian themes of contemporary Iranian cinema, firstly, by treating the problems of women in modern Iran, and secondly, by depicting human characters as "non-specific persons" – more like figures who nevertheless remain full-blooded characters, holding on to the viewer's attention and gripping the senses. Like the best Iranian directors who have won acclaim on the world stage, Panahi evokes humanitarianism in an unsentimental, realistic fashion, without necessarily overriding political and social messages. In essence, this has come to define the particular aesthetic of Iranian cinema. So powerful is this sensibility that we seem to have no other mode of looking at Iranian cinema other than to equate it with a universal concept of humanitarianism."

Panahi says that his style can be described as "humanitarian events interpreted in a poetic and artistic way". He says "In a world where films are made with millions of dollars, we made a film about a little girl who wants to buy a fish for less than a dollar (in The White Balloon) – this is what we're trying to show." Panahi has stated that "in all of my films, you never see an evil character, male or female. I believe everyone is a good person."

In an interview with Anthony Kaufman, Panahi said: "I was very conscious of not trying to play with people's emotions; we were not trying to create tear-jerking scenes. So it engages people's intellectual side. But this is with assistance from the emotional aspect and a combination of the two."

Author Hamid Dabashi has called Panahi the least self-conscious filmmaker in the history of Iranian film and that his films represent a post-revolutionary Iranian outlook on itself, calling Crimson Gold not just a history of a failed jewelry robbery, "but also of recent Iranian history, the history of the failed Islamic revolution and the Iran-Iraq war in particular."

Dabashi goes on to praise Panahi's restrained depiction of violence, stating that Panani's "manner of showing violence without showing who has perpetrated it has now become a trademark of Panahi's cinema." Dabashi specifically cites Razieh's brother in The White Balloon as clearly having been beaten in one scene, but only being given hints of the violence of Razieh's father from off screen. In The Circle, Nargress has been beaten, but we are never told why or by whom. Dabashi goes on to state that "violence in Panahi's cinema is like a phantom: You see through it, but it lacks a source or physical presence — who has perpetrated it is made intentionally amorphous. the result is a sense of fear and anxiety that lurks in every frame of his film, but it is a fear without an identifiable referent."

Some Iranians have criticized his work, claiming that his films "don't draw a realistic picture of Iran, or that the difficulties encountered by women in films apply to only a certain class of women."