3 Faces

3 Faces

The reality is that true artists cannot be restrained from expressing themselves, something Jafar Panahi, the legendary Iranian filmmaker has proved within the first half of his 20-year prohibition on filmmaking in Iran. This to a degree is why there can be no dispute concerning the presence of an unimaginable delight at the thought of watching another Panahi film. As a result he has become a wise defector who remains laughing in the face of such sanctions and keeps producing one interesting oeuvre after another while experimenting with and transforming his craft, which he mastered quite well.

The claustrophobic yet thematically expansive “This Is Not A Film” (2011) started off this phase or restriction, followed by “Closed Curtain” (2013), and relatively freer “Taxi” (2015). However, he breaks out again through his chains with “3 Faces,” his fourth feature written and made under the legal bar. This time around Panahi moves outside his immediate reach into rural areas; nonetheless, it still belongs to a series mentioned above as opposed to being its best.

Through this third film writer/director Panahi develops further his skillful way of handling his unfair situation by inventing other methods that bypass it and thus definitely appears to blend more effortlessly than ever before documentary elements with fiction in mystifying ways.

Starting from a fake suicide on screen, “3 Faces” evolves rather whimsically at a tranquil pace. Upset for not having been able to help even this poor young unknown person (she asserts she never received any message on Instagram from her), Behnaz incurs professional abandonments during ongoing production and calls upon her friend Panahi so they could go down to Marziyeh’s hometown in order solve the mystery behind her suicide note.

Like Agnès Varda and JR’s “Faces Places,” their journey together involves creating some kind of pastoral tableaux that also evoke different rural works of the Iranian filmmaker Kiarostami beginning from “Taste of Cherry” and “The Wind Will Carry Us” among others that deal with serious existential issues. Along narrow winding roads between Turkish-Azeri speaking villages, the duo will find out lots of oddities seasoned with humor in a village that still has some respect for its traditions.

A shepherd describes his cow’s reputation as a stud which is incessantly ill (it may appear bleak but it sounds kind of amusing), an old lady who tries her recently dug grave (an odd thing to do) and a group of villagers who confuse them with repairmen, only to later mockingly call them “entertainers.”

This obvious vexation leads into Panahi’s subtle commentary on how society views art and women who act as a profession. While Panahi does work towards some form of resolution, the film makes political and feminist statements about Marziyeh and her predecessors indeed, the title of the movie pertains to three generations of female artists.

Besides Marziyeh and Behnaz, we get to know a lot about Shahrzad a famous Iranian actress, dancer, poet before revolution times who was in Massoud Kimiai’s 1969 film “Qeysar” she doesn’t appear in this film but locals often evoke her example when referring to other women with equally dim future perspectives. In that line of thought, Marziyeh’s misfortunes become even more profound.

It is filmed by Amin Jafari using lens which captures dusty sun dappled shades of colour and endless horizons before narrow country lanes; finally “3 Faces” ends unexpectedly upbeat albeit open-ended in its last frame. He cannot conceal his optimism; he lets it triumph over all obstacles.

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