'Circumstance' movie review.
Circumstance:
This film has rattled a few heads around the world and, as we are a part of this world as well, the United States. The response in this country is actually interesting to me; but more on that later, for now, the film.
Circumstance is the story about a teenage girl in Tehran, Iran: Atafeh, her privileged background, her troubled brother, Mehran, her doting parents and, yes, her extremely attractive best friend, Shireen.
Very early in the film Atafeh convinces her friend, who has just gotten reprimanded for not paying the tuition for their education (which Atafeh dutifully pays for her) to avoid going home for the afternoon and do what teens to best: get into mischief. The two hop around Tehran, find their way to a secret westernized party, get high, and run off in giggles. It is only in the subtlety of how they are treated by the men at the party that you even begin to sense that this isn’t a story of two girls in L.A.
Mehran, meanwhile, returns home from an apparent stint in drug rehab or some other sort of rehab. The only somewhat clunky line of the film is delivered here: ‘The prodigal son returns’—and if you can forgive that, the rest of the film flows like horrific magic.
Atafeh and Shireen have a flirtation in the very first image of the film, passing an origami bird from one to the other and that simple flirtation quickly turns to much more under the heavy weight of the world in which they live. One can never quite tell if in a totally free society they would have fallen for each other or not, but clearly in this male-dominated world, they have nowhere else safe to turn. It doesn’t hurt that they both drip with sex appeal, something the still searching and confused Mehran notices as well.
The film is utterly haunting, especially the character of Shireen, who from the first image is clearly dealing with ghosts of her life (it is made clear that her parents are dead, apparently killed by the state) and the horrors of her current situation (the beautiful Shireen is more than once treated like a bred dog). And while westerners will identify immediately with the rebellious Atafeh, as the noose closes in around her, you can’t help but bounce thoughts around your own mind trying to find a better way out—and there just isn’t one. “Sometimes we have to accept our reality” her mother tells the nearly shattered Atafeh at one point, and you can feel your own rage build even as it reads on Atefah’s face.
Though several of the plot ‘twists’ are anticipated, they still play out with such devastation that you actually regret guessing their happening. In the end, several American hikers detained for a year seems like small potatoes compared to being born under a theocracy. If this film does anything more than titillation, let us hope it is to re-awaken a spirit in the west that will embrace the idea that ALL are born free and we should never see it as something we've earned. Because truth is, some of us just have a better circumstance.
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