Closed Cur­tain

It’s iron­ic that Iran­ian direc­tor Jafar Panahi went to the Caspi­an shore­line to make Closed Cur­tain. The sta­tus of the resource rich sea is still unre­solved, due to dis­agree­ments over delim­i­ta­tion between Iran and the oth­er four nations that share its coast­line. And yet oil is drilled by all five coun­tries. Panahi’s sta­tus mir­rors that of the Sea. He’s been pro­hib­it­ed from mak­ing films by the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment since 2010, but does so anyway.

This is his sec­ond fea­ture since 2011’s This Is Not a Film. Until his sit­u­a­tion is resolved, he looks inwards for mate­r­i­al, but Closed Cur­tain, made in 2013, rep­re­sents a def­i­nite end to the ideas he can gen­er­ate in iso­la­tion from the world. A writer (Kam­buzia Par­tovi, who co-direct­ed the film) comes to a house on the seashore with his dog, who he hides in a bag. Dogs are all-but-pro­hib­it­ed as pets in Iran, and this small act of defi­ance means that he has to draw heavy cur­tains all around the house.

His peace is dis­turbed by a cou­ple that claim to be broth­er and sis­ter, and that they are on the run from the author­i­ties. The broth­er leaves, and the writer is left alone with the sis­ter, who is implied to be sui­ci­dal. The two butt heads as the writer won­ders if she is a spy or some­thing more sinister.

This is where things get tricky, as the film veers from fic­tion into some­thing more sur­re­al. Panahi is say­ing that art can­not exist in a vac­u­um, and that it needs to be nour­ished through hon­est social and intel­lec­tu­al inter­ac­tion. Every­thing in the sec­ond part becomes a cri­tique on the defi­cien­cies of the first part. We see what it is like to be kneecapped at your prime, and Panahi sug­gests that the only thing you can do is to exam­ine the wound and maybe pick at it. ​“I know times are real­ly tough, but it’ll get bet­ter,” says Panahi’s friend. For his sake, and our ben­e­fit, we hope so too.