2006: Offside

Offside (2006, Panahi) 8/10

In 2005, during a World Cup Qualifier between Asian football powerhouses Iran and Japan, seven individuals died during a melee at Tehran's Azadi Stadium. When Iranian officials disclosed the names of the deceased to the general public, the identities of only six of the seven were revealed. News agencies speculated that the seventh death was that of a woman who had entered the Azadi Stadium disguised as a man.

The enigmatic nature of the seventh victim centers upon the complex nature of Iranian sports. In Iran, women are barred from attending live male sports. Until April 2006, the dream of female fans to view their favourite players such as Ali Karimi or Mehdi Mahdavikia beyond their living rooms was an illegal act. Yet, this pre-World Cup legislation designed to open up Iranian football to women, restricts attendance to married women: subsequently eliminating the participation of countless numbers of single women, teenagers, girls and elderly widows.

The absurd nature of this law is the crux of Jafar Panahi's film Offside: a verité style social critique disguised as a satirical comedy. Banned in his native Iran, Panahi's film is a carefully planed docu-comedy shot during Iran's penultimate World Cup qualifier against Bahrain in late 2005. Focusing on half a dozen women between the ages of 16-24, Panahi's film explores their attempts to gain entry into the illegal world of professional male sports. Disguised as soldiers, visually impaired teenagers and poster-bearing boys, the women each attempt to assimilate into the crowd and sneak into the Azadi.

Yet, Iran's Revolutionary Guard units have been informed to carefully monitor the spectators and extract any unwanted female fans from the over 100,000 individuals attending the game. Rounding them together in a rectangular prison constructed of crash barriers, the soldiers manage to find six women ranging from chain-smoking tomboys to shy introverts. Engaging in philosophical banter, the urbanite women mock and challenge their provincial captors: inquisitively dissecting the implications of their attendance and the discriminatory rhetoric their society upholds.

In Offside, Panahi cleverly creates a reflective microcosm. Setting almost the entire film within the Azadi Stadium, Panahi constructs a film as much a critique of social injustice, as it is a dynamic observation of the passions stirred by sport. Clad in Iranian colours and singing patriotic songs, Panahi's characters are unlikely dissenting figures. Their mere presence at the stadium is a sign of rebellion, despite their uncompromised adoration for their homeland. Thus, nationalist loyalties are not questioned in Panahi's film, but the women's collective disavowal of Iran's strict theocratic laws.

The arousal of these sentiments through sport is expertly achieved in Offside. Awash in jingoism, the majority of sports films miss the emotional resonance attached to games. Despite showing barely any footage of the Iran-Bahrain match, Panahi creates quite possibly the best film ever made about football. Restricting his footage to action unhinged from the mis-en-scene, Panahi allows sport to be the backdrop of the film, rather than a collection of morose intercuttings. When an elderly man arouses a fight on a bus headed to the stadium, Panahi avoids the obvious.

Rather than have the dispute be produced due to perjorative remarks about players, the man's mere decision to enter the stadium is an act of defiance. Not even age or ill health will prevent him. When the other passengers inform him of the benefits of watching the game on state television, the man describes the necessity of attending the match: musing on the communal nature of the event, the ability to speak his mind and the emotional brutality of the event itself. Addressing these concepts early in the film, Panahi is then able to utilize this template in relation to his female protaganists.

The aura of gender apartheid explored in Panahi's film is packaged in a humanistic tone, which is accessible and digestable. Panahi's subtleness enhances the picture through conversations brimming with the follies of human nature. Enclosed in their crash barrier pen, the six women are rounded up like cattle awaiting the verbal slaughter of the stadium's chief officer. Through their conversations with the soldiers, new perspectives are emitted. As one soldier openly remarks observing the six detained women is the last thing he wishes to engage in. Desperate to end his mandatory service in the army, the provincial young man dreams of returning home to harvest his mother's ailing farm. Other soldiers ring their jealous girlfriends or clamour for a glimpse of the action through the wrought iron gates next to the pen, inaccurately relaying the events to the information-starved prisoners.

Their sympathies with the women are closeted by their own needs. Failure to properly detain the women could endanger their future career prospects or extend their service. Using aggressive wit and logic, one of the women disputes the logic of the law: noting that Iranian women can attend films alongside men and that Japanese women were able to attend Iran's earlier qualifier with Japan. The soldier's awkward attempts to justify the laws fall flat, causing him to increasingly relate to his captives. The amusing hijinks of one soldier's attempts to escort another female to a male washroom delienates the baffling nature of the government's misogynistic policies: forcing the woman to wear an Ali Karimi poster around her head, while the soldier tries in vain to clear a graffiti-strewn washroom of its occupants. However, as Panahi observes in his poignant and expressive finale: sport is a unifier through which celebration bears no resentment based on sex, class, race or relgion.

By working within this absurd satirical edge, Panahi creates a film more memorable and brilliant than a simplified demonization. The political narrative underlying Offside exposes the threadbare properties soldering together a discriminatory set of laws: proposing new questions, while distinguishing ordinary Iranian citizens from the retroactive ideological constructs which ultimately surpresses them and their answers. Working within the Iranian New Wave's typical Neo-Realist influenced program, Panahi utilizes his non-professional actors and real locations brilliantly: compacting an actual live event into an almost real-time docu-comedy. Furthermore, he explores to great effect the democratizing qualities of sport, which can become forums for free speech, gender equality and classless interaction.

One of the best of 2006

* Offside is available on R2 DVD through Artficial Eye

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque