The Circle (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio Theatrical Trailer-2 Interviews-Crew-Director Biographies-Crew-Director Trailer-Kandahar; Blackboards
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	87:07
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jafar Panahi
Studio Distributor	Jafar Panahi Film Pr Madman Entertainment	Starring	Nargess Mamizadeh Maryiam Palvin Almani Mojgan Faramarzi Elham Saboktakin Monir Arab Solmaz Panahi Fereshteh Sadr Orfani
Case	Click
RPI	?	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Audio Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.70:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The Circle is the latest award-winning film from the director Jafar Panahi. His previous films include The Mirror and The White Balloon. The Circle is set in Iran, specifically in Tehran. The film has a documentary feel to it and covers the difficulties of life in contemporary Iran, in particular for women.

    The director mentions in the interview that is one of the special features on this disc that he used a combination of professional actors and people that hadn't acted before. He makes an interesting comment about how he casts for his movies - he looks for someone that has the appearance that he wants for the part and doesn't worry if they cannot act, as that can be taught during filming. The women who make up the central characters in this film all do a very good job and you can feel the pain, sorrow and desperation that they experience.

    There is not a storyline in this film in the traditional sense. We start the film in a hospital, in the maternity section. While there, we see the pain of a grandmother as she discovers that her daughter has given birth to a girl. She believes that this will lead to her daughter being divorced. As she flees the hospital, she passes the next character in the street. The camera turns, and we follow the next person or group for a while. This continues several more times. Sometimes the characters meet and know each other, and sometimes not. We do not see the start of each character's problems or the ends of their stories, we simply follow along and observe their life for a period.

    The film sets out to portray the difficulty that women face in the totally oppressive society that they live in. The treatment of the women is truly abhorrent. The film shows us this oppression in a subtle way. We do not see physical abuse, or other blatant oppression. Rather, it uses symbolism, in particular the prohibition against women smoking in public, along with the dress code, and the simple fact that a women cannot buy a bus ticket without a man accompanying her.

    There are some quite harrowing scenes in the film and it does get its message across very clearly. Sitting in a comfortable home theatre in Australia is a long way from where these women spend their daily lives. It is well worth watching, both in its own right as a film, and as an eye-opener to what is happening in a part of the world with some real problems.

Video

    The film is presented at 1.70:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced. The IMDB states that the original aspect ratio is 1.85:1 although I could not locate another source to corroborate this.

    The transfer is reasonably sharp. Black levels and shadow detail are good but some parts of the image are over-exposed. This is particularly noticeable in outdoor shots where we lose detail in the brightest parts of the image. An example can be found at 6:17. There is no low level noise.

    Colours are good. The only problem I noticed was come colour blurring and overrun on a bright orange pillar that we pan past at 6:05. There is no chroma noise present.

    There are no MPEG artefacts present. At 27:45, we see a scene filmed with a hand held camera which features a lot of fast movement - a nightmare for an MPEG encoder. In this case, there are no MPEG artefacts in this sequence, and even the sharpness which normally can drop back a bit when objects move quickly is quite good in this scene - my compliments to the encoder of this disc. In contrast to the MPEG encoding, the film master does have some problems - there is some grain visible along with a variety of marks and flecks. There are also some quite bad scratches such as those at 36:42 and 69:44. The film opens with voices over a totally black scene - here you can see a number of very obvious white flecks. At 76:22 the image jumps or shakes several times. This is probably the result of a hand held camera being used in a moving bus.

    The subtitles are burnt-in to the film master. They are mostly easy to read but occasionally they disappear when there is white in the scene behind them.

    This is a single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is a single Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack on this disc. The language is, I believe, Farsi. It is essentially mono.

    Not knowing the language I cannot judge the dialogue quality, but the audio appears to be in sync.

    There is no music used in this film. Dialogue and background noises make up the entire soundtrack offering.

    There was, as you would expect, no surround nor subwoofer activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    A static picture presented at 1.33:1 with a Dolby Digital 2.0 underscore. The music loop runs for 55 seconds.

Theatrical Trailer (1:13)

    Presented at a slightly narrower aspect ratio than the main feature, this is accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. The quality is the same as the main feature and presents a good introduction to the film. The trailer also has English subtitles burned in.

Theatrical Trailer: US version (1:14)

    This is presented at the same ratio as the main feature and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. This trailer includes an English voiceover and mentions some of the awards and accolades that the film has received.

Interview: The director, Jafar Panahi.

    This is presented at 1.33:1 and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. This is a fascinating interview with the director. He talks about the film, the concept behind the story and his filming style. It is also in Farsi with subtitles and takes the form of questions from an interviewer and answers from the director.

Biography: Jafar Panahi

    Five pages with a picture of the director on the left and information on the right.

Trailer: Kandahar (1:24)

    A film that looks behind the headlines at life in Afghanistan. Presented at 1.70 (not 16x9 enhanced) and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. This film looks very interesting if the trailer is anything to go by.

Trailer: Blackboards (1:18)

    Presented at 1.85:1 (not 16x9 enhanced) and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on:

• removable subtitles
• text pages talking about the background of each character and their story.
• 1.85:1 aspect ratio (unknown if 16x9 enhanced)

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on:

• director's biography (maybe)

    Accurate information is a little hard to come by for the Region 1 version. Depending on the original aspect ratio, which I could not confirm, R1 edges ahead as the subtitles are not burned into the source material.

    The Circle is a film during which you have to think. This is compounded by the fact that you also need to take time out to read the subtitles, thereby sometimes missing important things that may be happening further up the screen. Despite this, the film is definitely worth viewing, probably more than once.

    The video is let down by the source material.

    The audio is functional.

    The extras have some very nice inclusions.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall