MovieChat Forums > Ayneh (1998) Discussion > how much of this was real/scripted? !!SP...

how much of this was real/scripted? !!SPOILERS!!

posted 18 years ago by monkeeys_with_scissors
7 replies | jump to latest

I liked this movie very much but I have to ask, to anyone out there who has seen this. How much of it was scripted? All the stuff at the begining where there were several five or six minute shots of cars passing and lots of traffic noise and people walking by is too complicated to all be planned. There are too too many cars for them all to be stunt drivers, the camera uses random people on the street that most likely are not involved as a lead for the camera to follow to complete it's full circle of the busy intersection. What about the blind man and for that sake even the girl who came close to getting hit or run over many times, I don't think they would risk a little girl getting hit or for that matter an old man who I believe had nothing to do with film.
All the conversation on the bus was so realistic, you get so many glimpses of Iranian life and culture that are way too random and intricate to all be written somwhere. THe little girl is running all around town walking up to random people and talking to them about where her home is in as realistic a fasion as the people on the bus. There seams to be no time lapses and few cuts even so you believe that this all is happening as the camera is following this little girl home, no time to stop and plan the next scene or set up a cop giving a guy a ticket in the miffle of a busy intersection for that matter. It must be real, you start to think, they must actually be following this girl just like you would in a documentary.
It's plossible. Just as your confidant in this idea they stop the film by telling Mina not to look at the camera. The director calls cut and the girl pouts about how she wants to go home on her own and not be in the movie any longer. I began to rethink my realism theory and as I continued to watch I found more and more evidence of the script theory. She sees the same old lady that was having a very realistic conversation on the bus, two or three more times in drasticaly differant areas of the city. Mina strikes up conversation with her about the film and how she doesn't want to be in it, the old lady reveals that she was in the film aswell and was payed to say her lines.
Then Mina is talking to a man who claims to have seen her shoot the scene outside of the school (which we saw only half an hour ago) two weeks ago. This was a mind blow for me, the little girl claims to be acting and so do other people who seemed like real people on the street. She claims also to not be acting anymore and is trying to get home to a differant part of the city as before, but how can we trus that this isn't just another part of the script. Or is there one? I have my theories but I would like to hear others Please post if you have any.

[–] crater-7 18 years ago

i think it was all scripted right up to the "cut" on the bus and the sudden switch in cameras from a professional high quality set to a jerky handheld one that showed the director, sound guy, minder, break-up in audio (or expletives deleted!). after that it seems very real. the old lady was absolutely believable - "they paid me to act and were rude" (they were all untrained, paid a small sum - part of the "charm", like the really long takes for each scene, unlike the punchy Hollywood editing for people with short attention spans, all hallmarks of this director's work, and non-blockbusters in general). also, the unscripted 2nd half had a really unsatisfactory (and believable - real life is never tightly resolved like reel life) ending - we never have out-takes discussing the film with the child lead over cookies and milk like it would have been in Iowa or something.
but what struck me was the unscripted 2nd half when she was out of sight for long stretches - what if they lost her completely! i would have liked to see DVD interviews with him and the crew!

[–] Timetoeatpie 18 years ago

To be honest, I'm not sure how much it really matters. I mean, the outcome of the film, the authority of the little girl comes across whether it is scripted or not. But on that note, I think the entire thing was scripted, and it was the genious of Panahi's that alluded that it was all real.

The part of the film that makes it feel magical, (in the sense that it is uninterupted realism) lies in the way of which the scripted story of her (actual girl after she vows not to act anymore) getting to her real home. The parallels to the beginging story are too strong--(speaking of which, the scene where she talks the auto body men and they ask her where she goes to school, and she says Anehew (or wherever) I thought of the school at the begining of the movie, but in fact it is not. Awesome parallel and cool feeling as a viewer.)

The method of directing that Panahi is what makes it feel even more realistic. I'm sure he told her some guidelines, but for the most part she would just do her thing. He probably didn't tell her about some of the other "actors" who are in on it, so we probably also see moments where she talks to people who aren't involved in the movie making process at all.

Very interesting film. As a viewer (of only one showing) i need to go back and watch it again to fully understand the films intentions. Amazing.

[–] cyappueying 16 years ago

My college had a guest movie critic attend a screening of "The Mirror". Years before he had previously interviewed the director, and had asked the same question, "How much was scripted?". The answer was EVERYTHING! Every conversation, every camera angle, even up to the microphone cutting in the alley out at the end. Suprising isn't it? That's just part of what makes this such an amazing movie.

[–] carddealt 16 years ago

To echo what was previously said, this is a wonderful and inspiring movie. A perfect companion piece to Abbas Kiarostami's Close Up.

I just wanted to add to this interesting discussion how much I enjoyed the change in performance from the girl when the tantrum began and 'the movie ended' halfway through. I felt, although she had a remarkable on-screen presence, her acting in that first half felt somewhat scripted and 'performed'. The magic of the second half or the life reflecting art half, is that her performance suddenly felt totally alive. She spoke as if unscripted and became a person we cared about and wanted to spend the journey home with. I can't imagine this was unintentional either...for me it forms a major grounding in part of Panahi's deconstruction of movie making (restricted actors make for restricted performances).

The girl points out as we break into the second half of the journey how she was sick of being made to cry as that character and that her friends would make fun of her. This confirmed to me the intentional falseness of the character she was playing at the start, one who she couldn't relate to or understand (to the point of being embarrassed of the character with false tears and a clumsy broken arm), and how a performance can only come to life when the character becomes a part of the player. Having read alot about Kiarostami's Close-Up and how much manipulation went into that movie (cut out microphones, extended court cases without the judge being present then spliceing them into the movie to seem as if they were real etc) it seems entirely probable that every scene and camera movement (although i doubt every passer-by or car) could be carefully orchestrated by Panahi, yet even if the script was word for word layed out, the girls 'second' performance seemed the only element entirely unmanipulated.

Just a thought about a film thats given me plenty of them over the last week. It seems ridiculous that not one of his films has been given a release within Iran. A truly maverick film maker.

I am going to begin today with a headstand...Diane, I am now upside-down

[–] mghatiya 13 years ago

I am somehow bending towards agreeing that it was mostly scripted.
Otherwise why would you see people calling her Mina instead of her real name Aida?
Sometimes Bus in which the crew was, followed girl quite effortlessly.
Why would the pink-ribbon-shop guy say he recommended her, while she had already acted in a movie with Jafar Panahi?
Also, similarity between the first half and second half about "girl getting lost while going home" sounds too coincidental to be true.
There were other some such clues too, but overall it surely looked real and unscripted. I won't be heavily surprised if it was really unscripted.

Anyway, either director made a decision to continue filming in spite of her deciding to give up, or he planned to make the whole movie this way.

Either way I think it can be called a brilliant decision.

And if second half was really unscripted, I am very curious to know what was Panahi's original script :)

[–] Tchoutoye 12 years ago

In theory there are four options:
1) The first half is staged and the second half is real.
2) The first half is staged and in the second half the visual is real but the audio is staged (dubbed in later. Note that Mina and the other characters are filmed from a distance with their mouths hidden from view so this could be easily done. Mina even sits in the taxi with a voice actor who dubs the voice of John Wayne, which may be an in-joke.)
3) Both halves are staged, but Mina's 4-minute break-down in between is real. The film crew persuaded Mina to continue co-operation and, inspired by her break-down, slightly adjusted the script for the second half.
4) The whole film is staged, including the 4-minute scene.

In Panahi's 2011 film This is Not a Film – basically Panahi sitting at home under house arrest and talking about his films — he mentions the 4-minute scene, in which "Mina the Diva" refuses to act, as if it is a real (as in non-staged) event. As an example of how film is so much more than just the script, he talks about how, in that moment, the inspired Mina took control over the film and guided the director as to how the film was to develop. This story in itself is a ruse. The film's title, This is Not a Film, refers to Magritte's painting The Treachery of Images featuring a pipe and the text Ceci ce n'est pas une pipe (This is Not a Pipe). I wouldn't be surprised if Panahi has seen Orson Welles' film F for Fake.

In the DVD extras of Mirror Panahi confesses that the whole film was staged, including the 4-minute break-down scene in the bus, but that he had to make Mina angry for real to make sure that this pivotal scene worked well. So there you have it.

Iranian films are known for mixing reality and fiction. A common set-up is to cast non-professional actors who act out events of their own lives. This is precisely what makes some Iranian films so magical. Perhaps the title Mirror (no physical mirror is featured in the film) relates to how in the film reality and fiction mirror each other.

Ultimately film can never be true reality, as what you see is always framed and cut (if not in the editing room, then by the director on the set and/or by the physical length of film stock/video). At best it is "compressed reality", an approximation.

[–] ilpohirvonen 13 years ago

I think it was all scripted. Like the films by Jean Rouch in the 1960's: the cinema verite documentaries. The way I see it, The Mirror is a fictive documentary. Because it doesn't matter whether what we see is illusion or reality because it's all the same. This is the truth of the Iranian society, at least according to Jafar Panahi.

I never even thought that some of this would be REAL. Does anyone think that the documentaries on TV are REAL? Film creates its own illusionary reality and that can be real. Sure there are some things -- like the dozens of cars passing -- that haven't been written in the script but that doesn't make it anymore REAL.