Offside

Really the best satire is the kind that shows a deep affection for the subject that it is simultaneously mocking. Mark Twain had that gift. Few do; most satire is savage and set apart, and most of the time when satire comes to the movies, what you get is caricatures instead of characters. Great movies still can result, movies like “Dr. Strangelove.” It’s a funny movie, but it lacks a heart.

Fortunately, heart is one thing Jafar Panahi’s film “Offside” has buckets of. I say fortunately because it’s a movie about the oppression of women in Iran, and God knows we have enough heartless caricatures of Iran already. Instead, Panahi delivers a warm, light-hearted, and yet still socially critical film about a group of women trying to sneak into a soccer game. And not just any soccer game, the World Cup qualifying match. The film was actually shot on location at the stadium as the game was being played, and it’s the absolute best use of on-location filming(a recent fad amongst indie filmmakers) I’ve ever seen. Most of the movie takes place in a makeshift holding pen just outside the stadium — where the girls who have been caught are kept — and the noise of the crowd functions as a very effective background. We want to get in to the game almost as much as the girls do.

The film starts awkwardly, following one particular girl who looks miserable, doesn’t have much of a plan for getting past the security, and practically shouts “I’m a girl!” when a guard approaches her. Later in the film we learn that she is attending the game in memory of a fallen friend, and this information would have been helpful up front. I wonder why the filmmakers chose to follow this particular girl in the first place; as soon as she is placed in the holding pen, we meet plenty of other girls who seem more clever, more vocal, and clearly more passionate about soccer. Surely their stories would have been more fun to watch.

But no matter. Because once she is in the pen, the movie really sings with the interplay between the girls and their guards. Some of the girls are pros at getting in, and the guards lament that many more have gotten in than have been caught. One girl in particular is awfully bold, and asks some provocative questions of the lead guard. “When Japan was here, why were they allowed to watch the game and we weren’t?” “Because they’re Japanese.” “Oh, so my problem is I was born in Iran?” He keeps trying to answer her, but it is clear the answers satisfy neither of them.

Before long, these young soldiers become more interesting to me than the girls; what is it like to be an oppressor? Most movies make oppressors hardly less than demonic; they hate babies and eat kittens for breakfast. But these boys are just trying to stay out of trouble. They have orders, you see. They’re not chauvinistic, and while I suppose you would have to consider them sexist, they’re not mean about it. They seem themselves as the surrogate fathers and brothers of these rebellious women. When a father comes to claim his daughter and is about to slap her, the soldier intervenes. “Is that the way to treat your daughter? Slap her and she’ll never come home!” Paternalistic, yes, but it’s the way they’ve been raised: men and women are different, men are supposed to manage women, and they certainly don’t mix in public. Their problem is how to manage the logistics of that.

And it can be a doozy of a problem; observe when one of the girls really must go to the bathroom – right now, or else. One of the soldiers escorts her, but there are no women’s bathrooms in the stadium. Watch him try to manage the traffic in the men’s restroom to preserve her privacy, after ordering her to close her eyes, lest she read the dirty words written on the wall. This is good stuff.

We are being told by our leaders that Iran is a dangerous place, a country in the “Axis of Evil,” where terror reigns and terrorists are bred. But watching this movie, I was reminded of America in the 1950s, when the rules were still being followed, pretty much, and even believed by most people, to some extent, but a certain dissatisfaction was in the air. It was more a matter of not rocking the boat than of actually doing the right thing because you believed it was the right thing to do. But then came Elvis, and James Dean, and the Beatles, and Woodstock. It makes me wonder: if we manage to leave Iran alone for a few more years, will social change come from within? Jafar Panahi seems to think so, and “Offside” reminds us that not everyone in Iran is either a radical Islamic fundamentalist or a latent terrorist. Thank God.

Recommended

• if you’re interested in smart, warm, funny social satire
• if the idea of Iranian cinema intrigues you

Not Recommended

• if somebody told you this is a soccer movie, and you’re expecting to see guys in shorts kicking things
• if somebody told you this is an “issues” movie, and you’re expecting men to be pigs and women to be saints