Had Jafar Panahi not already used the title The Mirror in 1997, he could have applied it to any of the four features he’s made this decade. The Iranian director appears as himself in all four—This Is Not a Film (2011), Closed Curtain (2013), Taxi (2015), and now 3 Faces (2018)—effectively turning the camera on himself as a sort-of mirror. It would be shortsighted, though, to reduce these works with the label of autobiography. For one thing Panahi is too imaginative an artist to limit his interests to just himself. Like the French filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Philippe Garrel, Panahi recognizes how cinema can both enlarge a director’s persona and hold it up for scrutiny—you could say he brings the camera to himself in order to interrogate how it works. In The Mirror, Panahi exposed how much he usually controls as a director by allowing the little girl who stars in the movie to take control of the narrative. His films of the 2010s follow a similar trajectory, questioning how much artists can control the world around them.
Jafari suspects that Marziyeh was only playacting her suicide attempt, but the director isn’t so sure. He insists that the video couldn’t have been doctored, and in any case, he can’t resist her cry for help. The opening 20 minutes of 3 Faces find Panahi and Jafari bickering over the verisimilitude of the video on their drive, which gets interrupted by phone calls from Panahi’s mother (who wants to know if he’s making another movie) and the director of the film Jafari has walked off of in order to make the journey. When the two arrive in Saran, they’re full of questions, but they’re unable to ask them because they’re instantly swept up into the life of the village. They interrupt a wedding ceremony taking place on the only road leading into the town; in the village center, they’re mistaken for government workers, whom the residents are waiting on to fix the broken water and gas lines. Over the next day, Panahi and Jafari interact with a variety of townspeople, who begin to treat the visitors with respect after they realize the two are famous artists.
Directed by Jafar Panahi. In subtitled Farsi and Turkish. 100 min. 4/19-4/25. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $12.
