Offside
I haven't watched a lot of Iranian cinema. A Separation, The Salesman, Persepolis... that's about all I can think of. Even if they aren't about oppression directly, they all exist in an oppressive environment. As a viewer I find watching characters stuck in that environment very frustrating. Is this Gilead? Am I watching a Handmaid's tale? No, it's worse than that since there's no prospect of revolution... at least not in the timeframe of the story being told.
Here the goal is simply to see a soccer game in person, as a woman (dressed as a man). Perhaps the only hopeful thing in the film is that the agents of oppression that we meet don't themselves seem especially against the act of women attending a game in person... they just enforce the rule. Actually that's extending them a bit too much credit. Given the power to set the rules I don't get the impression any of them would change the status quo. Their annoyance at having to enforce this particular rule has little to do with the rule itself and everything to do with not wanting to be working. It's a bunch of young men begrudgingly fulfilling an obligation of military service. They'd all rather be somewhere else.
I don't get the impression that this episode in their lives will shift their beliefs towards something more progressive. If anything probably the opposite. People often grow to resent and hate those who make their work more difficult, not the system which precipitated the conflict. The next person they encounter pays for their frustration, and so on in a exponential sort of way. In time they come to feel the rule IS justified because of their experiences, meanwhile their increasingly zealous enforcement increases their rank to the point they are in a position of power to make or change rules, at which point they choose to doom the next generation of young men to repeat the process they just experienced.
I have a question for you et, but I don't quite know how to ask it. It's about the film's ambitions. Do you find them satisfying personally, or do you appreciate them relative to the audience the film is intended for? I find I'm struggling with the film. I find it bleak and sad and hopeless, and I'm not really sure if there's any takeaway for me. What do you take away from it?
I like your observations and sort of where this film led you to think, just in general. I think that's how "the system" works, it gets us to resent people that are very much in a similar station in life, and thus not think about the bigger issues that keep the people at the top in power. Also, there's the power of religious indoctrination at work here, too. I think through the body language and actions of the younger soldiers here, they seem, like you say, more blase about the fact that these women tried to get in vs. them just being a pain in their asses, BUT they (at least through the education system and the words of the people in power, if not through their own families) have also been taught the inferiority of women since they were born.
To your question: I find the ambitions very satisfying personally, on an artistic level as well as a sociopolitical level (the perfect blend for me in many instances). I like my Italian neorealist-influenced dramas to seem as "street" level (kind of how I think about a docudrama) as possible, the less of a wall between you and the protagonists (and antagonists) the better. At the same time, you could analyze this frame-by-frame (I haven't done exactly that, but did watch it once just to admire the frames), and there's plenty of interesting information there, too. But this sounds more like appreciation, and basically C-minus appreciation. Nevertheless, those techniques allow me to get closer to the people in the film (mostly about the people themselves, but obviously the context of the situation they're in matters), and the satisfying thing about this film is in the people, and partially the audacity of what Panahi was attempting (and that he pulled it off with so many days of filming truly coming off as a single day in the film). These women are resisting oppression while wearing the colors of their country, and Panahi's capturing it in a way I feel close to the struggle. I empathize, even if these things to happen so far away. I become emotionally invested in their struggle, to the point that their attempts to escape, or their overall treatment, matters to me. It's also fun to see how the male soldiers are when they want to let their guards down, and you start to see the cracks at the foundation of the Islamic Republic. The people just can't stop being who they are. Then the ending really put it over the top for me.
Getting off the bus with the firecrackers to mingle with their brothers and sisters of Iran after an amazing win to qualify for the World Cup is such a poignant final shot to me. It's humanity resisting and overcoming the oppression of the ruling class, if at least for a few moments, maybe one party. I don't see it as sad, bleak, or hopeless at all. Panahi himself making this film just shows how possible resistance and sticking your neck out there for good is (make sure you have friends in a few free countries before you do it, though.) At the most personal level, I've always been inspired by people fighting back against oppression in whatever ways they can. I have only dealt with it minorly in real life (#redfored, teacher's strike!), because I'm a white dude who grew up in a middle class home in suburban Ann Arbor and suburban Cleveland, but it seems to me that resistance is possibly the the time that people can be their best selves (save utopia, which I have design for, as well). Even as the women are detained outside of the stands, they still try to find ways to get the score from the guards, get a little play-by-play here and there. They joke, they mess around. The van ride to the station (
where they never went) was kind of a joke in and of itself, lots of social norms broken on this magical night. The power and magic of camaraderie due to a "meaningless" sports event. Anyway, it's close to bed, and I think I'm going to let this mass of words stand for my answer, or at least my impressions.
Maybe a shorter version is, this film isn't about oppression, but about resisting oppression however one may do it. I dig that biiiiiig time.