The Mirror (1997) User Reviews

A Peek Into Iran

[TIG · 8/10 · 27 August 2001]

The fact that this film is set in Tehran makes it more then just a good little "slice of life" film. The setting and story give us a glimpse into ordinary life in one of the places that we westerners only read about in the newspapers and then only when bad things are happening there.

The story chronicles second grade student Mina's eventful trip home from school on a day that her mother fails to show up to take her home. Mina travels by scooter, bus, taxi and on foot through the frantic traffic of downtown Tehran. On her way home she meets with and overhears conversations by many different people from an old woman, to a police officer, to a auto mechanic. Mina also manages to quit the movie about half way through yet her odyssey continues anyway hence the film's title. Mina is very fresh and cute, the bit players are all very real and the trip home from school is fraught with situations that waiver between poignient to funny. Everything adds up to a film well worth watching.

smart

[toasterc · 8/10 · 22 February 2000]

Although this is no Hollywood, but just like another day in LA the poor director is having trouble with his temperamental star, save by quick thinking he somehow has turn this film into (perhaps) a far more interesting movie then he has intended.

Little Mina is a good actress, if not a very professional one, but one should consider that she is only in second year of her primary school and she has plenty of character to make up for it.

The film follows the day of Mina, and how she was trying to find her way home which mirrors the story of the film she no longer wants to take part in. The film lets us see the world from a little girl's point of view, hear her thoughts... it's a little reminder of how it was when we were little... being a child is not easy... no one wants to take you seriously, it takea you twice the time just to dial at a payphone, you don't remember those funny names grown up call those road.

It is a very interesting film, perhaps slow at first, but it will certainly make you laughs, make you think.

Keep It Rolling!

[AfroPixFlix · 8/10 · 28 April 2011]

One of the most brilliant movies you'll ever see! Before the 38-minute mark, you will be caught up in the drama of a lost little second grade school girl wandering along the perilous traffic of Teheran. After the 38-minute mark, one of the most incredible experiences in cinema begins: the meltdown of Mina the Diva. This tiny, squeaky voiced actress refuses to participate in the film anymore, and 4 minutes after her meltdown, director Panahi makes a split second decision that changed the film and his career: KEEP FILMING. The next hour is filled with more drama than any script could ever create: (a) Mina sheds her scarf, an arm cast and clothing before she storms off the bus in a rebellion as bold as a student uprising during the Revolution, (b) After yelling to the camera man to LAY OFF, Mina darts through traffic as the camera tries to keep up with her, but in her haste to flee the set, she keeps the mike on and we hear her footsteps and conversations she has with people as she tries to navigate her way home—she really does get lost, (c) we have scary scenes when we can't see Mina, but hear cars screeching to a halt: maybe she has she been hit (d) we hear some shady men talking to her, and we wonder is this a child threatened with abduction (e) on the bus and in taxi rides that Mina takes, we hear the true undercurrents of Iranian society regarding the tension between modern women and traditional men, (f) we learn of how compassionate some people can be towards keeping the world's most precious asset, our children, safe. I will not spoil it, but the natural ending to this tale is great. This is one of the best films you can all year. So AfroPixFlix says see it!

In the best tradition of Iranian film

[eowyn_in_gondor · 24 May 2004]

I really like Iranian movies because they tend to be a lot deeper and thought provoking than your typical Hollywood action/entertainment type films. This one is like that. Warning: spoilers.

It follows a girl's journey home from school. Her mother did not pick her up as planned. Scared and alone, you follow her one-woman struggle against the world in her quest to get home. Your heart really goes out to her as she cries that she doesn't know what bus to take, when suddenly she bursts out "I CAN"T TAKE IT ANY MORE!" Then she rips off her hijab and her fake cast and shouts at the director and cameramen that she hates them and wants to go home. So then the filmmakers follow her to her real home, as she walks and takes a taxi to her family dwelling, as she is completely unaware that they are on her trail.

The point of this movie is that film and real life are often interchangeable. The first part of the film was fantasy, about a girl trying to get home. The realistic part of the film is still about a girl trying to get home. It's brilliant! It does have the feel that the director started making one movie and ended up with something completely different, but the end result is pure genius. Maybe that really is what happened, or maybe they engineered the whole thing to begin with.

In any case, I really liked this movie. 4/5 stars.

Wonderful and powerful film.

[Red-125 · 10/10 · 14 September 1999]

Ayneh (The Mirror) is an unusual, interesting, and compelling work. The young star, Mina, is type-cast as a forceful and self-reliant young girl. The city of Teheran, as portrayed, has an almost anarchic quality to its vehicle and pedestrian traffic rules. The constant threat of accident adds a real edge to this cinema verité film. (In fact, the only problem I had with this movie was the ethical concern of allowing any actor, especially a young girl, anywhere near all this traffic.)

The Mirror is an excellent choice if you are looking for a noisy, exciting portrayal of an individual caught up in a realistic urban setting. Not a soothing film, but in my opinion, a great one.

Movie and Reality in Terms of Paradox

[p_radulescu · 10/10 · 6 March 2011]

It starts with a little girl trying to get home from school by herself, and as in any story of this kind, there are all kind of funny events. It is always interesting to see the world of grown ups through the eyes of a kid, also the Ciné-Vérité style of the movie is amazing in catching the street universe of today's Tehran.

All this is true, but after five minutes you start asking yourself what's the big deal. As director Jafar Panahi is known to be one of the big names in the Iranian movie world you'd expect with each new film coming from him to see something really new. The Mirror came in 1997, two years after The White Balloon, another movie with kids: that one had been remarkable. Was The Mirror just an attempt to live on the account of the previous movie? Well, no. First of all, the universe is very different in the two movies. The White Balloon pictures a world in fair tale tones: it's from the girl point of view. In The Mirror the universe is also interacting with the girl reaction, but it's clearly the universe of Tehran street, as it is really. It's a delight: it's a poem dedicated to the chaos and trepidation of the street of a large Mid Eastern city, where modernity and specificity collide.

Actually both movies are in some way deceptive. The kid story hides a deeper level. It is made known in The White Balloon just at the end. Here in The Mirror this deeper level enters the center of stage in the mid of the story. It does it abruptly: the girl declares out of the blue that she doesn't want to play any more in the movie! She just wants to leave and go home truly by herself! The incident takes place in a crowded bus, and suddenly we notice that there are no passengers there, just the crew surrounded by equipment. Director Jafar Panahi is in the bus, sited near the cameraman, and he doesn't know what the hell to do. He decides to follow anyway the girl with candid camera. As one of the reviewers observed, that moment makes the movie a masterpiece! We had in the first half Ciné-Vérité, now we have simply Vérité.

They faint to forget taking the mike back from the girl, so the camera will follow her and the sound will be captured. Sometimes the camera looses the girl, while the sound continues to be heard. Some other times we see the girl, but the sound is missing. On her way home the girl encounters an old lady who played in the first part and now is complaining about the conditions of filming, about the director, etc. A man recognizes the girl as he has seen the shooting of a scene two weeks earlier: we have seen the same scene twenty minutes ago, in the first part. We meet then the man who recommended the girl for the film production. And so we are forced to realize that the first part was a movie, while this second part is no more. What is it then? Well, it is kind of movie, of course: in the same time a movie about its own making and a movie deconstructing itself.

Two questions arise here. Firstly, is the first part a movie, or just reality caught with (candid) camera? Because everything seems too natural to be a movie. And secondly, is the second part reality caught with candid camera, or just a movie telling a story about a girl and a candid camera? Frankly, we'll never know.

So, beyond the story of the little girl, funny and interesting, beyond the universe of Tehran streets, remarkably rendered, there is the hidden level: The Mirror is interested to study the relation between movie and reality. Panahi is interested here in the issue tackled by Kiarostami in almost all his movies! The tile comes from this hidden level: for Panahi a movie is a mirror of the reality. And the mirror works in both ways: for Panahi also the reality is a mirror of the movie.

To analyze this relation I am tempted to use the Niebuhr model (see H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture). It could sound blasphemous, but I think we can see in the relationship between art and reality the same types that H. Richard Niebuhr discovered in the relationship between Christian religion and culture.

I think the way Panahi sees the relationship between movie and reality is in terms of paradox: movie and reality are different; the movie remains a prisoner of the reality, regardless of any efforts to escape; the reality remains prisoner of the movie, though it's unaware. That the movie is the prisoner of the reality, that we can grasp. Why is the reality, in turn, the prisoner of the movie? I think for two reasons: because of the Big Brother presence (what else is a candid camera?), also because it is in the nature of reality the tendency to embellish itself.

So the two categories, movie and reality, are condemned to live together, though each one tries to run away. A tragedy defined by a paradox. It's the way Luther or Kierkegaard were seeing the relationship between a Christian living his faith and the universe surrounding him.

Jafar Panahi must be recognized

[lee_eisenberg · 7/10 · 30 December 2010]

Iranian director Jafar Panahi recently got arrested, charged with propaganda. He is sentenced to six years in jail and is banned from making movies for twenty years. This makes his 1997 movie "The Mirror" ("Ayneh" in Farsi) all the more interesting. The movie depicts a girl wandering Tehran's chaotic streets looking for her mother. Suddenly, she decides that she doesn't want to play the part anymore! First time that I've ever seen that happen in a movie.

The only other Panahi movie that I've seen is "Offside", about women getting kept from attending a soccer game, officially because the men's legs are showing. Judging by that, and by the conversations that the girl hears on the bus in "The Mirror", Panahi is not a director whose films really please Iran's authorities. There should be no doubt as to why he now languishes in jail. And above all, I truly recommend this movie.

Reflections out of Iran

[Artimidor · 9/10 · 7 February 2013]

This is a film about a girl going home. Apparently her mother failed to pick our little heroine up, and the feisty second grader sets out to find her way through the asphalt jungle all by herself. Well, there's more to it of course. It's the asphalt jungle of Tehran and the film was directed by Jafar Panahi, one of the innovative film makers of the Iranian New Wave. Not that his latest works are allowed to be shown in his home country, mind you. Sentenced to a six-year jail term in 2010 and banned from directing he nevertheless defiantly made an iPhone production called "This Is Not a Film" about his situation and managed to smuggle it out of Iran and tell the world.

The Iranian situation as such is already portrayed firsthand in Panahi's early 1997 film. A representative of the next generation, a child, in the center, we witness its abandonment by the adults. We eavesdrop on them complaining, but not really listening, observe the gender segregation on public transport (albeit through an innocent perspective in between as the missing link), but in a sea of scarves, uniform looks and the all encompassing everyday turmoil one can barely get a glimpse of something one could call "individuality"... In the words of Panahi: Everyone is wearing a mask, plays a role. Thanks to the stark realism present in Iranian movies we become part of the life and the hustle and bustle therein, get sucked in by following the odyssey through a child's eye. And we'll reach a point in the film where a clever twist cranks it all even up a notch. Thus a very real situation turns even more real and it results in a powerful reflection with a double meaning, within the film and outside of it. As in his preceding picture "The White Balloon", also centering on a cast of children, the tone in Panahi's "The Mirror" is light, and the film is entertaining throughout, yet layered and thought-provoking. There's someone who stands up to find a way, lost, but determined, wandering around in need for directions. But there's a fundamental difference between directions and direction, as the viewer might notice. No coincidence either that this someone we're talking about is a girl, the focus of some of Panahi's other works. Or let's say it that way: This is not a film... about a girl going home.

The movie is a simple but moving journey.

[theordinaryreview · 7/10 · 23 July 2013]

Little girl: "I don't want to be in the film anymore. They tell me to cry all the time. If my friends see this film, they'll think I'm a nagger!"

The film follows a young girl, in first grade. The school finished for the day, all the girls leave. But she remains waiting though her mother is not coming to pick her up. The girl doesn't feel handicapped by her arm in a plaster and she accepts a ride on a scooter by a relative of a teacher to drop her off at the bus stop. Things don't go as easy as planned when she thinks that she recognized the bus she takes and jumps in it. Braving through the traffic she once again gets off the bus in a hurry after she thinks she sees her mother. Her journey takes a surprising turn when the young girl simply stops acting and decides to go home, she is not in character anymore but her troubles are still the same as she has to reach home.

The beginning of the movie really doesn't surprise people who have seen The White Balloon (1995), a young girl has issues with what seem to be the simplest task to any adult but to a child it can become as complex as a jigsaw puzzle. The shots are mostly genuine and we are really immersed in the dangers of the traffic, as it seems to be quite a dangerous task to simply cross roads in Tehran at this time of day. Even the actress will look familiar as she is the younger sister of the one in The White Balloon.

Where the movie shocks and differs from what we are used to is when the fourth wall shatters unexpectedly half way through the film. The young girl stops speaking for a short moment and we hear the director's voice giving her the instruction to not look at the camera. This is very uncommon and at first we think this just might be a blooper, but this is what the "film" becomes then.

It really puzzled me at first but I think it is such a powerful method. Whether this was really a caprice of the young actress or actually scripted, I wouldn't know, but if it was scripted it was a genius idea. If it wasn't it is not only great circumstances but great salvage of the movie. I don't really think it matters whether it was scripted or not and that's not what I would judge the movie on. Whether it's Mina or the Little Girl, her path to find home is a trip in itself, the movie exploring once again the generosity of strangers while some other by- passers do not feel like helping her at all.

The downfall of the movie-became-reality is the fact that the shots are not that clear anymore. Keep in mind that we are in a bus following a little girl running or taking rides through a town at rush hour. Therefore we often lose track of her, we only see car paint for minutes at times, fortunately keeping in touch with Mina through her microphone, which also encounters issues.

The movie has no great quotes, no great twists or a beautiful touching ending. It is simply a journey where the reality mirrored the fiction. I would actually think it to be better if we never knew whether it was all intended from the start as I like the mystery. I like the fourth wall going down in this unexpected manner.

I liked: The sweet, yet petulant little girl. Blurs the lines of fiction. Endearing.

I disliked: Suffers from it's reality-like filming. Most dialogues heard through eavesdropping with no internal link.

71/100 I was greatly surprised by its twist, the immersion was total.

Pure cinematic experience

[inioi · 9/10 · 12 December 2015]

This is a pure concept: Director has chosen to play with two resources: camera and sound. No music, no SFX.

The story itself is quite surprising.

Sometimes, the lower the budget, the greater the creativity. The border between documentary and film is blurred, so the sense of "reality" is quite present and remains till the end.

The director also plays with the audience: there is a certain point when the viewer feels to be misplaced.

As Rene Magritte's painting "la Vengeance", in which the artist does not accept the inherent limitations of his art, he dares to paint outside the easel, that way Jafar Panahi goes beyond the usual simple structure of the movies.

Just for "independent advanced" movie goers.

9/10

The Mirror is Broken

[Theo Robertson · 6/10 · 21 March 2017]

Since I'm doing an academic film class this week centered around the auteurship of Abbas Kiarostami , a director who I think of a one trick pony , I thought I'd immerse myself in the other works of other directors who make up the leadership of Iranian New Wave cinema and it's Jafar Panahi turn

One thing that becomes very clear clear very soon is how "samey" this cinematic movement is. Just about every Iranian film I've seen from this period is very similar in look and feel . The 1948 Italian film THE BICYCLE THIEVES along with other Italian Neorealist films , non professional cast , static camera work etc and the French director Robert Bresson , incidents taking place out of frame etc are major influences , so much so you tend to ask yourself if these Persian directors have any ideas of their own ? Not to be negative I'll always give a film and its makers a chance

As the film starts I had THE MIRROR nailed . A young schoolgirl finishes for the day and her mother isn't waiting for her at the school-gates . I know what's going to happen now . We're going to be watching a remake of Xenophon's Greek myth Anabasis where a Greek army is substituted an individual innocent Persian child finds herself in a potentially hostile environment . Never assume anything because it'll make an ass out of you and me

!!!!! MAJOR SPOILER !!!!!

Halfway through THE MIRROR there is a shock revelation where the fourth wall isn't so much broken but gets destroyed completely . To be fair to the production team I never saw this meta-fictional twist coming but by the same token it's all been done before with such examples being Michael Haneke's FUNNY GAMES from the same year or the 1970s BBC series GANGSTERS. I suppose if you're Iranian and have only seen Iranian films this might seem the most original and shocking film ever made. For those of us having the privilege of living in the West - and it is a privilege - we've seen it all before and destroys the emotional investment we've put it to the first half of the movie. "It's only a film" is a cliché that is very apt here and ironically destroys THE MIRROR

Fizzles in second half

[gbill-74877 · 6/10 · 27 April 2023]

Strong start, with a little girl trying to make her way home from school in the busy streets of Tehran and getting lost, something which builds empathy instantly. It fades in the second half though, after the actor playing the little girl breaks the fourth wall and walks off the project, then tries to find her own way home, mirroring the character's predicament.

The film gets a few observations in about the patriarchal society in the form of bus regulations that require women to enter the rear door, and a taxi driver who expounds on the proper domestic role for women in marriage, at least as he sees it. Mostly, however, it's just the girl trying to describe where she needs to go to strangers, who are kind enough to try to get her moving in the right direction, but never really follow through completely, often passing her off to another set of adults like a baton. There is probably something to be said for the resilience of the child and the culture where she is generally safe, or at least feels that way anyway (no one is alarmed for her being alone, a striking contrast to how it is in America).

Unfortunately, however, this film just gets tedious as it plays out, with no real escalation in the story, and the transition from character to "real life" coming across as a gimmick, since it added absolutely nothing. A great concept and an endearing little girl, but this is one that fizzled.

Clever but overlong.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 19 November 2013]

I would love to know more about the making of this film. Is this film exactly as the director, Jafar Panahi, planned or did he simply adapt the film to circumstances? I'll try to explain: The film begins with a primary school letting out for the day. All the children either take their bus or have their parents come for them. That is, everyone but tiny Mina (who appears to be about 6 or 7). When her mother doesn't show, an irresponsible teacher sends her off with a well-meaning man--but soon she is separated from him and the child fends for herself--trying to zig-zag her way through the city to her home. However, Teheran is a city of 8,000,000--and the traffic is crazy busy--and so the child's task seems impossible--especially since she doesn't exactly know how to get home.

About 40% of the way through the film, the child suddenly announces that she is finished with the movie and is leaving. And, you see the camera crew and director! They beg the child to continue but she will not. However, they now decide to continue filming her--but from a distance. And, the reality and the film are about the same here, as the child does continue walking and looking for her home--just like her character.

The idea of this film is quite good and the Iranians have shown that you can make great films with child actors and not much in the way of plot (such as Majid Majidi's "Children of Heaven"). However, although the idea of someone stepping out of the film is intriguing, the problem is that it happens way too early in the movie. Because of this, the pictures just goes on and on and on and it is simply way overlong. Had the film been 45 minutes or even an hour, it would have worked much better. But, at an hour and 42 minutes, it becomes quite dull and drags. Worth seeing for the insane film buff (like me)--otherwise you could do better. The only reason the film earns a 5 is the idea is sound and the little girl is pretty cute.

"How she rebels and who she rebels against is what turns this film into a masterpiece."

[elsinefilo · 10 December 2005]

A child (Mina Mohammad Khani) waits in vain for her mother to pick her up after school. Whether she tries to resolve the dilemma herself or asks for help from the adult world, this serious little girl confronts dead-ends. At first She asks help from a motorcycle driver and the guy gives her a lift to the bus-stop then she takes the wrong bus so on and on.She challenges the adult world. "If you can show me the way I can go by myself" is a repeated line in the movie but the adult world does regard her either weak or it doesn't care about her.The close camera shot right on the little girl is very good really and the performance of this little girl deserves a standing ovation. Great job! The only thing is that I felt that the movie lacks a little bit action through the turmoil of urban life. The director focuses on littler girl more than necessary I guess. We hear some external voices (like the people on the bus) but the camera is always on the girl so this feels a little bit passive. Other than that it's really great!

A Giant Traffic Jam for 90 Minutes

[billcr12 · 2/10 · 3 August 2012]

I watched the Mirror based on a positive review on a podcast called Filmspotting. I don't know what they were on when they watched it, because it is one of the worst movies that I have ever seen.

A little girl of about seven is at the front of a school in a city in Iran. She is wearing the traditional head dress and apparently waiting for her mother to pick her up and take her home. After waiting for a while, she becomes impatient and walks to phone booth to make a call. No one answers, and a man on a scooter takes her to a bus stop. She gets on, and the fellow passengers pretty much ignore her and carry on their mundane conversations as a radio in the background announces the score of a soccer match between Iran and South Korea. About 1/2 way through, the kid says that she does not want to act anymore, and we see the film crew. She wanders through the most incredible traffic, as the cars and bikes just crawl along at a snail's pace. I don't have any idea what the title means but The Mirror is absolutely pointless.

Poor cousin of Abbas Kiarastomi's Through the Olive Trees

[ashwinisharma777 · 3/10 · 9 January 2024]

For someone like me, who just wants a good story - this movie being one made for film connoiseurs who want to explore the philosophy and meaning of cinema - is not good for me.

It was good half-way through until the fourth wall is broken by the child actor, and from thereon, the viewer is led to view the movie with the fourth wall broken, but the way story continues in a very let's say 'organic' fashion maintains the myth that the fourth wall is not broken after all.

But if one were to keep the fourth wall lens, then it makes the viewer voyeuristic who chooses to stay with the child actor even after she wants to escape being filmed - even as the film crew chases down the actor from the set to her home.

It's surely a clever piece of work and one made for the history books - but it fails as an entertainment piece for me. I generally do not take well to content that is made for the creator's own personal enjoyment. There has to be something in it for the viewer too.

I found the cleverness interesting, but the execution a bit amateurish. The child actor would walk consciously while looking at the camera - betraying the fact that the fourth wall breakdown was scripted and executed not much to perfection. Alas, I am able to say this only because I got to see Abbas Kiarostami's films before I started with Panahi's library. Abbas does it so so well that Panahi's efforts in this movie pales as an amateurish metoo copy.