‘This Is Not a Film” was made surreptitiously by a politically persecuted filmmaker in Iran and smuggled out of the country in a cake. Presumably the dessert was tastier than this dry and dutiful piece of cinema.
The movie is a video diary that is so vague and circumspect that it might baffle you if you didn’t know the story going in: Director Jafar Panahi (“The White Balloon,” “Crimson Gold”) was punished by the Iranian justice system with a 20-year ban from filmmaking and a threatened six-year prison sentence for supporting the opposition in the fraudulent 2009 exercise Iran termed “elections.”
Awaiting appeal, and expecting his sentence to be reduced, he enlisted his friend Mojtaba Mirtahmasb to film him lounging around his apartment, watching the news, chatting with a custodian and playing with a pet iguana. Since Panahi is technically not the filmmaker here, he is side-stepping the ban, but the distinction seems unlikely to amuse Iranian authorities.
So there is courage and cheekiness here. What there is not is a story, or much insight or even anger; anyone expecting an indictment of Iran will be sorely disappointed as Panahi drifts around his home outlining his ideas for another movie, which doesn’t sound terribly political or interesting. In having this film made, Panahi seems interested merely in issuing the gentlest possible tweak, not a fervent rebuke, to the country’s oppressive rulers, and doesn’t dare to dish the details of the situation, seemingly in hopes that his sentence will be attenuated. Instead, he and Mirtahmasb coyly dance around the edges of the topic at hand. Their reluctance to speak too much truth to power makes for a meek and uneventful work.