The narrative perspectives in films directed by women in the Makmabaf family can be categorized into two categories. With a god-like calm and objective zero-focus narrative perspective, it provides rational thinking for the real problems presented in the film text.
Usually in narrative films, the temperament stereotypes of male and female characters are broken, and the temperament image shows a new change that distinguishes it from the tradition, accompanied by a change in the way of participating in social activities.
The gentle and delicate, emotionally rich inner focus narrative perspective shown in the film starts from the perspective of women, through the establishment of emotional connection with the audience, speaking for women, and finding and re-establishing female identity.
Broken: Break the stereotype of gender temperament
In the films directed by the Makmabaf family, the director provides the filmmaker with a rational, calm, flexible and zero-focus narrative perspective, focusing on the current situation of women's survival in the Middle East, as well as the displacement of women's identity in social life and the change of female gender temperament.
Cinema is a microcosm of real society. Women in real life are threatened by war and forced to "change" their traditional gender roles.
Reflected in the film, men have stepped onto the battlefield, women have stepped out of the family, taking on some of the social responsibilities of men, and the stereotypes of inherent and traditional gender temperament have been broken.
The stereotype of gender temperament is formed by distinguishing between different temperament images of men and women, stipulating the rights and obligations of men and women in social behavior, the social perception formed, and the social rules to be adapted.
Masculinity is characterized by combative, competitive and competitive qualities, while femininity is characterized by personality traits such as compassion, gentleness, and sentimentality, and they rely on men for the necessary necessities of life, and masculinity and femininity show a dualistic characteristic. "This stable, solidified and gender-opposed gender temperament is called a stereotype of gender temperament."
In the gender temperament stereotype, the image of women is usually related to the family, and women bear everything in life, raise children, and take care of their husbands. In the films directed by the Makmabaf family, women break the relationship between masculinity and femininity, and in some films, men do not even appear, and women juggle the dual responsibilities of taking care of the family and using physical strength to make a living.
For example, in the movie "The Buddha Collapses in Disgrace," Barty and her mother and young brother's family are in a dilemma of survival, and their home is built on the ruins of the Buddha statue after the collapse, a cave-like room made of dilapidated mounds of stones.
Barty's neighbor is a boy of her age, and the boy's family is in the same situation, with only the boy living with his mother.
The mothers of the children needed to support the survival of the family, they went to society and went out to work. A little girl like Barty is also forced to end her childhood early, with a child-faced face playing the role of an adult woman in her life, caring for her infant brother.
What these poor families have in common is the collective exodus of male family characters, a situation in which the absence of men inadvertently obscures the concept of gender by the female characters in the story.
Women are no longer "second sex" in the traditional sense, but exist as "non-masculine" and "non-female". If they want to play the social role of men in a patriarchal society, since they are "playing", they must no longer be the established identity, and they lose their identity as women.
In the family and society, the absence of male roles is the beginning of the decline of society and nation, and the absence of either side will upset the underlying balance. The war led to the absence of male characters, and the departure of men led to the displacement of female characters.
Zero-focus viewpoint is like a pair of flexible eyes that are free from the story, all of its footholds, have the unique viewpoint of the narrator, this perspective of observation of the story is calm and objective, not affected by other factors such as characters, and more likely to reflect the reality of objective existence.
People who live in society have social attributes. It is an eternal social law that the person who contributes the most to labor in social production should have the dominant position.
In the traditional agricultural society, men are the main force of social production, forming a male-centered social culture that has continued to this day.
"Masculinity is always associated with the ability to be instrumental and physical, femininity is always associated with the ability to express sexuality and affinity, instrumental sexuality and the ability to be related to physical fitness are always more important, and people with this temperament enjoy higher status and power in society, that is, the difference in gender temperament creates a division of power."
Breaking the stereotype of gender temperament is embodied in the opposition between external temperament characteristics and social rights. Masculinity manifests itself as possessing instrumental sex and engaging in physical-related work, while femininity manifests itself as having affinity.
This is due to the physiological characteristics that distinguish men from women, masculinity characteristics make men hold social rights in society, and women usually stand behind men and become the central figures of family life.
The female characters in the Makmabaf family's women's films have a contrast between gender temperament and power. Men's "exodus" make women come out of the family and take on physical-related work in society, which is actually the transfer of femininity to masculinity, and women assume the social responsibilities of masculinity while maintaining the original emotionally oriented family responsibilities.
Among them, the transfer of gender temperament and social functions, there is no power replacement, when women and men have the attribute of relying on tools and physical abilities to obtain material information at the same time, women do not obtain corresponding powers, and still exist as male vassals and as "second sex".
Women become independent individuals in social work, but still do not have social rights commensurate with their duties.
Li: Finding and reconstructing female identity
The main feature of the inner focus narrative viewpoint is that the characters in the film are the external narrators of the film. In women's films as objects of analysis and research, female characters act as the first narrators in the film, telling women's own stories from their point of view.
The female characters in the Makmabaf family's directorial shots first have the perspective of active viewing, starting from her point of view, unfolding stories about women themselves, or stories that happen around them.
Usually, female characters in movies are more traditional, and the value of female identity seems to be realized only in the family. The cumbersome family life caused them to lose their selves as a woman and were forced to label them as docile and obedient. In fact, female identity should not be defined.
Due to the intervention of the narrative method of the inner focus point of view, from the perspective of the female role, the women themselves, the lives of women, and the female group are considered, and the identity of women is re-founded.
The gender identity of women is acquired, and it stems from the similarity and continuity between women and their mothers. In family relationships, women imperceptibly inherit their mother's family responsibilities.
This deep-rooted "family rule" may have caused women to be troubled by subjective identities that some women do not realize and still live under invisible family rules, such as Hawa's mother in the first story of the "Woman Trilogy", who loses herself under the oppression of family life.
Female identity is born in the relationship with family members, and the family relationship in "Buddha Collapses in Shame" has a clear change of position, Barty's mother replaces the role of father in the traditional family, going out to work to obtain the necessary materials for family life, and Barty replaces the role of the mother in the family, taking care of the younger brother, and connecting her relationship with her mother and brother.
As a young girl, Barty was clearly unaware of the change in her family identity. However, her thirst for knowledge has led her to unconsciously pursue her own identity in society—an identity equal to that of men—in the hope of obtaining another self-identity.
Some women realize that women's identity should not only be realized in family life, but should be reflected in the realization of self-worth.
The narrative passages in "Five P.M." that focus on the narrative perspective can reflect the transformation of female identity, and the protagonist Nogra is not willing to be an ordinary low-level woman, and her career ideal is to be a president.
When the teachers of the women's church counted whether the female students had any professional intention to become presidents, only three or four female students stood up sporadically, and the crowd burst into laughter.
The source of the laughter was the group of female students facing career choices, for whom the country had never had a precedent for a female president, which was too strange to be understood.
The development of career is an important symbol of women from family life into social activities, the same as women, they have different views on their career development, women become the backbone of social development This road is obstructed and long, to bear the pressure from male society, but also to bear the pressure from the female group.
Subsequently, they gave the candidate's speech, which led to the following meaningful dialogue. Film is like a "dream", the hidden creator creates a new world, and the narrator's point of view presents the picture through the camera.
Each frame of the shot is from the narrator's point of view, and the content is filtered out by the narrator. Every line spoken by the characters in the film is carefully set by the narrator, who creates the world of the movie.
In the narrative field created by the narrator, the creator provides the filmmaker with a rational and calm zero-focus narrative perspective, forming an "illusion" of the story telling itself.
The audience has one more level of viewing the story than the characters in the story, focusing on the whole story from multiple angles. The creator's inner focus narrative viewpoint carries the unique personal emotions of women and is delicate and gentle expression.
The peculiarity of the Makmabaf family's female directors in making films is that they carry women's thinking in the film, so that from the perspective of the film's narrative, the film breaks the stereotype of inherent gender temperament and actively seeks out and even reshapes the female identity.