An Iranian director assays revenge

   Director Jafar Panahi has paid dearly for his art. He’s been in and out of Iranian prisons, initially for "propagandizing" against an oppressive regime.

   In his new movie, It Was Just an Accident, Panahi tackles issues of guilt and responsibility while raising disturbing ethnical questions: How far should those who've been tortured in prison go to avenge themselves? If it's justice they seek, how would that look?

  That sounds heavy, and it is, but when you see It Was Just an Accident, you may be surprised that Panahi’s thriller includes moments of absurd humor. And as is the director’s practice, Panahi embeds his story in the rhythms of ordinary life. His movie can be as deceptively simple as its title.

  Where to begin? A chance incident on a lonely road brings Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) in contact with Eghbal, the man he believes tortured him in prison. Vahid recognizes the man’s walk because "Peg Leg," or "The Gimp" as the prisoners called him, had a prosthetic leg with an identifiable squeak. You could hear him approaching.

  Like other prisoners, Vahid was blindfolded during his interrogation; he never saw Eghbal's face.

  After kidnapping his purported tormentor, Vahid is about to take his revenge. He starts to bury Eghbal  alive in parched land outside Tehran. But the man’s pleading raises doubts. Is this really the sadist who ruined Vahid’s life, costing him his marriage and his job? He needs confirmation.

   Vahid's captive winds up in a trunk in Vahid’s van, and Vahid begins contacting other prisoners, hoping they'll help him make a positive identification. If he harms an innocent man will he be any different than the men who tormented him?

    Former prisoner and photographer Shiva (Maryam Afshari) is in the middle of taking wedding photos when she’s recruited by Vahid. She leads him to Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), a hot-tempered fellow with no compunction about killing the man suspected of torturing him.

  Also on the journey are the prospective bride (Hadis Pakbaten) and the unsuspecting groom (Majid Panahi) who've been posing for Shiva's photos. Still wearing the gown she wore for pictures, the bride is eager to take revenge for having been sexually abused by Eghbal -- not to mention the nooses that were tied around her neck when she was threatened with hanging.

   Putting the suspected government official off-screen allows Panahi to shift the film's focus. He's less interested in the abuser than in the abused and how they behave when confronted with an opportunity to turn the tables.

  This unlikely group winds up traversing Tehran. At one point, Vahid's stalled van must be pushed through a busy street, an odd sight considering that the bride and groom haven't shed their formal wear.

   All of this follows a disorienting opening that sets the story's stage. A bearded man (Ebrahim Azizi) drives at night with his pregnant wife (Afsaneh Najmabadi). His young daughter (Delmaz Najafi) bounces to the beat of songs on the radio in the back seat.  

  When the driver's car hits a dog, he needs a mechanic, which brings him to the garage where Vahid works. Vahid's boss attends to the car. From the shadows, Vahid decides that the driver is the same intelligence officer he blames for ruining his life. The walk is a giveaway.

  Panahi has said that the descriptions of torture related by his characters derive from stories he heard in prison, and if anyone’s entitled to add humor to a tough movie, it’s Panahi, who displays a taste for the absurdity that confronts characters who often deal with the unexpected by acting on impulse.

 Considering his circumstances, every Panahi movie can be viewed as an act of courage. It Was Just an Accident, which won the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, qualifies as an important movie from a director whose struggles with oppression haven’t extinguished the spark that makes him human; that's the same spark that allows him to tell stories that touch our humanity as well.

 

 

  

Bob's Cinema Diary: Jan. 12, 2023: 'No Bears' and 'Saint Omer'

No Bears

 In 2010, Iranian director Jafar Panahi was prohibited by his government from making films. Despite the ban, Panahi was able to make five films. Last July, Panahi was jailed for six years. Even he has been unable to make films while incarcerated. Prior to his imprisonment, Panahi made No Bears, a film that, among other things, deals with difficulties of filming when a director must operate surreptitiously. In No Bears, which sometimes resembles a documentary, Panahi (This is Not A Film, Taxi) plays a director who has moved to a village away from Teheran. He uses his laptop and phone to stay in touch with a crew that's filming a story about two people who are trying to leave the country. In the film-within-a-film, Zara (Mina Kavani) and Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei) aren't in agreement. She has obtained a fake passport; he has not. She refuses to leave without him. For his part, Panahi runs into trouble with the townspeople of Jabbar, a small village near the Turkish border. Panahi's solicitous landlord (Vahid Mobaseri) apprises him of problems he may have with the locals who are upset about a supposedly compromising photograph they believe he has has taken. Both narrative streams of Panahi's film lead to tragic results. Employing a no-frills style, Panahi has made a complex, thought-provoking film that raises questions about a filmmaker’s responsibilities and makes you wonder about a society that would put such a gifted artist in jail.*

Saint Omer

First off, it's necessary to know that Saint-Omer is a small town in France that was home to a trial that gripped the French imagination. A French woman of Senegalese descent confessed to the murder of her toddler. She left her child sleeping on a beach so that death would follow when the tide rolled in. The woman claimed the devil -- or more accurately -- demons made her do it. That crime becomes the basis for director Alice Diop's Saint Omer, a meticulous depiction of the the mother’s trail as seen through the eyes of Rama (Kayije Kagame), a Senegalese-French writer and professor. Rama, who's pregnant, convinces her publisher that she should write about the trial. She sees a connection between the defendant and Medea. Much of the movie involves the testimony of Laurence (Guslagie Malanda), the self-confessed murderer. An aspiring student of philosophy, Laurence cuts a peculiar figure; she says she hopes the trial will provide an explanation for what she did. Rama's fascination with Laurence gives the movie the provocative charge of a writer trying to tackle a disturbing but irresistible subject. No, Rama decides this isn't some modern version of Medea. Diop allows the racism that Laurence faces to emerge as the trial unfolds. The resultant movie peers into both Senegalese and French cultures, focusing on issues of race, motherhood and alienation. But Diop doesn't stop there: She confronts us with the inexplicable side of human behavior which she explores in lengthy, immobile shots that resist the sensationalism a subject such as this might have elicited. Perhaps Diop wanted to move slowly so that we could ponder how ill-equipped we are to deal with secrets the heart insists on keeping — even from the person in which it beats.

*On Feb. 3 news broke that Panahi was released from prison. Panama's release came two days after he had begun a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. Let's hope that Panahi remains free. 

'Taxi' drives into the heart of Iran

A simple, but revealing film about a society under stress.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi has been barred from making films for 20 years. His crime: Making movies that angered the Iranian regime. As an artist with a flare for ingenuity, Panahi has resorted to all manner of invention to keep his camera rolling.

The documentary This is Not a Film (2010) dealt with the time in which Panahi was under house arrest. He was in the process of appealing a six-year prison sentence that accompanied his ban on filmmaking. Part of that film involved Panahi describing a film he planned to make.

This is Not a Film was followed by Closed Curtain (2014), which focused on a screenwriter in hiding.

Now comes the entertaining and illuminating Jafar Panahi's Taxi, a movie in which the director drives a cab around Teheran.

A more or less mundane premise allows Panahi simultaneously to explore the limitations that have been imposed on him and the deep contradictions that tear at the fabric of Iranian society.

Using a camera attached to the cab's dashboard, Panahi introduces us to non-actors who play out various scenarios, including one in which a hustler sells bootlegged copies of American blockbusters.

The movie opens with a satirical scene in which a passenger argues for the death penalty. Another passenger suggests that perhaps the death-penalty advocate is being needlessly harsh. The death penalty advocate sticks to his guns.

Two older women get into the cab carrying a gold fish bowl and explaining why it is essential for them to return the fish to the spring where they were found.

The film is stolen by a youngster who Panahi tells us is his niece. He picks the girl up after school, and she proceeds to kick the film into a higher gear.

Self-assured and confident, the girl says her teacher has instructed the class in how to make a "distributable" film; i.e., one that will make it past Iran's censorious regime. A film must be real, but not so real as to indulge in "sordid realism," we learn.

Taxi also opens its doors to Nasrin Sotoudeh, one of Iran's major human-rights lawyers. Sotoudeh has been in prison, so it's particularly convincing to hear her discussing interrogations with Panahi, who also knows something about the subject.

It's probably of metaphoric significance that Panahi -- best known for his 1995 masterpiece The White Balloon -- sometimes gets lost.

The tone of the film is relaxed and the filmmaking, of necessity, is modest.

But this deceptively simple film reveals much about the current state of Iran, about the plight of artists who are suppressed and about the way one such artist courageously retains his humanity, still allowing himself to be amused by his fellow citizens.

Taxi ought to shame every petulant director who makes a point of insisting on more luxury or more money. For Panahi, a film is not only an important act of expression: It's a necessary act of courage.