'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.

'A Separation' is one of the year's best

This Oscar-nominated film takes a revealing look at life in Iran.

When western audiences first began to discover Iranian film, viewers were caught by the beauty and simplicity of stories that often focused on children, perhaps to avoid the stultifying intrusions of censors. Iranian film has evolved since then, and nothing stands as a better emblem of its potential maturity than A Separation, a powerful and emotionally involving drama about a husband and wife who separate and are then caught up in a legal battle involving the woman who takes care of the husband's aging father.

Though steeped in all manner of personal and social conflict, A Separation is one of those rare movies that respects every character's point of view, offering a complex and realistic portrait of characters operating under intense pressure: the urgent need to find custodial care for a demented father, the desire to open new opportunities for a daughter, the pain of a troubled marriage, the resentment bred by those who think society has pushed them toward the bottom and the sense of entitlement felt by a middle class that's not beyond condescension toward those assigned to lower status.

It's ironic, I suppose, thatA Separation -- nominated for Oscars as best foreign-language film and in the best original screenplay category -- arrives at a time when it's impossible to pick up a newspaper without reading about tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Those of us who've loved and championed Iranian film find it deeply disturbing that some of the country's finest filmmakers -- Jafar Panahi, for example -- are in jail. Others -- Abbas Kiarostami -- are working outside the country. It may not bring great joy to the likes of Ahmadinejad, but a movie such as A Separation has the kind of refreshing candor and authentic humanity that's at the core of exceptional drama.*

Director Asghar Farhadi begins the story with an Iranian couple mired in conflict. As A Separation unfolds, we start to suspect that this couple embodies many of the difficulties of life in Iran on both personal and political levels, which inevitably spill over into the realm of religion. These conflicts feel both familiar and strange, built on recognizable human frustrations, yet pushed to extremes in a society in which conflict resolution can be cumbersome.

The movie's crumbling marriage serves as a backdrop for everything else that transpires. Simin (Leila Hastami), a doctor, wants to find new opportunities abroad, presumably because of the way women are restricted in Iran. Simin wants to take her 11-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) with her. Her banker husband (Peyman Maadi) is willing to grant the divorce, but wants his daughter to remain in Iran.

Simin won't leave the country without Termeh, but she does leave her husband. She moves out of the couple's apartment and takes up residence with her parents.

Meanwhile, Maadi's Nader feels trapped by a sense of love and duty. He refuses to abandon his aging father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi) who suffers from dementia and needs 24-hour care. Semin's departure leaves Nader, who works as a banker, in desperate need of someone to watch his father.

Eventually, Nader hires Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to care for his father. It doesn't take long for another conflict to emerge, this one between Nader and Razieh. This clash is bolstered by the staunch religious convictions of Razieh's resentful, unemployed husband (Shahab Hosseini). Razieh says she's uncomfortable with duties that include changing the clothes of Nader's incontinent father, something she views as improper and perhaps a violation of Islamic law.

I won't burden you with more plot description, but know that Farhadi weaves a tangled web of cross-purposes in which the movie's characters struggle to advance their various points of view. And don't think that Nader carries the torch for reason in the face of Islamic fundamentalism. He's a flawed man whose behavior contributes to his problems.

Farhadi also takes the characters through Tehran's legal bureaucracy as the parties seek redress. We begin to feel that life in Iran is beset by complications that prevent the movie's adults from attaining any sense of sustained equilibrium.

Farhadi provides enough information for us to understand each characters, although it's never easy to say who's right or wrong. Interestingly, the movie opens with both Simin and Nader pleading their case to an unseen judge, who's supposed to rule on their divorce. Let's just say, you wouldn't want to be that judge.

Given its complex scenario, it should come as no surprise that A Separation generates plenty of tension about the fates of its characters. Farhadi takes us into a highly stressed society that's full of irreconcilable conflict. That's a lot of thematic territory for what could have devolved into a domestic soap opera, but A Separation is much too perceptive for that. It's an insightful and honestly observed piece of work.

*In an interview, Farhadi told TimeOut London that censorship in Iran is a bit like British weather, "one day it’s sunny, the next day it’s raining. You just have to hope you walk out into the sunshine." The censors allowed Farhadi to film the script he submitted, a process no Iranian filmmaker can avoid unless he or she wants to work underground. I hope the sun of sanity shines on more of them.