‘It Was Just an Accident' Review: Iranian Director Jafar Panahi's Done Being Discreet, Launching an Open Warning to His Oppressors
Take heed: Jafar Panahi is no longer the filmmaker he once was, transforming from understated humanist (in films such as 'The White Balloon' and 'Offside') to openly critical of the Iranian regime, as revealed in his punchy new political thriller, 'It Was Just an Accident.' The greatest irony of that change is that Panahi may never have become so explicitly defiant of his persecutors if the system itself had not tried to crack down as harshly as it did. Arrested multiple times for so-called 'propaganda' and locked up on two occasions (released only after he went on hunger strike), Panahi can't help but make art, emerging fired up and ready to fight back.
The same is true for the five characters in 'It Was Just an Accident,' who've assembled almost like the diamond thieves in 'Reservoir Dogs' post-heist to point fingers and dispense justice. Strange as it may sound (for a slow-burn scripted drama with endless driving scenes and a detour through the maternity ward), their mordantly funny task crosses the absurdism of Samuel Beckett with one of Tarantino's more furious revenge pictures. Each of these survivors swears he'd recognize the self-righteous one-legged prosecutor who tortured them in prison, even though none of them saw the man with his own eyes.
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Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) was blindfolded every time he was beaten, but he knows the sound of Peg Leg's walk when it limps into the auto garage where he works. For Shiva (Maryam Afshari), who refuses to wear the veil in her work as a wedding photographer, the man's smell is the giveaway: the way 'the Gimp' reeked of sweat. Meanwhile, hot-headed Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr) insists it's the guy's voice that takes him back to those traumatic days, when he was interrogated and threatened, left to stand for hours with a noose around his neck.
So what if none of these survivors can make a positive visual identification? Together, they can surely determine whether the man tied up in Vahid's trunk is indeed Eqbal, the oppressor they share in common. How did he come to be Vahid's prisoner? That's the outcome of the film's disorienting first act, which begins with a bearded man named Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi) driving home with his family. His pregnant wife (Afssaneh Najmabadi) and daughter (Delmaz Najafi) are dancing to the radio when he hears a whelp, the sound of a wild dog being struck by his car. 'God surely put it in our path for a reason,' his wife reasons, unable to comprehend how much this minor accident will change their lives.
According to traditional narrative logic, audiences should be predisposed to sympathize with this family, who are introduced first and seem like decent Iranian citizens (even if striking a dog doesn't earn the patriarch any points). At a nearby garage, Panahi adds Vahid to the cast, but does nothing to manipulate our feelings toward him. If anything, this disheveled new addition comes across like a slob, cowering out of sight in the rafters of the building the way a frightened child might. But something about Eghbal has upset him, and it's not until the next day, when he stalks and eventually abducts this stranger that his motives shift into focus.
Vahid digs a grave and is ready to bury Eghbal in an open expanse of desert (barren but for a scraggly tree that looks as if it was borrowed from a production of 'Waiting for Godot'), but his panicked captive introduces just enough doubt for Vahid to seek out other witnesses. 'There's no need to dig their graves. They've done that for themselves,' says his friend Salar (Georges Hashemzadeh), opening a dialogue that Panahi seems to be having with himself in the film.
By now, the Iranian regime's victims far outnumber its oppressors, whose draconian measures are inadvertently creating the very resistance they're trying to suppress. When things eventually reach a tipping point — and they will — Panahi wonders whether the citizens' revenge should be correspondingly cruel, or should they show mercy? Just how far off can revolution be? It's telling that Panahi is no longer obliquely challenging specific policies (the way 'The Circle' depicted gender inequality and 'This Is Not a Film' pushed back on limits to personal expression) but openly threatening his overlords with payback.
Like fellow Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof ('The Seed of the Sacred Fig'), Panahi is still working with both hands tied behind his back. Except for Azizi, who plays Eghbal, his performers are all nonprofessionals, and much of the low-budget production is spent not on traditional sets, but within a few meters of Vahid's white van — or else in the back, where Shiva has brought along the bride (Hadis Pakbaten) and groom (the director's nephew, Majid Panahi) from a recent photo shoot.
Her story is the most upsetting one we hear in a film that boils with rage, but still takes its time to play out. The director's anger comes as no surprise, though audiences may be caught off-guard by the humor, as in a shot of the couple pushing the van in their wedding gown and tuxedo. As the livid bride-to-be tells the man she's supposed to marry, 'It all started before you, and it has to stop someday.' That's the takeaway warning from a film that will almost certainly bring fresh heat on Panahi.
While the simple premise recalls certain post-WW2 dramas, in which survivors recognize the Nazi culprits who once terrorized them, the film's chilling last scene feels like a call to action. For most of its running time, 'It Was Just an Accident' leaves unanswered whether Vahid and company have the right one-legged man. In a sense, it doesn't matter. The movie shows that those who've been wronged — for protesting unfair working conditions or appearing immodestly dressed in public — are now united by their mistreatment. Case in point, the characters' backstories were directly inspired by things Panahi heard while incarcerated, suggesting that he couldn't have written this movie without meeting like-minded people in prison. That means, even if the authorities crack down on Panahi, he's not alone.
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