I don’t think I’ve seen another film this year that lays out its central thesis as quickly and efficiently as Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident, a dark comedy fable about the futility of revenge that literally opens its very first shot with an image of dogs chasing cars. An angry and funny look at the cycles of violence and vengeance under the Iranian regime, it’s a film full of people desperately seeking resolutions that won’t truly save them in a country where justice is impossible to obtain.
Our main car-chasing hound here is Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), a former prisoner of the state who has been left a physically and mentally broken man by his time under torture, most of which was carried out by a sadistic war veteran with a prosthetic leg. Blindfolded for all his sessions, Vahid could not pick the man’s face out of a lineup, but the squeak of his prosthesis is seared into his brain, so when a one legged man with a squeaking artificial limb (played by Ebrahim Azizi) wanders by chance into Vahid’s work, he snaps, beating and kidnapping this possibly innocent disabled stranger.
It’s an utterly harebrained scheme that instantly forces Vahid into a lethal dilemma – whether this guy is torturer ‘Peg Leg’ Eqbal, as Vahid assumes, or not, Vahid’s own life is over if he gets away alive. Possibly to assuage his own conscience or perhaps bring some others down with him, Vahid starts a quest to find other victims of Eqbal to confirm that the man he has nabbed is indeed the villain he assumes before burying him alive in the Iranian desert. These are level-headed photographer Shiva (incredible first-time actress Mariam Afshari), traumatised newlyweds Goli (Hadis Pakbaten) and Ali (Majid Panahi), and murderously angry wildcard Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr).
Panahi gets a lot of comic mileage out of this gang coming together, slowly loading up Vahid’s van (in which ‘Eqbal’ is stashed in a chest) like a deadly clown car. They’re also all in hilariously mismatched outfits – Vahid dressed for work, Shiva’s flak jacket-esque vest making her look like she’s in a combat zone, the newlyweds in their tux and dress, and Hamid all schlubby and casual – visually hammering home how ill-prepared any of them are for a scheme this serious. And so it proves, the gang getting into an increasingly ludicrous series of situations while calling one another idiots.
It’s funny but tragic, the arguments between Eqbal’s victims fuelled less by actual interpersonal disagreements than years of unresolved pain and humiliation, all excellently played by the ensemble. It’s all building up to a climactic confrontation where the laughs die completely, replaced by white-hot rage, and while this does drag on a little too long, the final note Panahi ends on is utterly haunting. Winning the Palme d’Or at this year’s edition Cannes, It Was Just An Accident is the first Panahi effort in many years that is purely narrative fiction, politically-charged and vital but also just eminently watchable.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 