Iranian films – Movie Musings

Compelling, compassionate and deeply political drama, full of humanism and warmth

Director: Jafar Panahi

Cast: Vahid Mobasseri (Vahid), Mariam Afshari (Shiva), Ebrahim Azizi (‘Eghbal’), Hadis Pakbaten (Goli), Majid Panahi (Ali), Mohammad Ali Elyasmehr (Hamid), Delnaz Najafi (‘Eghbal’’s daughter), Afssaneh Najmabadi (‘Eghbal’s’ wife)

Late at night, a father (Ebrahim Azizi) driving his heavily pregnant wife and daughter home, hits a wild dog. His young daughter is deeply upset, but the father impassively responds it was ‘just an accident’. But the car is damaged, so the father pulls over for help. When he does so, the distinctive squeak of his artificial leg brings near-by Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) into a horrified cold sweat. Vahid has heard that squeak before: belonging to Eghbal (‘Peg Leg’) the man who brutally tortured him in prison.

The next day Vahid kidnaps Eghbal, intending to bury him alive until doubt sets in: has he got the right man? To get the confirmation he needs, he reaches out to others tortured by Eghbal, including wedding photographer Shiva (Mariam Afshari), bride Goli (Hadis Pakbaten) (with groom Ali (Majid Panahi) in tow) and Shiva’s former partner Hamid (Mohammad Ali Elyasmehr). Can this motley group confirm Eghbal’s identity? What will they do with him?

It Was Just an Accident takes inspiration from Death and the Maiden and it’s a story that could be happening right now. Jafar Pahani’s outstanding film is set in Iran, where anyone can be seized from the streets and face months of relentless, brutal questioning from furious interrogators. Pahani, himself imprisoned for seven months in 2022-23 (only gaining release after going on hunger strike) shot the film secretly (and illegally) in Iran, the sixth film he has shot in this way, after being banned from film-making. Smuggled out of the country, it won the Palme d’Or, and makes compelling political points about life in Iran while never losing track of the human stories at its heart.

Pahani asks searching questions about truth, reconciliation and what separates the oppressed from the oppressor. Each character, a rag-tag assemblage of the regime’s victims all bundled together in a beat-up van like an eccentric Scooby-gang, must ask themselves what they want from their former torturer. Is it vengeance pure and simple? Or something deeper? And would taking satisfying, violent revenge really fill the hole years of brutal treatment left inside them? Do they want to stoop to the same vile level as their torturer – if he can take the last vestige of their humanity from them in this state, is this not a victory of sorts for Iran?

There is no doubt about the lasting trauma years of imprisonment has left on its victims. Vahid, constantly stooped with back-pain, literally freezes in mute horror at hearing Eghbal’s squeaking leg, before rushing into a sudden, ill-thought-out kidnapping. Shiva can barely bring herself to look at her possible torturer, barely suppressing vomit when she recognises his smell. Goli has to be restrained from beating him, her pain roaring to the surface. Hamid’s instinct to immediately kill Eghbal needs all the group to restrain him: his fury so intense, the man’s identity is almost irrelevant to Hamid’s desire for revenge. Even the calmest people find themselves succumbing to the cathartic need to assault Eghbal, to work some of the pain out of their system.

But yet… aside from Hamid, the group find it hard to embrace the violence of their oppressors. Instead, all crowded into Vahid’s van with a drugged Eghbal locked in the boot, they meander, arguing over what to do. Bury him in the desert? Confront him? Let him go before he identifies them? These people fell foul of Iran’s government because they campaigned for worker’s rights – they are not revolutionary fighters, but ordinary people. This dilemma leaves them sitting in the desert, emotionally sharing stories of their imprisonment, seemingly waiting (as Hamid says watching Shiva sit under a dead tree, like Waiting for Godot) for a decision to come to them.

These heart-rending stories reveal the oppressive horror of Iran’s system. Tales of mock executions, people left hanging upside down for days, harangued under brutal conditions to confess and name names. The fear of returning there is a constant, all of them scared that a released Eghbal may come for them. The abusive infection at the top of the country, trickles down. Anyone with any authority abuses their power, from car park attendants who carry card machines to force bribes for turning blind eyes to suspicious activity to hospital staff who place rules above treating people (and nurses who expect ‘tips’ for service), the system feels corrupt from top-to-bottom.

But that doesn’t mean the country is. Pahani reminds us throughout that real people are kind: there is a strong, uplifting humanist streak throughout It Was Just an Accident. From an ordinary person’s instinctive offer to help when Eghbal’s car breaks down, to passers-by who rush to help push Vahid’s van when it breaks down (filmed in long shot, these passers-by didn’t even knew they were in a film) to a doctor who over-rules petty officialdom to help a woman in need. It Was Just an Accident is full of small moments of human warmth and decency. Each of our group displays these attributes at points, with Vahid and Shiva in particular revealed as people of deep generosity and kindness. The film also takes surprising turns, with the characters responding to circumstances with a decency and humanity that is immensely moving.

Pahani shoots with a series of measured, long-takes allowing performances and themes to naturally expand. He films a series of virtuoso extended scenes of intense emotion, where the camera simply sits or glides gently to follow the action. The long desert scene, where the characters share their stories is all the more powerful for the gentle, unobtrusive distance the camera gives them. Best of all, a hugely powerful sustained shot, lit by the brake lights of the van, explodes with grief, cathartic anger, menace and shame – as well as eliciting extraordinary performances from the actors.

It Was Just an Accident is wonderfully acted across the board. Vahid Mobasseri is heart-breakingly decent beneath his pain. Mairam Afshari’s Shiva is superb as a principled woman who won’t allow herself to be corrupted. Mohammed Ali Elyasmehr’s Hamid never lets the anguish beneath his rage get forgotten. Hadis Pakbaten gives Goli a desperation to speak out while Majid Panahi’s Ali allows his character’s reserve to slowly break. Ebrahim Azizi walks a fine-line with the possible Eghbal, switching from assurance to desperate confusion, pleading to rage – and closes with an impassioned tour-de-force that provokes complicated, enigmatic reactions from the audience.

Enigmatic is also part of Pahani’s ending, a quiet, open-to-interpretation final sequence that could be either a haunting reminder of how the past never lets us go, or a suggestion that there is a hope for truth and reconciliation. How you take it, is to you. But there is no doubting the extraordinary power of Pahani’s film, or how lightly it wears its political and social messages. This is not a film without humour, nor is it a film that forgets people are capable of decent, humane acts that can surprise even themselves. It’s a film that will leave you thinking deeply.

Compelling drama of a family under pressure, in Farhadi’s brilliant film

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Cast: Payman Maadi (Nader), Leila Natami (Simin), Sareh Bayet (Razieh), Shahab Hosseini (Hodjat), Sarina Farhadi (Termeh), Merila Zare’I (Miss Ghahraii), Ali-Ashgar Shahbazi (Nader’s father), Babrl Karimi (Judge), Kimia Hosseini (Somayeh), Shirin Yazdanbakhsh (Simin’s mother)

It’s very easy today to imagine Iran as another world. A mysterious country, locked behind an oppressive regime that we are constantly told by our leaders is a frightening, distant place not to be trusted. But this prosperous country, with its rich historical background, isn’t some sort of Mars. It’s full of regular, normal people just trying to do their best for their families. It’s the strongest thing you’ll take out of Asghar Farhadi’s heartfelt, low-key, deeply moving masterpiece: deep down, we are all united by how circumstances push us into desperate situations with few good options.

Married couple Nader (Payman Maadi) and Simin (Leila Natami) have petitioned for divorce. Secular Muslims, they want to emigrate to find better opportunities for their teenage daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). Simin wants to leave now – but Nader won’t leave while his aged father (Ali-Ashgar Shahbazi), suffering from Alzheimer’s, is alive. Their only option, under Iranian law, is divorce. However, separation makes it impossible for Nader to care during the day for his father. He hires Razieh (Sareh Bayet), a devout Muslim – but the position causes her a host of problems, from concerns about touching another man (she calls her Imam to ask if she can change the old man’s trousers after an accident), to her worries about what will happen if her husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), a feckless man in and out of prison, finds out she is working for a single man. After Razieh ties Nader’s father to a bed to keep him safe, she and Nader argue, during which he forces her out of his flat. Razieh then has a miscarriage that night. Did Nader know she was pregnant? If so, he could face prison for murder. Both families find themselves in desperate straits.

A Separation is a superb piece of film-making, deceptively simple in its assembly and shooting, but carrying a huge emotional force as we become invested in the lives of the people it follows. Farhadi never passes moral judgement over his characters. All of them have strong reasons for doing what they are doing, rooted in what’s best for the family. Everyone acts in the way they feel will best protect their loved ones. Arguments become profoundly personal and damaging – but they don’t start out that way. It’s simply a question of things slipping out of control.

That’s not helped by the laws of the Iranian state. Farhadi’s film is very careful to never pass explicit comment on Iran’s laws. But the nature of the regime – and the mood it encourages – is at the heart of all the problems. Tensions are perhaps inevitable between the middle-class and secular Nadar and Simin, and the more working-class and traditional Razieh and Hodjat. This is class and religion in one cocktail, both sides carrying impressions that are nearly impossible to shake off.

But it’s the laws of the state that amplify this: where a man and a wife must go through a demanding pantomime for divorce or a man can be sentenced for murder for the lightest push on the shoulder of a woman who then miscarries. The judge hearing the pre-trial arguments (a very gentle and dignified performance from Babrl Karimi) may be the very soul of reasonableness, but it doesn’t change the fact that the laws he must rigidly uphold continually inflame the situation.

The story is brilliantly constructed, a tightly plotted melodrama that frequently presents new information that forces us to reinterpret what we have seen and heard. It mixes superbly domestic drama and crime procedural, and frequently only the audience has the complete picture of everything that has happened. Key arguments – the loss of money, Razieh’s unexplained absence from her duties, the difficulties of keeping Nadar’s father safe – are shown to us from every angle. But still, we understand the very natural – and human – reactions that people who do not have all the facts, as we have, make. Perhaps it’s the constant stress of simply living – magnified in a crowded and difficult city like Tehran – that seem to put every character on a knife-edge, terrified that a wrong step could land them in a host of trouble.

But that’s the power of Farhadi’s film-making – he invests every shot with sympathy and empathy. He wants us to understand everyone. It would be easy to make Hodjat exactly the sort of chippy, argumentative, working-class figure Nadar clearly thinks he is – but we also see his desperation, poverty, shame at not being able to provide for his family. Simin is easy to see as a woman trying to escape to live her own life – but she is also willing to cause collateral damage to the rest of her family. Nadar is the picture of a more liberal Iranian – but he also refuses to listen to people and is selfish in equating what he wants with what everyone else should want. There are no easy moral choices here – and no clear “heroes and baddies” for us to invest in.

The film reminds us that on every side of a dispute there are real people, with real concerns. And that the collateral damage can be just as bad. Nadar’s father is left even more catatonic than he was at the film’s start. Nadar and Simin’s daughter Termeh becomes consumed with guilt and disillusionment over the moral compromises her parents are forced to make. Her distress plays constantly at the edges of scenes – and even her morals eventually end up compromised – only coming fully into focus with Farhadi’s heartbreakingly open-ended conclusion.

The acting is superb. Payman Maadi is harassed and desperate under a veneer of controlled reason. Leila Natami plays a modern career woman, compromising herself every day, with great power and intensity. Sareh Bayet’s vulnerability is matched only with her profound sense that she cannot compromise her morals, in a performance that brilliantly mixes fear, resentment, warmth and anger. Shahab Hosseini superbly brings to a life a loud, brash man who is secretly profoundly weak, scared and trapped. There isn’t a wrong note in the entire cast, and Farhadi’s patient and intimate direction and shooting allows each of them to bring their characters superbly to life. This is a brilliant film which shows an intriguing – but sensitive – insight into life in Iran. But it most strongly demonstrates how human we all are. Everyone in the film is doing what they feel is best for their family – be that trying to hold them together, forcing the issue of emigration, earning money from work, or suing for compensation for the loss of a child. It’s a glorious reminder of how our lives can be altered by circumstances, and our intentions drastically different from their impact.