When the mind survives trauma, which affects everyone differently, it can in some cases process the pain by omitting peripheral details. In doing so, deep hurt can be channelled into one specific detail.
It can be anything. An image. An object. A smell. Anything.
The brain latches onto a detail, a survival mechanism creating a focal point which evolves to become a locked box. You can live with it, but you can never forget its presence.
For Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), that detail is a sound. Specifically, the squeak made by a prosthetic leg. When he hears the unmistakable wheeze for the first time in years in his place of business, his locked box is flung open, and his tormented memories pour out.
“Peg Leg” (Ebrahim Azizi) isn’t a family man whose car has broken down after accidentally hitting a dog. He’s not a customer who has left his daughter and pregnant wife in the car to seek assistance in a nearby repair shop. For Vahid, he’s the former intelligence officer who brutally tortured him – and countless others – for years in prison.
So visceral is Vahid’s reaction that he impulsively abducts the man and plans to literally bury his pain by burying his torturer alive in the desert.
However, his reckoning is derailed by a sudden sense of doubt. Vahid was blindfolded when he was tortured, and the man insists that he’s not who Vahid thinks he is. As for the lost leg, he insists that this is the outcome of an accident which happened only a year ago.
It’s not righteous vengeance if it’s murder, and Vahid needs confirmation from former prisoners that he’s killing the right man. So, he stuffs his would-be persecutor into a crate and loads him into his minivan. He proceeds to drive around Tehran, rounding up other survivors who could potentially confirm the captive’s identity. There’s photographer Shiva (Mariam Afshari), bride-to-be Goli (Hadis Pakbaten) and Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), a livewire who happens to be the only one who’s seen the face of the sadist who dehumanized them as so-called “enemies of the state.”
So begins this revenge story, Jafar Panahi’s first film since being imprisoned in Iran for “endangering national security” through his films condemned as “anti-government propaganda”, as well as for supporting his fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof.
The dissident Iranian filmmaker, who has clashed with the repressive Iranian authorities as far back as 2003, draws from his experiences as a persecuted man to tell the story of a motley crew of survivors trying to ascertain whether “squeaky” is their man.
Shot in secret, considering Panahi was not allowed filming permission from the authorities, the result is a taut, tense and tightly scripted drama that surprises due to its deft tone shifts.
As a thriller, it’s a powerfully engrossing work that explores the consequences of torture, the price of revenge and whether mercy is possible, as the characters are rattled by the possibility that fighting violence with violence could dehumanize them further.
“No need to dig their graves. They’ve done that by themselves.”
Yet forgiveness seems unreachable, even for those desperately trying to move on from their past and attempting to heal.
This leads to a reflection on the central uncertainty of identity, which by extension steers Vahid’s crew’s conundrum towards the unreliability of memory. However, instead of getting too bogged down with what could have become an unwieldy morality tale, Panahi masterfully injects some bleak comedy and slapstick elements to the retribution. After all, this dysfunctional road-trip has its protagonists crammed into a rickety van, which means some mordantly funny bickering over where to go and how to bribe security guards allows Panahi to lean into the absurdism of Samuel Beckett – who is namechecked by Hamid in the desert.
But as potent as It Was Just An Accident is as a satirical farce which verges on “Waiting For Godot” spliced with Weekend At Bernie’s – due to the lumbering of a body – Panahi never lets the comedic elements overshadow his film’s credentials as a timely critique of both the Islamist Republic’s repression and a timeless commentary of the sins of state despotism. At the end of the runtime, this is a subtly searing indictment of the terror a tyrannical regime leaves in its wake.
Nowhere is this better felt than in It Was Just An Accident’s jaw-dropping final scene, a simply filmed one-take shot which uses sound to devastating effect. It is worthy of the best horror films, and it’s without a doubt this year’s finest, most ingenious conclusion to a movie. Prepare to be shaken.
Even if Jafar Panahi’s extraordinary film hadn’t won the Palme d’Or this year, becoming the first Iranian film to do so since Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry in 1997, It Was Just An Accident is the work of a master.
Not that the Iranian government will be convinced. Nor those all-too-eager to call the Cannes jury’s decision a purely political one.
Once again, Panahi’s film reveals a fundamental misunderstanding: movies are not created in a vacuum. Cinema is a medium that reflects thoughts, generates empathy and empowers consciousness. As hoary as it may be to lean on the great Toni Morrison, the late author said: “The best art is political, and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.”
This is what Panahi has achieved. He shows with It Was Just An Accident that banal binaries stating that either a film is politically charged and therefore has little artistic value, or that it is art for art’s sake and the end result contains no allegorical potency is utter rubbish. As the filmmaker’s contemporaries Mohammad Rasoulof and Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha proved last year with The Seed of the Sacred Fig and My Favourite Cake respectively, subversive art is not only vital but artistically flooring. Both challenging and escapist films like these shouldn’t be taken for granted by audiences, who have the privilege of being able to see the work of filmmakers who literally put it all on the line for the sake of their artform.
Both The Seed of the Sacred Fig and My Favourite Cake ended being Euronews Culture’s joint Number 1 pick for the Best Movie of 2024 – and there’s little doubt that when it comes to looking back on this year, It Was Just An Accident will be a strong contender for the top pick.
As for next year’s Academy Awards, Panahi’s film will represent France (as the film was edited there) in the race for the Best International Feature Film. You can guess who we’re backing.
It Was Just An Accident premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. It is out now in French cinemas and heads to the BFI London Film Festival on 11 October. It is released in the US on 15 October, followed by a theatrical rollout in Spain (17 October), Portugal (13 November), UK (5 December) and Germany (11 December).