It Was Just An Accident: LFF Film Review
Iranian director Jafar Panahi won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival with his latest effort, It Was Just An Accident, so naturally my expectations were very high. The film isn’t perfect, but I respect the hell out of it.
Mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) encounters a man with a prosthetic leg at his repair shop one night and is convinced he is “Eqbal the Peg Leg”, his tormentor when he was in an Iranian prison. Vahid kidnaps Eqbal (Ebrahim Azizi) and starts to bury him alive in the desert. When he insists he’s got the wrong man, Vahid has a crisis of confidence, and the seeds of doubt set in. Is this the man who haunts his nightmares? Vahid needs help confirming his identity, so he packs Eqbal into his van and visits former political prisoners Shiva (Mariam Afshari), imminent bride Goli (Hadis Pakbaten) and Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr).
First of all, Panahi is a filmmaker who must be applauded for his courage. He has been imprisoned before for openly criticising the Iranian government, but that has not stopped him from continuing to do so. It Was Just An Accident was filmed in secret, without the permission of the Iranian authorities, and is very critical of the regime and authoritarianism. For his bravery alone, he deserved the Palme d’Or.
But casting all that aside and looking at the film on its own, I must admit I’m not as positive about It Was Just An Accident as most. I couldn’t figure out what tone it was striving for. This felt like it should have been a farce, but it’s played straight. I know we’re dealing with serious subject matter, but the ridiculousness of the situation really piles up, and it feels like it should have been a comedy of errors. There were so many moments when I wanted to laugh, but it didn’t feel right. I couldn’t figure out Panahi’s intention: did he want us to laugh or not? It’s been described as a thriller, but it only really felt like that in the final act, particularly the haunting final moment.
The cast are excellent – I particularly liked Afshari as the voice of reason – and their heated debates about what to do are really compelling. Is violence the answer? Will it make you feel better? In these circumstances, is it justified? What if they’ve got the wrong man? It poses an interesting moral dilemma that makes you question what you would do and which viewpoint you resonate with the most. That being said, the film is a bit too talky, and they argue a bit too much, and it feels slightly too long at 104 minutes.
It Was Just An Accident is a tonally confused but remarkably critical piece of work from Panahi.
Seen at the London Film Festival. In cinemas from Friday 5th December