It Was Just An Accident review: Jafar Panahi's gripping moral thriller is a major achievement

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi's film is infused with grit, anger but above all, humanity.

It Was Just An Accident
Director: Jafar Panahi
Rating: ★★★★★

It Was Just An Acccident played to a packed house at the International Film Festival of Kerala.

Each new feature from Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi is a form of protest. The stakes are incredibly high for him, whose films are like socio-economic parables of his country under such scrutiny and control. The more he is told not to make films, the more unscathed he makes them. His astonishing new feature, It Was Just An Accident, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes earlier this year, and premiered at the International Film Festival of Kerala, arrives like a silent storm and then gushes through the frame with such force and intensity that by the end, there's a palpable shift. It is a revenge thriller filled with rage against the authority, brimming with moral complexities.

The premise

Vahid (played by Vahid Mobasseri) is caught offguards by the sound of something in his shop. It clearly still triggers something traumatic, a sound that he cannot easily forget. Turns out, it is the sound of a prosthetic leg. Informed by real-life experiences and stories of people he met in prison, the film sets the tone with stunning immediacy. It is established that Vahid was one of the many civilians who were arrested during protesting for workers rights. He recognizes this man (Ebrahim Azizi), who tortured him during his time there in prison, only by this sound. His name is Eghbal, or Peg Leg as he is called. Vahid follows him home and the next day, knocks him down with a shovel. He ties Eghbal up, puts him inside a box and digs the ground to bury him alive. But Eghbal begs for life and tells that Vahid has got a different person and he is not the same man.

Vahid puts him in the van, in the pursuit of others who can verify that this man is indeed Eghbal. He meets a photographer named Shiva, played by Maryam Afshari, who has rebuilt her life in the aftermath of her prison sentence. She is busy with a pre-wedding shoot, and turns out, even the bride (Goli, played by Hadis Pakbaten) was one of the victims of Peg Leg. One particularly haunting monologue details, in her own words, what happened to her during those days in prison. She takes her fiancee (Majid Panahi, the director's brother) along with her for the ride. Then there is the impulsive Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), whose fury is so intense that he threatens to knock down the man right at the spot.

What works

Still, as these bunch of people argue and yell at each other about what to do next, Panahi insists that their anger must not envelop and obliterate their humanity. It Was Just An Accident finds the director at his angriest, and it can be perplexing at the circles of moral dilemma this film takes on. A morbid undertone of humour pervades the scenario amid the brutal and absurd futility of it all. Panahi, a master filmmaker, is at the top of his craft here, building a stunningly realized finale that took my breath away. The particular sequence that ties up the film's insistence on revenge, is hauntingly performed and shot. The intensity of this rage, coupled with relentless moral dilemma, is breathtaking to behold.

It Was Just An Accident is an essential work of filmmaking from a director who must confront the grave immediacy of his truth and his people. It is a film that is not just about one country, but arrives like a warning to authoritarian regimes everywhere, a signal for citizens of the world. Panahi wants us to see how tempting it might look to give it back to the oppressors in the same way as they suffered. There's so much anger and desperation that it threatens to dehumanize the best of minds. Panahi wants to draw the line and say, look, this is where we are at. This is what we are left with. Look closely. If we are left with nothing but rage, we might as well become what we hate.