Jafar Panahi’s ‘taut revenge thriller’ turns into frontrunner to take Cannes’ high prize

After years of imprisonment and journey bans in his native Iran, Jafar Panahi returns to Cannes with a livid however humorous revenge thriller that takes intention at oppressive regimes and will scoop the Palme d’Or.

The movie opens with a protracted, unbroken, deceptively charming shot of a genial man (Ebrahim Azizi) and his comfortable, pregnant spouse driving within the countryside one night, with their playful daughter within the again seat. When the automotive breaks down, the husband persuades a mechanic to tinker with it, however then the mechanic’s rumpled colleague Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) recognises a chilling mixture of sounds: the uneven footsteps of somebody with a limp, and the squeaks of a synthetic leg.

One of many themes working by way of the competitors movies at this 12 months’s Cannes Movie Pageant is how laborious it may be to battle your strategy to justice when the state is standing in your method. In Two Prosecutors, the forms in Stalin’s USSR grinds fact to mud. In Eagles of the Republic, an Egyptian actor finds himself being directed by slimy officers, each at work and at house. File 137 is ready in as we speak’s France, however even there, a police investigation is obstructed by methods that defend some sorts of wrongdoers greater than others.

Essentially the most instant and private of those movies is It Was Simply an Accident, written and directed by Jafar Panahi. Panahi has repeatedly been imprisoned and banned from film-making in his native Iran, and has been topic to so many journey bans that he hasn’t been in Cannes since 2003 (though his movies have), so it is hardly stunning that his newest movie is so frank about life underneath an oppressive regime. What could also be extra stunning is that It Was Simply an Accident balances fury with heat, humour and sympathy for its characters, even when taking up the grimmest attainable material.

These sounds, which have haunted Vahid’s nightmares for years, recall somebody he calls Peg Leg, a sadistic interrogator who tortured him whereas he was incarcerated on trumped-up sedition prices. On impulse, Vahid knocks the person out with a shovel, and stuffs him in a field behind his van. He plans to bury Peg Leg alive within the desert – and the movie, with its dusty mountain vistas, involves really feel like a basic Western story of frontier justice.

However wait. Vahid was at all times blindfolded whereas he was in jail, and so he cannot be sure that the person he has caught is Peg Leg, in any case. He decides to drive into the town to get a second opinion from a buddy who was locked up with him, however even then, issues aren’t so easy. Earlier than lengthy, Vahid’s van is filled with former prisoners arguing over the query, together with a shrewd wedding ceremony photographer (Mariam Afshari), an offended girl (Hadis Pakbaten) who’s getting married the subsequent day, and a bitter man (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr) who’s greater than keen to throttle Vahid’s captive, whether or not he’s Peg Leg or not.

It Was Simply an Accident is a taut and twisting revenge thriller loaded with heavyweight moral quandaries. It’s heartbreakingly specific about what the well-drawn characters have suffered, but it surely asks whether or not they can ever be justified in utilizing the identical strategies – abduction, torture – as their oppressors. Even when they will make certain that their captive is Peg Leg, have they got the correct to execute him? Alternatively, have they got a selection? Have they gone thus far that they are going to be in additional hassle in the event that they launch him than in the event that they end the job?

Panahi mixes these points with a wholesome dose of comedy. Vahid and his associates are not any bloodthirsty vigilantes, however a bickering bunch who could also be foiled of their mission by working out of petrol: at one level, they need to push the van to a storage, together with the bride-to-be in her white wedding ceremony costume. In the meantime, they are not simply wanting over their shoulders for the key police, they’re being irritated by endemic, low-level corruption. Certainly one of a number of wry examples has two safety guards producing their very own moveable card readers in order that they will settle for bribes from individuals who have no money on them.

These farcical vignettes aren’t simply mild reduction, although. They bolster Panahi’s highly effective level that heroes and villains aren’t all monumental figures in uniform. Those that have dedicated the worst evils, those that have endured them, and people who have stood again and let these evils occur, can all be seen on any sunny metropolis avenue, getting on with their extraordinary lives with mates and relations.

Panahi places these terrifying but touchingly humane insights into a movie that’s as fast-moving and unpretentious as any crime caper. He might nicely return to Iran with Cannes’ high prize, the Palme d’Or, after the competition finishes this weekend.