IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT is last year’s Palme d’Or winning film by Iranian writer/director Jafar Panahi (THE WHITE BALLOON, OFFSIDE). It’s a wrenching drama about ordinary people who were once political prisoners and suddenly stumble across a chance for some payback.
It does start with an accident, when a man (Ebrahim Azizi) driving with his wife (Afssaneh Najmabadi) and kid (Delnaz Najafi) at night hits one of the many stray dogs that roam the streets, damaging his car. He stops at a garage where one of the mechanics, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri, NO BEARS), perks up at the sound of his squeaking prosthetic leg. He clearly recognizes him.
The next day Vahid follows the guy. Watches him. It’s very tense. He’s circling around in his car. He has a shovel. He hits him with it.
When he’s out in the desert burying the guy alive he tells him he knows what he did. He was blindfolded, but he’d know the sound of that leg anywhere. He believes this guy is Eghbal, nicknamed Peg Leg, the most sadistic guard at the prison. And now he’s gonna pay for it.
The guy says he has a family. Yeah, so does everybody. He says it’s not him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He asks him to look at his stump. Says his accident happened too recently to be this peg leg guy he’s talking about from years ago. Vahid does look and the scars do look fresh.
So he doesn’t kill him. But he knocks him unconscious and locks him in a trunk. Holds onto him for later.
He goes to see his friend Salar (Georges Hashemzadeh), who owns or runs a bookstore. Says he thinks he found Peg Leg. Just needs him to verify it for him. Salar wants nothing to do with it. Says even if it is him you should let him go. This is wrong.
But later Salar calls him up with the name of somebody else to talk to. He couldn’t stomach doing violence to this guy but I guess he also couldn’t stomach nobody doing anything. Vahid goes to meet up with Shiva (Mariam Afshari), a wedding photographer in the middle of a job. She doesn’t want anything to do with it either but the bride she’s photographing, Goli (Hadis Pakbaten) was a victim of Eghbal too, and wants to see if it’s really him. So they get in the van to take a look. She thinks it smells like his b.o. but just like everybody she was blindfolded at the time, and can’t be 100% sure. They think who would definitely know is Shiva’s ex, Hamid (Mohammad Ali Elyasmehr). That’s a desperate act because this guy is hard to be around. The torture changed him more than it did the others, maybe. Or messed him up more noticably. Hamid feels certain it’s Eghbal after touching his scars. He remembers how they felt.
But this is a group of people in a tough spot. Sometimes that means trying not to get caught, but mostly it’s about agreeing what to do. Hamid is pretty hardcore, but nobody else is the kind of person who can be comfortable doing what they’re doing. They have differing opinions about how sure they are it’s the guy, whether or not they can get away with doing something to him, whether or not it’s justifiable. If there are cases where it’s justifiable, this is one of them. But if there aren’t, it’s not. Also Goli’s groom Ali (Majid Panahi) keeps wanting to be done with this because he doesn’t have the same direct connection to it as the others and is most worried about not screwing up the wedding. A little selfish.
The structure is brilliant – the way it opens with a long scene of this guy who I assumed would be the protagonist, turns out to be more like the McMuffin, carried around unconscious for most of the movie, but constantly discussed. Once I hear the accusation against him I can believe he’s a monster, but I still have sympathy for his pregnant wife and daughter we met along with him, and how this will affect them. Then eventually they become relevant again. The daughter becomes a character again, and Vahid’s empathy for her despite what he may do to her father strengthens him as a protagonist.
It’s also very funny that it’s established in the first scene that he’s borrowing someone else’s van, and then we see all the crazy shit going on in said van.
I tend to be a sucker for revenge movies, even though they usually follow the same pattern: I’m gonna get revenge, I’m enjoying the revenge, you know what, when you think about it revenge is bad. This is such a simple and straight forward story but it feels fresh because it manages to complicate that formulation a little. These are victims, they are angry, they have different ethics from each other but most question whether they should kill this guy even if it’s him. They are good people and (spoiler) their goodness prevails, but in the end I don’t think we’re supposed to know if it’s the right thing. I think there are different ways to interpret the very end, but they include that Eghbal comes to kill Vahid, or that Vahid continues to be afraid of him forever.
This story unfortunately feels very relevant right now in our country, and also in Iran on the verge of a possible revolution. I like that it doesn’t reduce things to simplistic moralizing. Shit is complicated. Do I believe in killing? No. Would I be mad at somebody killing the monster who tortured them? No.
I respect any artist speaking out like this, but Panahi has a more personal connection to it than most. In 2010 he was arrested for “making a film against the regime.” To protest mistreatment (including being stripped and left in the cold, and having his family threatened) he went on a hunger strike. One of his demands was “that my remains be returned to my family,” so that’s how serious he was. He was sentenced to 6 years and banned from directing or writing movies, giving interviews or leaving Iran for 20 years. He has done all of those things, and if I understand correctly the ban has been lifted, but he still has to make his movies in secret with small crews because he can’t get permits (in part because the women aren’t wearing hijab). Stay strong and safe artists, I hope you keep making movies, even the regular ones that aren’t as good as IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT.
