Review: IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT

Vahid, the boss of a garage, freezes when he hears a sound coming from one of his customers. It's a little squeak from a prosthetic leg. It takes him back to days in political prison when the torturer Pegleg was committing atrocities on a daily basis. He follows the man (with young family) home and then kidnaps him and prepares him for summary live burial in the desert. The man's pleas include a challenge to test his claim of mistaken identity and Vahid is struck with reasonable doubt that dances around with his righteous anger. So he phones some friends, or at least others who were imprisoned by the regime at the same time. They need a positive ID.

But they can't quite do it. The closest any of them get is something remembered from the darkness of a solitary confinement cell. Between them they still don't quite have enough to stop them killing an innocent and very unlucky man. By this time Vahid's van is crammed with a wedding photographer, her subjects including a bride to be in tiara and gown, a firebrand, and the war criminal/innocent man  packed into a coffin sized tool box.

Jafar Panahi's thriller has a story that has been told before. It's one that highlights the costs of totalitarian regimes and the crimes against humanity that nurture them. In this case the story has some more urgency, being from the current Iranian situation. Panahi has been a prisoner several times over in the regime's jails as well as house arrest. He has been generally forbidden to make films and famously made one by stealth while under house arrest title This is Not a Film.

Here, he is operating with loosened restrictions and presents this alarming tale in his usual neo-realist style, mixing muscular characterisation with enough comedy to smooth things while the ethics stay centre stage. There is one massive humanity-testing circumstance in the middle act that manages to be both funny and demoralising, another moment where officials expect kickbacks and things that should run smoothly are subject to wrinkles in the tape. 

Panahi does give us a conclusion (no spoilers) which is followed by a tense and almost eerie finale moment, shot with impeccible judgement. At a time when the world's news is loud with the actions of blustering tyrants and forced loyalties to atrocity organisations, we need this film. We need to remind ourselves of the terrifying decisions that await us when the curtain lifts to reveal danger from our own neighbourhoods. Think about it, it seems to call, just think.

Viewing notes: I went to a morning screening which was sparsely attended but did feature a couple of senior women at the back row who talked all through the trailers and commercials and then through the opening coprorate badges that inform that the movie is about to begin. They weren't loud but I hadn't paid to listen to them. I did as I no longer fret to do and turned until I located them and loudly intoned: "Excuse me. Please stop talking." They did, for the entire film. We need to do this more.