‘It Was Just an Accident’ review: Humanity’s rocky road

Filmmaker Jafar Panahi delivers a must-see film with the hypnotic and unexpectedly funny ‘It Was Just An Accident.’

Shot with a precise, tonal anxiety, filmmaker Jafar Panahi‘s latest, the exemplary It Was Just an Accident, delivers a caustic and humanistic balancing act. With the radical political underpinnings of his most vital works, he once again seeks to understand oppressors by examining the perspectives of those looking to reckon with them through self-ruinous retribution. In just under two hours, Panahi finds ways to explore the lasting physical and mental effects of life under a regime and the way in which our souls take greater, self-flagellating beatings when faced with those who scarred us.

A man, played by Ebrahim Azizi, drives down the road at night with his pregnant wife and young daughter. While en route, he hits a dog, killing it. Here is where the film first lays bare its monumental intent – to offer humanity in unexpected places. Azizi’s face changes minutely as he watches the animal suffer before dying, before climbing back into his car, where his daughter shames him further for his accidental violent act.

However, it’s not just the dog who is a casualty. Due to the hit taken, his car breaks down, leading him to a garage and, most notably, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri). Vahid, who, identifying the man through the squeaking sound of his false leg, believes him to be the intelligence officer who viciously tormented and tortured him while he was a political prisoner. Vahid immediately finds himself thrust into an enraged fit of revenge, tracking him down and threatening to bury him alive until threads of doubt interfere. He must travel further to find others to prove the man’s innocence or guilt.

Unexpected notes.

Photo Credit: Neon

It would have been easy for It Was Just an Accident to focus only on the suffering of these characters. Considering Panahi’s own experience with imprisonment, surveillance, and creating art during immense censorship, a film that prioritizes the suffering of characters similarly imprisoned and surveilled (and their subsequent search for meaning) would be a pointed storytelling position to take. But what makes the film such a staggering success—beyond the sheer technical achievements—is how Panahi’s script reaches beyond the depths of human despair.

There’s a poet’s cadence to the filmmaker’s prose, loose and nimble in the delivery of his actors, that grants the film a smooth flow of exchanged and unexpected humor. Lyrical yet darkly funny, the tone plays with expectations. Yes, this is a story about revenge and the ways in which humanity succumbs to bitter folly, but it’s also a comedy of errors and mounting tension. Impulsivity drives Vahid and, consequently, the plot, as he often finds himself wrestling with his innate goodness despite a deep desire to punish the man who ruined his life.

The humor doesn’t cheapen the experience but strengthens it. One minute there’s the bird’s-eye view of Vahid and the engaged couple, Goli (in her wedding gown) and Ali, pushing their broken down and borrowed van that holds their hostage. The next sees the arrival of Hamid, whose loose canon antics creates great unexpected tension. There’s a bevy of pitch-black comedy that’s just as poised to illuminate the human experience as the darkness at the core.

Because ultimately that’s what this is – a tale of humanity and all of its many different paths and layers. At the start of the third act, Vahid once again acts on his streak of impulsivity that showcases his line in the sand that separates him from his abuser. He wishes ill on the man who tortured him while imprisoned, but his rage is still capable of sparing the lives of those who orbit the target of his ire.

An unmissable feat of storytelling.

Photo Credit: Neon

Panahi utilizes his documentarian style for observational shots that patiently observe the characters. From the moment of Vahid attempting to bury Ebrahim alive, to later sequences and revolving the van carting Ebrahim around, to the crescendoing, exhaustive exhale of their final (onscreen) encounter, and the lingering doubt that shrouds the final, haunting frame, the direction forces us to sit and wait with the characters. To sit in their discomfort and fury and the untenable sense of doing something wrong for what they believe are the right reasons.

Along with cinematographer Amin Jafari, Panahi shoots with an eye for the natural beauty of the rolling hills in the background. Utilizing natural colors, the tans and grays of city life contrast with the scorched earth of the desert, creating a gorgeous visual effect that mirrors the film’s tonal shifts. But there are no scenes quite as striking as those that center on Ebrahim, both of which utilize the glaring red lights of the breaking vehicles that catalyze so much of the story. Ebrahim, whose eyes convey so much at the start of the film as they take in the wounded animal at his feet, and whose mouth dispels so much pent-up, rotten horror by the end.

When we can’t see evil, how do we identify it?  Through words, sounds, and sensations. Through touch and minor observation. In the case of It Was Just an Accident, we too see how the creator of such evil – the one who carries it out – must also contend with how to let it manifest when the eyes are no longer the window to the soul.

The bottom line.

With a superb pace and committed performances that convey the stricken nature of these victims and the barely concealed rage they carry, It Was Just an Accident is one of the most vital films of the year. Tapping into long-gestating humor and the impossible, improbable human nature and the ability to sustain humor through devastation, the result is a story where the ambiguity is both the point and the driving force. How do we persevere – how do we champion good – when under a regime meant to break us?

It Was Just an Accident is now playing in select theaters. Watch the trailer below.

Images courtesy of NEON. Read more articles by Allyson Johnson here.

Allyson Johnson

Based in New England, Allyson is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of InBetweenDrafts. Former Editor-in-Chief at TheYoungFolks, she is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and the Boston Online Film Critics Association. Her writing has also appeared at CambridgeDay, ThePlaylist, Pajiba, VagueVisages, RogerEbert, TheBostonGlobe, Inverse, Bustle, her Substack, and every scrap of paper within her reach.