It Was Just an Accident
Jafar Panahi’s brilliant, Palme-d’Or-winning drama It Was Just An Accident expertly probes the moral and psychological implications of revenge
Revenge has rarely felt as searingly political, ethically complex, or unabashedly absurd as in Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident. A filmmaker known to have suffered at the hands of the regime in his native Iran, he is well placed to craft this film about such survivors. It explores their experiences via the central conceit of a man, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), who chances upon the sound of a squeaking prosthetic limb that he identifies as belonging to ‘Peg Leg’ (Ebrahim Azizi), a prison torturer whose cruelty he’d suffered when incarcerated years prior. Vahid promptly kidnaps the man with the intention of exacting retribution.
Unsure about his course of action, Vahid collects a coterie of fellow former detainees who clamber into the back of his beat-up van and debate the rationalisations and consequences of their desired justice – and whether they concur the man even is Peg Leg at all. From a bride and groom in their wedding get-up (Hadis Pakbaten and Majid Panahi) to the raving Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr) who advocates vengeance regardless of successful identification, they run the gamut.
It Was Just An Accident borders on farce, but Panahi never allows it to spill over into territory that undermines the integrity of the film’s multivalent dialogues. Scarred by trauma, the ensemble wrestles with whether killing Peg Leg is justified, what it means to sink to the level of those who hurt them, and how to retain their own humanity. Old wounds remain painfully exposed, and Panahi expertly probes their moral and psychological implications.
Released 5 Dec by MUBI; certificate 15