At a pivotal moment in Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident,” our main characters are debating whether to kill the man who tortured them in prison – or, at least, they’re pretty sure he’s the man who tortured them in prison.
Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), a staunch member of the “kill him” camp, walks over to Shiva (Mariam Afshari), who’s sitting up against a tree with no leaves. The tree reminds Hamid of a play the two of them saw once, “Waiting for Godot.” They too now find themselves waiting for the same thing as the characters in the play – for hope, for salvation, for some clue of what they should do. But the thing about Godot is he never shows up. Hope, an answer, whatever it is – it never finds those waiting on it.
That tension sits at the core of Panahi’s rage-fueled, somehow comedic thriller about the fruitlessness of revenge. Made in secret by a filmmaker who understands the evils of authoritarianism better than most, “It Was Just an Accident” offers a sharp rebuke to that authoritarianism, wrestling with complex questions about justice and humanity.
We don’t start with Hamid, or Shiva, or any of the other regime victims, but rather the might-be perpetrator. A man (Ebrahim Azizi) is driving through the countryside with his pregnant wife and young daughter and runs into some car trouble. The mechanic, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), recognizes the man – in particular, the distinct squeak of his gait, caused by the man’s prosthetic leg. Vahid believes that the man is Eghbal, the Iranian officer who tortured him in prison. He kidnaps him, intent on burying him alive, but the man swears Vahid has the wrong guy. Vahid can’t be sure – he was always blindfolded during their encounters – so he gets a second (and third, and fourth, etc.) opinion.
Due to his repeated criticism of the Iranian regime and a government-imposed ban on his filmmaking, Panahi shot “It Was Just an Accident” in secret (if you watch closely, you’ll notice the film features a lot of covert shots from the inside of cars). But this incognito filmmaking style never detracts from the film’s verve. Vahid, who was arrested after going on strike for better wages, asks a group of former political prisoners to help him identify Eghbal. But the group’s beliefs about the prisoner’s identity swing wildly back and forth between doubt and surety. The film’s tension – both humorous and vengeful – hinges on that nagging little doubt in the back of the audience’s mind that maybe Vahid made a mistake.
Hamid is the only member of the crew who expresses 100 percent clarity about the prisoner and what should be done. He is the most aggressive and radical of the bunch, a shining example of someone so beaten down he’d rather lash out at the world than cling to any sense of humanity. “They let us hang upside down for three days to get a name. We didn’t see daylight for months,” he spits, angry that his companions won’t simply agree to kill the man and be done with it. “And you feel pity for them?”
But Hamid’s anger is more human than he’d like to admit. He is in pain – not just because he was tortured in prison, but because of how abandoned he felt in the aftermath – by his friends, by his country, by everyone. It’s easy for him to hold contempt for the kidnapped man’s unborn child (“He’ll be worse than his dad.”), but the antagonistic persona he shows to the world hides a world of hurt. The person who ostensibly has the least humanity left is the one who feels the most alone. This is what the regime does to its enemies – it splits them apart.
Hamid sits at the intersection of one of the film’s biggest themes: where is the line? What level of cruelty puts you on the same level as your oppressor? “It Was Just an Accident” does not take this question lightly. While Hamid’s “eye for an eye” mentality is not one the film particularly aspires to, it treats his position with the utmost seriousness. Hamid might not be in the right, but the film empathizes with his pain. Spending your life underfoot oppressive control can turn you into something you don’t want to be, someone fearful and angry. “I wouldn’t have hurt a fly,” Vahid sobs at the kidnapped man. “And today, I dug your grave.”
Apart from Hamid, the other members of the group try hard not to lose themselves to their vengeance. In one moment, Hamid looks as though he might follow through on his promise to kill the man. Then, the man’s phone rings. It’s his daughter, calling with an emergency at home. One by one, the group decides to help. You can feel the weight of what they were about to do settle upon them, their desperation to do something good overtaking their need for revenge.
“It Was Just an Accident” is about just that – trying to maintain your humanity in an impossibly bleak situation, trying to find power in empathy and goodness. But, while the film admires those qualities, it is not unaware of their limitations. The film’s hair-raising ending will leave you short of breath, wondering, not for the first time, if Vahid and his comrades made the right decision.