‘It Was Just an Accident’ - Review
Trauma lingers in the human body long after a traumatic incident occurs. Its imprint on the brain can reorganize how the mind manages perception: the slightest hint of danger — a voice, a gesture, a sound from the past — can reactivate an episode, bringing back the same smells and physical sensations. The cast of former political prisoners in It Was Just an Accident link their trauma to their senses: Vahid recognizes the intelligence officer who once tortured him by the squeak of his false leg; Hamid identifies him by tracing the crevices of his prosthetic; Shiva remembers him by the scent of his sweat. For director Jafar Panahi, this trauma imprint is familiar and personal. “Life definitely goes on, but [that experience] has left its impact. You are released from the smaller prison, but you’re still in a larger prison and still completely haunted by the experience, and anything can bring you back to that memory,” he said to Film Comment at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, just days before he was awarded the prestigious Palme d’Or.
Panahi has had a tumultuous history with Iranian authorities throughout his career, having been a vocal critic of the country’s policies in his filmmaking. This has led to several high-profile arrests and imprisonments, which the sixty-five year old has managed to overcome despite it all.
After his 2010 imprisonment, subsequent house-arrest, and bans from filmmaking and international travel, Panahi’s films floated in the realm of documentary and docufiction (2011’s This is Not a Film, 2015’s Taxi, and so on). These films, made illegally and therefore very small-scale to stay under the radar, focused on Panahi himself as a protagonist, naturally leading to very indrawn, self-reflective pieces of work. Following another high-profile arrest in 2022, and after a seven month detention, the extensive bans placed on the filmmaker were lifted, and suddenly, on paper, he was allowed freedoms he hadn’t had in years. It Was Just an Accident marks Panahi’s return to fictional, scripted filmmaking.
This wouldn’t go on to mean that Panahi’s work would be any less personal — in fact, the director explicitly sought to dedicate his next work to the people he spent time with in prison. The result is a film that wastes no time and pulls no punches, one that manages to be anxiety-inducing, affecting, and darkly funny all at the same time. A man accidentally kills a dog while driving his pregnant wife and daughter home; the car breaks down, and he stops at a garage. There, mechanic Vahid, a former political prisoner, recognizes the sound of the man’s prosthetic; blinded by emotion, he stalks, kidnaps, and prepares to kill him, until he grows doubtful about the man’s identity, having never actually seen his face under his prison blindfold. Vahid detains the man in his van and, over one long day, gradually picks up a colorful cast of fellow ex-prisoners, all of whom were victims of the man’s cruelty, but none of whom can confirm if it is him or not.
Just as his previous works, Accident was filmed without permission from authorities. Made in just about a month on the streets of Tehran, the secretive circumstances of the production is reflected in the settings of each scene: many are either shot at night, in the woods, in an empty desert, or in the cramped back of Vahid’s van. The desolation of the former and comedic, yet claustrophobic nature of the latter, informs the tone of the film, mirroring the milieu of someone in handcuffs and a blindfold, waiting in anticipation. Waiting for Godot, the famous Samuel Beckett tragicomedy, is explicitly invoked by the characters, and in a way, parallels their conditions: in the play, two men wait for a man named Godot, who never arrives; their conversations and actions become repetitive and cyclical, with no release — not dissimilar to the effect of trauma on a victim, or to take it further, the effect of systemic trauma on a nation.
A remarkable aspect of the film is how lived-in and realistic each character feels. Vahid, an Azeri who was arrested for protesting worker’s rights, has permanent kidney damage after the physical torture he suffered in prison — he meets the other characters at the behest of an old friend and cellmate, and we learn who they are right as he does. Shiva, a wedding photographer, and Goli, a bride, were arrested after protesting the mandatory veil, and they both suffered gender-related trauma while incarcerated; Hamid, Shiva’s ex-lover, is an angry blue-collar worker, whose short temper and irritability is only heightened by their taxing situation. These people came from different backgrounds and fought for different things, but were all reduced to a shell of a body in a prison cell, having to live with the shame of weakness and vulnerability for the rest of their lives. Panahi has an intimate understanding of how these people have been fundamentally changed, and the shape of their current reality. It’s easy to imagine him drawing inspiration from the people he knows in his personal life while writing the script, and wanting to represent them holistically — even when the contents of the film reveal his inclinations to be a bit more empathetic than some of the characters he’s created.
Though they remain uncertain of the man’s identity, the memories of their unjust and unsparing imprisonment come rushing back, and as with all trauma victims, manifests in different ways. The narrative’s central question is thus presented: if you were faced with the opportunity to enact revenge on the one who wronged you, would you take it? In long takes, heated arguments ensue: Shiva argues that there’s no point in revenge, the crippled man is part of a wider system, he’s already dug his own grave; Hamid insists this point of view is that of passivity, cowardice, a willingness to erase what happened to them, and if they let him go, he might come back for them. While the viewer can’t understand what these people have been through, their perspectives are clear and coherent. This moral dilemma is what the film wants us to explore: What would we do in their shoes? Would we have the wherewithal to control our emotions, to try to move on without violence? Would we want to force-feed the wrongdoer a taste of their own medicine? What is the “right” thing to do — is there a right thing to do — when you’ve suffered through so many wrongs?
Ultimately, though, the answers to these questions are not given, nor do they matter, because It Was Just an Accident is not a story about revenge; it’s a story about how trauma never truly leaves you. Vahid and his companions — and in turn, Panahi and the inmates he dedicates this film to — simply left one prison for another: the prison of memory. Revenge is only a possible, likely temporary, solution, but by no means a proven antidote. The terror inflicted upon them remains in every crevice of their minds. Finding the road to freedom is a grueling task, especially when a concrete map does not exist. The best we can do is open our hearts to empathy, in an understanding that victims cannot all be perfect, and reckon with the system of violence that allows this cycle to continue.