It Was Just An Accident: Movie Review

Cast: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr, Ebrahim Azizi
Director: Jafar Panahi

It starts off simply with a man driving with his young daughter and wife through the night. 

But after the driver hits a dog (and shocks his daughter with the news it's dead as she realises he killed it), they're forced to a random house when the car dies.

As they seek help from the owners, it soon turns out one of them Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) recognises the driver - he was the Iranian secret official who tortured them during captivity - or so he believes.

Following him and then kidnapping him the next day, Vahid plans to kill him in revenge - but a stab of doubt pangs his belief and in desperation, he turns to former colleagues who also were Peg Leg's victims...

Mixing Panahi's real life internment and a hefty dollop of "what would  you do" morality, It Was Just An Accident's mix of uneasy comedy and blood curdling use of sound makes for an unsettling watch.

As he deftly builds a level of quiet discomfort, the film skates a line of ambiguity with deftness as bitterness rises to the surface between the core group of those afflicted by Peg Leg's previous reign of terror. 

With the cast representing differing and unswerving points of view, there are plenty of moments of feelings of allegiances being switched and moments of severe moral discomfort. Yet sandwiched in between those are moments of near high farce that feel occasionally awkward and shift-in-your-seat uncomfortable.

The Palme D'Or winner delights in duality and a commentary on the bribes ethos that runs deep within Iranian officialdom.

But where it soars is in its lead - Mobasseri's deft playing of a man who is 100% sure and bent on revenge before his latent humanity comes to the fore is nothing short of exceptional. The emotional internal turmoil is as obvious as the physical discomfort he feels.

This, coupled with Panahi's almost visceral dialogue in parts, makes for a powerful mix that takes audiences deep into a world that feels all-too-far away.

And while the film's resolution feels disappointing in some ways, its final moment involving such stillness and abject terror evoked by sound is one of the singular and disturbingly memorable images committed to celluloid this year.