Worth: $19.00
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Cast:
Pantea Panahiha, Rayan Sarlak, Mohammad Hassan Madjooni, Amin Simiar
Intro:
… tender filmmaking which places the personal as the political in a manner that is never heavy-handed.
There is a sense of urgency that pervades writer/director Panah Panahi’s debut feature Hit the Road, which goes beyond its themes and to the very core of what it is to live in contemporary Iran. Panah’s father, the revered director Jafar Panahi was recently imprisoned for criticising the Iranian government. There is an inherent danger lurking in Hit the Road which places the characters in an untenable and deeply melancholic situation. Yet, for every moment of pressure and justified paranoia, Pahani offers another of levity and uncompromising love.
The film starts with a family in a car. “Where are we?” asks the mother (Pantea Panahiha), “Dead” replies her firecracker six-year-old son (Rayan Sarlak). Although the family are not ghosts riding to oblivion, they are travelling in a borrowed car to a destination that has the possibility of destroying them all.
In the car are Mother, Father (Mohammad Hassan Majooni), younger son (who will be known henceforth as the kid), and at the wheel, the older son (Amin Simiar). At first, it appears that the family is taking a simple road trip across north-western Iran, but as Panahi drip feeds us information, we become aware that the trip is to smuggle the older son out of Iran and into Turkey, because for reasons that are not specified, he has become a target for the authorities.
The journey is simultaneously stifling and expansive. Father is a slovenly mess with a broken leg who banters with Mother who is barely able to maintain her composure. The kid is ricocheting backwards and forwards through the car, his behaviour pushing everyone’s buttons. The older son is pent up with the enormity of what he is going to do. Everyone’s nerves are frayed, yet there is such a fierce display of familial affection between the unit that despite the stakes being so high, no one takes to blaming another for what is occurring. Instead, Mother does her best to cheer up her older son by lip-synching to old tunes (whose singers have long since fled Iran). Panahi cleverly elicits the notions of subversive freedom and reminds the audience that Iran was once a place where pop music was part of the cultural fabric and not censored.
The adults are trying to keep the full extent of what is happening a secret from the kid. They tell him a story that the older son is going to elope (“But won’t that get you in trouble?” he asks) and that he’ll be back. The kid is far more clued in than the adults want to admit and it’s possible that his constant misbehaviour is a tactic that he’s trying on to get the truth out of them. The kid is a point of humour but more than that he is a symbol of knowing innocence. Children take in more than they’re given credit for; the kid may not be aware of the extent of the danger the family is in, but he certainly knows that something is off.
Panahi’s script is a masterwork in tonal construction and also a sensitive piece of character creation. Each member of the family is given the opportunity to reveal a piece of themselves. A conversation about the Zen peacefulness of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey which is older brother’s favourite film is punctuated with wry humour from Mother saying, “A least there are no wars in Space.” Mother has taken photographs of older brother’s urination patterns when he was a baby and included them in his belongings to take with him when he crosses the border. Father philosophises with older son about topics which range from the banal to the bizarrely profound, which leads older son to wish they’d spent more time talking. Father also jokes with the kid about how terrible it would be for the Batmobile to lose value if it were scratched.
Panahi’s deft script and direction is bolstered by the remarkable cinematography of Amin Jafari (who worked with Jafar Panahi on 3 Faces). Jafari is as adept creating wide vista shots as close focus work. There are moments where the film verges into almost magic realism territory which Jafari’s camera makes spellbinding without breaking the naturalism of other parts of the film.
The performances from all actors involved are superb but special mention must be made of both Pantea Panahiha and Rayan Sarlak. Panahiha delivers a series of emotional grace notes that are astonishingly rendered. Sarlak manages to imbue the kid with a wild energy that is as captivating as it is deliberately grating. For a child of six, Sarlak’s range is astounding and it can only be hoped that he develops a flourishing career.
Hit the Road is tender filmmaking which places the personal as the political in a manner that is never heavy-handed. The film’s major achievement is that it never loses sight of how expansive love is and the risks that a family will undertake to save one of their own. The film depicts many families having to take the same risks for those they love. As much as Hit the Road is an indictment of the contemporary Iranian regime, it is also a testament to the ordinary people who seek freedom whether it be through banned pop songs or by leaving everything and everyone they love behind.
