JAFAR PANAHI'S TAXI

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In our debut podcast episode of LA GRANDE BOUFFE (THE BIG FEAST), Mike Lacy and I discuss Jafar Panahi's Taxi" Enjoy!

 

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has been a critical darling since the release of his debut feature “The White Balloon” in 1995. It was Iran’s Academy Awards submission for Best Foreign Film before the Iranian government requested the film to be withdrawn in response to the U.S. trade embargo that began that year. The film won a slew of awards including the Camera d’Or at Cannes.

His next film “The Mirror” (1997) also attracted numerous awards, and further pushed Jafar Panahi’s name onto the world stage as a prominent Iranian film artist. However, trouble arrived when his third film “The Circle” (2000) was banned in Iran for its “dark and humiliating perspective” by Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Guidance. “The Circle” nonetheless went on to win best film awards in San Sebastian and Montevideo.

By then Jafar had become a lightening rod for negative authorial attention, as evidenced during a stopover at JFK International Airport (one his way from Hong Kong to Buenos Aries) during which time he was handcuffed, detained, and threatened with jail. He wasn’t allowed to have an interpreter or to place a phone call. This is serious stuff for a filmmaker whose films are tame by American standards.

His next two films (“Crimson Gold” and “Offside”) continued to draw the ire of Iran’s government. So much so that he was arrested in Iran in 2009 before being released with the government-line excuse that the arrest had been an error. In 2010 the government lie was exposed when Jafar, with family and friends, were arrested and taken to Evin Prison. There, Jafar remained for nearly three months, during which time he went on a hunger strike that brought about his release until his trial six months later. The Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced Jafar Panahi to six years imprisonment and a 20-year ban on making or directing any movies, writing screenplays, giving any form of interview with Iranian or foreign media, as well as leaving the country except for Hajj holy pilgrimage to Meca or for medical treatment. Panahi was ultimately released from prison (at the call of numerous international filmmakers and notable film critics) and placed under house arrest.

This primer about Jafar Panahi’s film history is a necessary window through which to view his current films. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. It would be irresponsible to pretend that you could arrive cold to “Jafar Panahi’s Taxi” to judge it on the film’s merits alone, even if many (if not most) audiences who watch the film streaming on Netflix, will do.

“Taxi” has no credit sequences naming its title or actors. In this way it is a non-film along the lines of Panahi’s “This Is Not a Film” (2011), which he filmed entirely within the close confines of his apartment, and had to be smuggled out of Iran on a thumb drive.

So it is that Panahi’s “Taxi” brings up questions about how he was able to drive around Tehran in a common yellow taxicab, inside which the entire film is set. Jafar picks up passengers (though he never charges them) who carry on discussions about aspects of Iranian culture, mostly associated with crime. The film serves to show a prism of daily life in Tehran, something that Western audiences have very little knowledge of. The movie sits somewhere between cinema vérité and a filmic selfie. By Western standards of what constitutes a movie, it leaves much to be desired but that isn’t to say it isn’t entertaining, informative, and interesting. Do critics give Jafar Panahi a free pass in light of his special circumstances? You bet. Does he deserve such exclusive protection? I would argue yes.

Panahi’s through line theme for “Taxi” comes to the fore during a conversation with his 10-year-old “niece,” who uses her compact digital camera to capture a film-within-the-film. She reels off the list of “rules for a distributable film” that her teacher has provided.

• Respect the Islamic headscarf.
• No contact between men and women.
• Avoid sordid realism.
• Avoid violence.
• Avoid the use of a tie for good guys.
• Avoid the use of Iranian names for good guys instead use the sacred names of the Islamic saints.

Dogma 95 it isn’t, but the tenets provide a brief window into the mindset of how Islamic ideology is being propagated in a modern context.

By this point in the film, Panahi has already introduced Mr. Arash a [good-guy] character wearing a tie. Mr. Arash is a longtime friend of the family who wants to show his former neighbor a closed caption videotape of his mugging at the hands of a married couple. We never get a look at the video clip he shows Jafar on his iPad but we do get a sense of the man’s impulse to forgive his attackers.

Panahi ties together his film’s theme of turn-the-other-cheek justice during a conversation with another family friend (referred to as “the flower lady,” ostensibly for the bouquet of roses that she carries). The flower lady is an attorney with a professorial demeanor on her way to visit a young woman imprisoned for attempting to attend a soccer game. Just as Jafar is banned from making films in Iran, this attorney is [unofficially] suspended from practicing law by the bar association. The smiles that Jafar and his attorney passenger share reveal a confidence of character that seems to override the harsh social conditions imposed on them.

Making films in Iran is a tricky business, but Jafar Panahi’s powerful urge to tell filmic stories about his home country overrides the constant fear he lives with day in and day out. “Jafar Panahi’s Taxi,” may not stand up as great piece of cinema, but it is well worth seeing if only to understand some similarities and differences between Islamic and Western culture.  

Not Rated. 82 mins.