Title: Taxi
Director: Jafar Panahi
Starring: Jafar Panahi, Hana Saeidi
2015’s Golden Bear is a remarkably courageous, audacious and cutting edge cinematic piece by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. Despite he was banned in 2010 from making films and travelling (for “propaganda against the Islamic Republic”) and received a threat of a six-year jail term, the Iranian auteur and democracy campaigner found a way around the state ban on him. This new film is technically without credits and so evidently cannot be officially attributed to him as a director. This device also allowed to protect the cast and crew, since ‘Taxi’ is somehow a subversive film, hinting at the dark threats to artists and dissidents in Iran.
Panahi plays a jovial taxi driver who takes passengers around Tehran, often refusing their money, and recognised by some who wonder why a famous filmmaker is driving a cab with a camera on the dashboard. His amusing encounters include a couple arguing about the value of recent hangings for extortion, a tricky character who sells pirated videos of banned European movies and American television series, a badly injured man who is desperate to make a will leaving everything to his wife who would otherwise have no legal right to their possessions, and a lady who is actually carrying a goldfish in an open bowl. There is also a smarty-pants schoolgirl, supposedly Panahi’s 10-year-old niece, who is making a video for her class. As she shoots, she lists all of the official requirements for a screenable film in Iran: women must wear headscarves, men must have Iranian names if they are heroes, no mention of politics and no sordid realism among others. Finally Panahi picks up a friend who is a lawyer, disbarred from practising her trade, in the way that he has been barred from film-making. They discuss the case of Ghonsheh Ghavami, the Iranian woman jailed for trying to attend a men’s volleyball match.
Panahi maintains a smilingly fatalistic attitude to all this. In his latest movie, he comments, with ease and moderation, on his country’s heavy-handed system, using blatant humour. His acting role within the flick is emblematic: the great director is now reduced to driving a modest cab, driving around Tehran, often not knowing where places are, as the car takes on the role of confessional of the discomforts of his people.
Technical: B+
Acting: B+
Story: B+
Overall: B+
Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi
