Starring: Hassan Madjooni, Pantea Panahiha, Rayan Sarlak and Amin Simiar
Distributor: Rialto Distribution
Runtime: 94 mins. Reviewed in Aug 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
| 
| 
This subtitled Iranian comedy-drama tells the story of four members of an Iranian family who drive together to the Turkish border to smuggle one of their members across the border.
This film is a feature debut for Iranian director, Panah Panahi. Panah is the son of well-known director Jafar Panahi, whose film, Three Faces (2018), has been released in Australia. Jafar was awarded Best Screenplay by the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, but he is still banned from filmmaking and from leaving Iran, in fear that his films will be seen to spread anti-government propaganda.
Hit The Road, directed and produced by Panah, who also wrote the screenplay, won Best Film at the 2021 London Film Festival. No film the Panahi family makes is likely to be poor, but neither is it likely to be unpolitical. This film weaves sharp, witty humour, with incisive political, personal, and cultural comment. Iran delivers quality cinema, and this movie continues that trend. The quality of Iranian cinema is known most widely, through the multi-award-winning films of Asghar Farhadi, Iran’s best known director.
The situation depicted by Hit The Road is deceptively simple. A family of four travels together inside a borrowed car, which follows the road to the Turkish border out of Tehran. In the car are Khosro (Mohammad Hassan Kadjooni), who grouchily heads the family – his leg is in a cast, and he has a toothache; his young son (Rayan Sariak), 6-year-old ‘Little Brother’ who constantly demands attention, cutely and energetically, in the back of the car; a loving mother (Pantea Panahiha), who nervously, but affectionally, tries to manage the chaos that surrounds her; and 30-year-old Big Brother, Farid (Amin Simiar). Farid – the reason for the journey – sits quietly and sullenly in the front, driving the car, aware that his family is smuggling him across the Turkish border so that he can escape detection. Also, in the car is a family dog, that everybody loves, without long to live.
As viewers, we never actually learn, or are told, why exactly Khosro and his family have to leave Tehran, but we know they are driving stealthfully towards the Turkish-Iranian border; their house and car have already been sold. The film is directed to show a family group, which could well be on vacation, but it is clearly not – and the film’s classical, musical soundtrack sonorously fits the theme. The film focuses on the impish behaviour of Little Brother, but offers political comment on everybody’s actions. It beautifully combines personal heartbreak and hilarity, and as the family ‘hits the road’, like all families, members get on each other’s nerves, though all of them love each other. Reflecting the fact that the family is on a risky mission, the film weaves a subtle line between tragedy and laughter, where laughter is necessary for the family to survive. Panah’s strategy is to join comedy with political defiance and touches of the surreal (one of which vividly ends the film). The film brilliantly fuses verbal banter and comedy to depict reality.
On the way, the car travels through spectacular scenery where human figures become small dots on Iran’s huge expanse of arid landscape, that leads to green grass and rolling hills. The family’s resilience expresses hope for the future, and humour preserves the effect. The film depicts a journey that comments realistically on Iranian society, and the film has moments that tellingly communicate the underlying anxieties associated with refugee experience. The cinematographer for the film was the same cinematographer for Three Faces, the film directed by Panah’s father.
The film’s tragic-comic tone is directed skilfully to show a tight-knit family, under stress, wanting to stay together and trying to keep its secrets secure. Oblique reference to Farid’s behaviour, and the knowledge that he is being pursued for a reason, set up tensions, which permeate the movie, and they are masterfully directed by Panah. This is a film that is political, deeply personal, and extremely well-acted, directed and photographed. With the help of ‘Little Brother’, it also delightfully entertains as the family’s tensions play out, sadly and meaningfully.
12 Random Films…
