The movie titled It Was Just an Accident by Jafar Panahi is a morally haunting film. It places the moral decision, whether one should refrain from taking revenge on tormentors, into an indeterminate position by staging it within an authoritarian political context.
An accident is a mystery: a mystery in which the tormented
encounters the tormentor. The victims are ordinary, powerless people who value
justice and nonviolence. They are suddenly awakened to their painful prison
memories, accidentally, to the sound of the tormentor’s gait. The officer,
whose car had struck a dog, comes to repair it and seeks a toolbox from one of
his victims. That victim recognises the sound of his gait, which reignites
anger and the thought of revenge.
Panahi seems to suggest two divergent versions of reality,
which may collide accidentally at any time. The officer, who at first conceals
his identity, eventually reveals himself, first as the oppressor, and then,
when confronted by a woman recounting his cruelty, as a man burdened by guilt.
He cries and confesses that he carried this guilt until it faded with time. We
never feel that his remorse is feigned, nor does the film suggest it. In those
moments, they are all ordinary, powerless, compassionate people, and at last,
he is forgiven.
Yet the film ends when the victim once again hears the sound
of the tormentor’s gait from behind. Common people may show compassion, but for
the authoritarian, compassion is only a mask. When weakened, they appear
ordinary, but once restored to power, they return to authoritarian cruelty.
Panahi halts his reflection at the film’s end.
Is it wise to set a fascist tormentor free, out of pity, out
of an inability to commit violence, or out of aesthetic resistance to violence,
knowing that if released, he will resume tormenting? The answer is difficult.
And so Panahi ends the film, pausing to think with us.
Mukundanunni
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