Taxi Tehran review: This year’s winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale is enlightening… inspiring.”
Taxi Tehran review
With a camera strapped to the dashboard of his moving film studio, and a colourful array of unknowing characters – passengers in this case who enter and exit the vehicle’s frame – dissident filmmaker Jafa Panahi’s Taxi Tehran is an eye-opening and oft times entertaining look at the real and unreal life in his beloved Tehran and the vibrant and candidly expressive people that reside within the Islamic Republic.
From the opening shots of a bustling Tehran intersection through the car’s windscreen to his filmed discussions with his budding filmmaker niece Hana (Hana Saeidi) as they drive through the city, Panahi introduces audiences to a city that appears (on the surface) like any other. It’s not until Panahi pulls over to accept passengers in his car, that audiences encounter a surrealist world where western conventions of right and wrong are skewed and challenged by their middle-eastern counterparts.
It’s this fascinating contradiction of east/west social and cultural norms through the through line that keeps you guessing as to whether the film is cleverly scripted or pure serendipity. Either way, the contrivance is a fascinatingly controlled insight into serious national issues in Iran discussed by ‘ordinary’ citizens living under its Shari’ah Law.
And let’s face it, it’s not everyday that one gets to ride in a taxi with a neophyte driver convicted of collusion and intent to commit crimes against his country through filmmaking (freedom of expression), discuss public hangings (death penalty) with other random passengers like it’s the weekend football results, film a hypochondriac spouting his dying rites (agnatic system in inheritance jurisprudence) as he’s taxied towards hospital, or participate in a piracy transaction (censorship).
However you look at it, Panahi’s use of light-hearted western tropes to highlight the real causes of Iran’s problems is astutely effective. What do people learn from public hangings when they occur every weekend? When the desire to see a foreign movie despite its ‘sordid realism’ overrides the crime itself or wanting to leave your beloved a roof over their head when you die despite Shari’ah Law? They learn that despite oppression, a regime will always wither under the force of an individual’s will; that a way can, and always will be, found when it’s wanted.
It’s why Panahi’s third film made in secret is this year’s winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale and is being lauded in film festivals from Sydney to New York. It’s enlightening… inspiring.
Panahi wanted to share it, and we wanted to see it.
If you don’t believe me, here’s a sneak peak below to whet your appetite.
Taxi Tehran review by Sacha Hall at Sydney Film Festival 2015.
Tehran Taxi screens at the BFI London Film Festival.
