Jafar Panahi’s Taxi [a.k.a. Taxi Tehran] (2015): A Great Ride

You may recall my admiring review a year or so ago of This Is Not A Film, the very personal documentary/memoir by, about and featuring Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, following his 2010 conviction for “propaganda against the Islamic Republic,” as he attempts to deal with the conditions of his probation.   Among other things, Panahi was banned from making or directing movies, writing screenplays or even giving interviews, until 2030. As a viewing of This Is Not A Film makes clear, working in cinema for Panahi is as essential as the air that he breathes – so such a proscription on moviemaking amounted to stealing not only his livelihood but his life’s purpose. He literally risked his life to make that (not a) film, and since then has made two more besides.

Closed Curtain (2013), was/is an arty, allegorical, somewhat cryptic movie shot (surreptitiously) entirely within Panahi’s seaside villa in a magical realism style. It’s about the director’s struggle to come to an understanding between his legal circumstances and his need to create.

Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (2015), the subject of this review, was shot entirely within a taxicab, using three minicams and an iPhone. Panahi, the unemployable director, is the cab driver. The picture is literally a journey - one that starts with the dashboard camera facing forward, providing a view, through the windshield, onto a Tehran street with its traffic, pedestrians and so forth; then the light turns green, and the taxi begins to move. A soft soundtrack of traditional music kicks in – of a type often used to accompany Persian epic poetry.   Over the next eighty minutes, we ride along with Panahi as he picks up various passengers and they engage in several interesting, seemingly random conversations, sometimes with one another and sometimes with the cabbie/director. This journey is not about the places we visit, but rather the people we meet and the world that they and Mr. Panahi inhabit.

I know, that doesn’t sound like much, yet believe me: this movie is a small, lustrous wonder - a seemingly uncomplicated little film, yet one that that stays with you, makes you smile with appreciation and which, upon reflection, turns out to be deep and layered. The tone throughout is light; the undertone, not so much.  Taxi is by turns engaging, revealing, funny, wise, provocative and always deeply human. Like the two previous films, Taxi was shot clandestinely; also like those pictures, it has been banned in Iran.

I think this movie is an understated masterpiece. I am not alone in my appreciation: last year Taxi won top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Golden Bear. It’s as if the constraints within which Panahi is forced to work have necessitated a level of subtlety and creativity that have elevated his art.

The passengers in Panahi’s taxi are too numerous and various to describe in any detail here. And part of the fun is discovering them as they enter the cab and reveal a bit of themselves. Highlights include a self-described “mugger” and a schoolteacher, who get into a spirited debate about crime and punishment. There’s a black market DVD supplier (who, not unreasonably, sees himself as performing a public service), and a film student who asks Panahi for advice, because he can’t come up with a subject for his first short film. The director sagely replies that a filmmaker has to find that for himself.

Not stuck for ideas is Panahi’s delightful niece, Hana, a bright, charming, vivacious young girl (perhaps 11?) who also has a short movie assignment for school. She finds subjects in pretty much everything she sees, and is shooting video constantly. When Panahi briefly leaves the taxi to run an errand, Hana points her little camera out the window, capturing a bridal gown bedecked wife and her bridegroom walking to their getaway car (shadowed by an omnipresent videographer, just like here),  and a young scavenger boy absconding with a money clip that the groom has inadvertently dropped. Later, she describes documenting “from A to Z” the story of star-crossed young lovers facing angry opposition from the girl’s family because the boy is Afghani. Hana’s problem is not lack of subject matter; it’s that none of the real life video vignettes she has recorded will be acceptable - because her project must meet the distribution standards for all Iranian films, and those standards ban, among many other things, the depiction of “sordid reality.”

Panahi himself, as driver, takes in everything with a serene, tolerant smile, and Taxi treats all of these people, with their contrasting lives  and points of view, with great equanimity and compassion. And we come to see them that way, as well. These Iranians are not some inscrutable “other”; they’re a lot like us, trying to get by, to take care of their families, trying to find happiness. They are also surprisingly entrepreneurial. And appealingly polite.

In the manner of This Is Not A Film, this movie pretends that is something other than it is - in this case, just a slice of life in Tehran. In fact, Taxi explores a mix of interrelated themes, commenting on the current state of Persian society and on the injustice of the treatment of Panahi and other artists and intellectuals in his country. We see how the country’s screwed up economy has impacted ordinary Iranians (scavenging,  thievery, a rampant black market, a jaundiced or pessimistic outlook on life). The film is also a kind of secular jihad, using ridicule to attack many of the absurd rules of conduct emanating from the Islamic thought police, by exposing them to the light of day. For one example, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance dictates what a movie should include (for example, good guys should have Islamic, not Persian, names and should not wear ties) and what is not allowed (women with uncovered hair, criticism of Islam or of the government, depictions of “sordid realism”, and so forth).  Taxi highlights the dichotomy between the airbrushed vision of Islamic society preached by the governing religious establishment and the sordid reality of the real world – where theft is rampant; where young people fall in love without regard for family wishes; where widows often face destitution, because they presumptively do not inherit from their husbands; where girls are arrested just for trying to attend male sporting events (see Panahi’s excellent comedy-drama Offside [2006]); where the justice system presses people to lie under oath to preserve the mirage of an upright regime, and where, in fact, most people are secular.

Much of this information comes across through the comments of the taxi’s “passengers” – all of whom are anonymous (and uncredited). Panahi himself is not saying this stuff (wink, wink), he’s just the driver. But then, we know that just making and distributing the movie was an act of political defiance.

Jafar Pahani’s Taxi comes with my highest recommendation.

82 minutes.

Available streaming on Netflix, and from Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, and other sites.

             Closed Curtain (2013) is available streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, and other sites

             Offside (2006) is available streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, and other sites; and on DVD from Netflix.