If I were to have dinner with anyone living or dead, I would choose Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director of The White Balloon (1995), This is Not a Film (2011), Taxi (2015) and this year’s It Was Just An Accident. Even though Mr. Panahi speaks no English and I speak no Farsi, I believe there would understanding through his entrancingly beautiful films and the humility he shows in every interview I know.
Jafar Panahi silently aghast of the Shark Tank Guy
Mr. Panahi and I would talk about films and books, living in this chaotic world and the American Tragedy. Mr. Panahi understands that there is no such thing as the American Dream, no success story of rising to the top of the capitalistic ladder, that there is only tragedy, a sacrificing of everything for personal greed.
Daniel Day Lewis’ portrayal of the American Tragedy
This tragic tale has been told throughout Western history – from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon slaughtered by his wife, Clytemnestra, through Scotland’s Macbeth beheaded by Duncan to the American’s Daniel Plainview sitting in blood and piss – each furiously violent stories of how the attainment of power leaves you desolate and dead.
Yes, Macbeth, those trees are moving coming for you.
The fates of Gates, Zuckerberg and Musk are not hard to determine; like Trump, the bitter and ignominious final chapter is coming fast. None of us will be sad. Mr. Panahi and I would laugh and nod about that and then talk about better things, films to come and maybe even of one day living in a tolerant and empathetic world
It’s not like I had expectations of anything worthwhile, but I still was depressed at the pathetic nature of this year’s Academy Awards. Worst of all is the bald-faced lie of inclusion.
Sinners, a predominantly black production, was hailed for receiving the most nominations in Oscar history (16), winning four, including Michael B. Jordan for Best Actor. Great, right? Or as Jordan said, “God is good.” Uh, no. Sinners is not a very good film, meandering through vampires and gore to nowhere, paling in comparison to Fruitvale Station (2013), Ryan Coogler’s first film with Michael B Jordan which received zero nominations.
Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the cinematographer for Sinners, became the first woman to win in this category. Great, right? Uh, no. There have only been three previous female nominees ever in this category – Rachel Morrison, Ari Wegner & Many Walker – a profession known historically for being for men-only. Why? Yeah, good question.
Where’s Agnes Varda’s Oscar?
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another won six awards, including Best Picture and Director, and featuring a black female lead, Chase Infiniti. Great, right? Uh, no. Anderson’s previous films, including There Will Be Blood, Punch Drunk Love & Magnolia, were not acknowledged – despite being far superior in substance, style and meaning.
It was just the best film of the decade.
Worst of all this year was the exclusion of Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident, not only the best picture of the year but perhaps the decade. Also excluded, not even nominated (!), was Alex Babenko’s 2000 Meters to Andriivka, documenting the futility of war in Ukraine. Ukraine? Iran? Whatever. But…”God is good.” Okay.
Conan O’Brien, the host for the evening, spent much of the night performing gags related to the increasing irrelevance of the Academy Awards, due to the present generation’s inability to focus and empathize. Wow, okay. As my mother used to say, “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”
Listening to Jafar Panahi speak about his filmIt Was Just An Accident made me think about my life, the things that I do, the things that I say I’ll do, my half-baked words and actions, the things that make me the regrettable quagmire of contradictions that I am.
I know one thing and one thing only: time passes. No matter the tastes and pains, the magic and nothingness-eses, that’s what it does. It passes.
I’m on the side of a narrow, cold channel. The lighthouse is in the distance. I take off my boots and socks and make my way across the kelp and rocks, expecting to fall, my body to wash out with the tide, found in the years to come, a human interest story on the northeast tip of Sanday Island in the Orkneys.
It is not as difficult as I imagine and brush the sand off my feet as I examine the small bird skull. The path winds beside a fallow field. The nettles are thick. I look back, wondering if the tide is already rising and I will be stuck here for the night. The lighthouse is fenced in and fully automated.
I return along the coast and am dive-bombed by oystercatchers. They screech and shit, and I scream back and throw rocks. They terrify me.
The tide rises, and I walk in the knee-deep water. There is an ancient tomb at the side of the road, but it has been covered over. Sheep stare back, their bodies oddly sheered and painted blue. I want to write, but I don’t know what about. Something true and real. Something fantastic and simple. Something about what I was doing here. Can oystercatchers be trained? And who will play me?
I attended a screening of Jafar Panahi’s latest film It Was Just an Accident at the Jacob Burns Film Center after which the director offered his thoughts on filmmaking and life. The experience has left me in absolute awe.
Mr. Panahi has directed eleven films over a span 30 years, a remarkable career not just for his masterfully inspiring work but also as he’s worked under an oppressive Iranian regime which has repeatedly interrogated and jailed him and then banned him from filmmaking for the past 20 years. And what did he do over these years? Made films.
Jafar Panahi, while banned from making films, made his film Taxi Tehran, telling the stories of an array of Iranians as he drove them in his cab.
It Was Just an Accident asks the question: “What we would do if we were able to capture our torturer. Would we berate them? Torture them? Kill them? Bury them alive? Let them go free?” It is a punishingly raw story, dotted with humor and revelation.
As in almost all Panahi films, a little girl speaks loud and true in It Was Just an Accident
Mr. Panahi’s humility is astonishing. He praises the people for sharing their stories and his actors for their bravery, claiming that he does little beyond frame the work. When asked why he does not leave Iran, he simply states that it is his home.
His strongest opinion is perhaps that there are two kinds of filmmakers: those who make films for the audience and money – some 95% – and those who tell their own stories and make the audience come to them. They’re now coming to Mr. Panahi; the Oscar extravaganza awaits. And little will he care. I just hope that he is treated properly when he returns home, and the threats abate.
A limited number of filmmakers have garnered world-wide acclaim through a definitive style and understanding of the medium. These range from the American Giants (such as John Ford, Stanley Kubrick & Martin Scorsese) and Independents (Paul Thomas Anderson, Terence Malick & Spike Jonze) to International Visionaries (Francois Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni & Andrei Tarkovsky).
The following is a list of directors whose work has been equally vital and vivid and yet often overlooked. In other words, these are the filmmakers who you might not know but should:
Agnes Varda, France
Style: French New Wave, personal, human and direct
Quote: If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes.
Key Films: La Pointe Courte (1955) Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), The Gleaners and I (2001)
John Boorman, UK/USA
Style: New American, raw and intuitive
Quote: I think they’re all bold films, for better or worse.
Welcome once again to my can’t-miss list of the greatest films ever made. To review, the criteria is as rudimentary as I can make it: a) The immediate impact of the film and b) The compulsive need to see the film again and again. Yes, these are films I will think of on my death bed. The top ten films ever made..:
1. Aguirre, Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, Germany, 1972)
Indelible line: “I am the wrath of God. Who else is with me?” (Aguirre)
Lasting impression: The futility of man’s desires
2. No Country for Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen, US, 2007)
Indelible line: “What’s the most you’ve ever lost on a coin toss?” (Chigurh)
I finished a bag of chips as we started to watch Jafar Panahi’s Taxi. I was about to get up and throw it away but waited.
The opening shot held too much promise, a point of view from Panahi’s car as he started through Tehran. I folded the bag and held it tight.There is so very much to say about Panahi’s film Taxi – searing political statement, marvel in story-telling, profound celebration of life, comic odyssey into sordid realism (a phrase repeated throughout) – but what struck me most is the advice given by Panahi to a prospective filmmaker who sits in the back of the car. After being told that the young man had read many books but could not find a good subject for a film, Panahi replies: “Those films are already made, those books already written. You have to look elsewhere.” If only Hollywood and the rest of the film-making world would listen to that; it’s the ideas that matter and not the budget. Imagine what the Oscars might look like then, with none of the Mad Max, Gravity, Lord of the Rings nonsense. Actual films instead…what a world that could be.
The film ended as suddenly as it had began, the camera removed, the screen now black. I realized that I still held the plastic bag tight and, at long last, stood to throw it away.
The 2013 Oscar Award Nominations were announced at 8:45 (EDT) this morning, some of which were sadly predictable (12 nominations for Lincoln), some happily not (No Best Director for Tarantino, Bigelow or Affleck) and some more good, bad and ugly than the rest.
The Good: This is apparently the year of Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild and Michael Haneke’s Amour.
The Bad: Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master wasn’t nominated for Direction nor Cinematography, despite the fact that it is certainly one of the most visually striking films of the past several years. The Ugly: Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film wasn’t nominated for anything. The failure to recognize this film for its cinematography and profound social commentary underscores the mind-numbing ignorance of Hollywood. Like every year, it is best to just breathe and remember that the Oscars are not so much about recognizing filmmaking as they are about promoting the Hollywood machine. The idea is to get more people to pay their $12 at the theatre – $26 with drink and popcorn – and leave it at that. Baa.
