Four years ago the acclaimed Iranian cinema artist Jafar Panahi pulled off a sleight of hand when he defied the Islamic dictatorship's 20-year ban on his making films by shooting the entertaining appeal to humane values This Is Not a Film. He shot this feature-length work with his cell-phone camera, augmented by a colleague wielding a digital camcorder, technically not violating the clerical ban on his movie muse. Four years later, the ban still firmly in place, Panahi gets himself a job behind the wheel of a cab, and in the process gives us a leading Best Foreign Film Oscar candidate. Jafar Panahi's Taxi allows Panahi's tongue-in-cheek methods to flourish, in effect extending a witty middle finger to one of the world's most repressive regimes. The random selection of Tehran fares in this Taxi illustrates life in this unpredictable 21st-century urban society.
First up is a hectoring bully, a flashy-dressing loudmouth with a corrosive stream of opinions that begin with his enthusiastic promotion of capital punishment for any Iranian citizen tempted to flout the country's feudal codes of conduct. With a patient female passenger challenging him from the backseat, the bully pontificates.
Male fare: "A cousin of mine, he left the house and got in his car to go to work, only to notice all four tires had been replaced by bricks."
Panahi: "What make?"
Male fare: "A really cheap car. Honestly, stealing such a piece of junk, if I were head of state, I'd hang a couple of them, just to shake them up."
Female fare (from the back seat): "Hang them? You're quick to dispense with others' lives. Maybe he was in need."
Male fare: "Our driver must be in even more need. Not to mention me. That's no excuse."
Eventually the bully exits the cab, not before announcing his line of work: "My specialty is mugging!" The ride proceeds with the veiled woman and bemused cabbie shaking their heads in incredulity. But the film ride proceeds for another 74 minutes, and provides a funny/scary portrait of a nation of nearly 81 million. A short, pushy guy attempts to ingratiate himself with his celebrity driver, revealing himself as a seller of bootlegged Western films. The taxi also becomes an improvised ambulance as the victim of a bicycle accident gets a ride to the nearest hospital while his distraught wife howls in terror. Later, a self-assured schoolgirl demonstrates just how diverse an authoritarian society can be when you open the verbal spigots.
Like so many of today's mini-cam films, Taxi will probably be more arresting on the big screen, when it begins its Bay Area run Friday. Another amusing thing about it is how much Tehran resembles downtown San Francisco until the players start speaking Persian (with excellent English subtitles). If Panahi can survive his professional banishment and continue to make such poignant movies from the underground, our two cultures may actually start acknowledging each other before the turn of the next century.