In recent years we’ve tried to get as close as we can to watching all the movies nominated for Oscars. It’s a lot easier now that most of those movies are available on the streaming services. One that we were especially eager to see was the Iranian film “It Was Just an Accident.” I’ll explain the eagerness in a minute but first let me tell you about this movie. A group of Iranians living in a large city shared the horrific experience of being imprisoned and tortured in the same facility and by the same sadist. One of them thinks he has found the villain, based on the unique sound of his gait; he has a prosthetic leg. They kidnap him and debate how to exact revenge for the suffering he caused them. The director Jafar Panahi manages to extract humor from this deadly serious subject matter. He shot the film in secret to avoid the heavy hand of the Iranian censors.
During the years when our daughter Adina was the film reviewer for the Jerusalem Post, she shared with us her deep appreciation for Iranian films, many of which approach large social issues by focusing on how they are reflected in the lives of ordinary people. A woman hired as a caregiver sues her employer for shoving her while she is pregnant. We get to see the workings of the Iranian court system (A Separation). A man who takes a government job that requires killing dissidents in order to support his family. (There is No Evil). A family goes on a road trip which allows us to see vast stretches of this expansive country (Hit the Road).
During the Soviet era Phillip Roth shined his spotlight on literature from a number of countries under Kremlin control, contending that the works born in a period of oppression and censorship benefitted from the obstacles the authors had to contend with, often forced to mask their criticisms of the authoritarian regimes under which they labored in settings and plots that, on the surface were innocuous. When those regimes collapsed, some of the fire went out of the work produced in those countries. The parallels to Iranian filmmaking are obvious, as directors and actors continue to work with limited freedom to directly criticized their authoritarian religious government. We’ll see what happens if and when they get to create with greater freedom.
So why am I going on about something so seemingly trivial as films when bombs are raining down on Iran, destroying not only military targets but innocent children, holy sights and the homes and gathering places of innocent Iranians? It is precisely because these films provide the opportunity for Americans to get past their stereotypes of this “enemy” country and see that, contrary to the outdated and distorted images they may have, Iran is a modern and sophisticated nation with an educated populace living in a spectacularly beautiful country. They are neither Bedouins astride camels nor thugs intent on terrorizing the western world.
Make no mistake. The regime overseen by the late Ayatollah was a menace to its own people and to other countries it sought to destroy. The majority of the people he ruled over are happy he is gone, though they resent the way he was eliminated by actors who do not have their interests at heart. The Ayatollah and the Iranian guard do not represent them any more than Trump and ICE represent many of us. As we witness the destruction, we need to be aware of who the victims really are, people like us who love their families and wish to live in peace and prosperity.
These past few days, I’ve been in touch with an Iranian American friend who is beside herself at the destruction raining down on her family’s home country. She is desperately trying to contact relatives, seeking reassurance that they are safe. In some cases, she has been unable to make contact and fears what may have befallen them. Some of her family now lives in some of the Emirates close by the Iranian border, where they are the targets not of American and Israeli bombs, but Iranian missiles and drones aimed at American military installations in the region. My heart goes out to her.
We live in a country that is currently ruled by a government built on lies. When we hear the daily carousel of changing explanations for the war, we have to be vigilant not to be drawn in by those lies. Our incompetent and inept leaders are themselves not clear about what purpose all this destruction serves, seemingly unaware of the unintended consequences of waging war. We learned nothing from Iraq. We are just at the beginning of this nightmare. It’s not clear what horrors – deaths, economic consequences, destabilized countries – the next days, months and years will result from this mindless destruction.
