This a terrific film about a man who is not there. It won this year’s Palme d’Or for its tragi-comic depiction of a group of dissidents in Iran. It was shot secretly by the director Jafar Panahi, who was only released from his latest spell in prison after a hunger strike.
A man is driving with his squabbling family at night, when he hits a dog in the road. The dog dies and a little later his car breaks down.
There is then an extraordinary sequence where a mechanic, Vahid, observes the man with fear and disgust, pursues him secretly and kidnaps him. A little later they are in the desert and the mechanic drags the victim, who is trussed up and blindfolded, into a newly dug grave in the sand.
Vahid tells the man that he is going to bury him alive. He recognised him by his voice and the creak of his prosthetic leg. He is Eghbal, the government inspector who tortured him when he was blindfolded in an Iranian gaol. The torturer boasted to prisoners that he had lost his leg in a holy war in Syria.
The man in the grave cries out that there’s been a mistake. He’s not the police torturer. He says his leg was amputated after a recent accident and the scars are new.
Vahid has a look. He is almost certain but not quite. Cursing, he drags the unconscious man back into his van and rolls him into a locked box. He set off to find his dissident friends who were also tortured in prison. They give him the nickname Jughead, because of the body shape when he massages his lower back. He was severely beaten across his kidneys in jail.
No one can be quite sure of the identity of the man in the trunk. They were all blindfolded while they were tortured and physically, mentally and sexually abused. A woman thinks she recognises his smell. Another man strokes the amputated leg and is sure he recognises it.
By now the man in the box has been drugged and gagged. He is the presiding spirit of the movie but we never see him. There is terror that he will recognise and denounce them, if they were to let him go. The van fills with people – all with different reactions to their predicament and stark moral choice. If they murder the man – will they become as evil as the regime?
In what is almost a road movie, there is room for comic satire on daily life in Iran. At one point two policemen come over to take a look inside the vehicle. But they are easily placated with a bribe, paid into a card reader.
Throughout the film, we are left in total suspense about the man in the box. Is he the sadistic torturer they believe, or is it a tragic mistake? Will Vahid and his friends decide to kill him? No one can agree what to do.
I won’t reveal the dramatic ending, but I think the key element is the motif of the blindfold.
A torturer doesn’t want the victim to see his face. Their terror and his own immunity is greater. The dissidents in the film have blindfolded their captive – and they are terrified of being seen. Could we behave so brutally to other people if we took off our blindfolds and properly saw them?
This is a profoundly humane film which remains gripping and entertaining while stirring some of these deeper questions. And it’s also a window onto the high anxiety of anyone who dares challenge the religious authorities in Iran.