Hit the Road (Panah Panahi, 2021) (Patreon)

Encroaching fascism keeps us perpetually off balance, always braced for the next punch in the gut. This state of anxiety has many side effects, one of them being that as we feel ourselves to be under attack, we reflexively turn inward, looking to insulate ourselves and our loved ones from sudden harm. This inward turn, of course, serves the fascists very well. It places us in a mindset conducive to the isolationist, America-first ideology, as well as making it hard to see the degree to which our struggles are connected with those of other citizens of other nations. 

With this in mind, it is important that we remember that in Iran right now, the administration of Islamist hardliner Ebrahim Raisi is rounding up dissidents, including three prominent Iranian directors: Mohammad Rasoulof, Mostafa Aleahmad and Jafar Panahi. Although the news media and our elected officials rely on us having the memory of a housefly, it is vital that we recognize that the Green Movement in Iran was a mere thirteen years ago, and that movement demonstrated in no uncertain terms that the majority of Iranian citizens want a liberal government. But of course, if we forget this, it makes it easier for American politicians to equate "Iran" with its tyrannical leadership, a useful and necessary enemy.

Just released to streaming platforms, 2021's Hit the Road is a timely film in many respects. It is the debut feature from Jafar Panahi's son Panah, and although one can certainly perceive cinematic continuities between père and fils, the differences are quite instructive. The senior Panahi has been officially banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government since 2010, a twenty-year sentence. He has continued making films on a very small scale, eluding the authorities and, in one case, smuggling his film out of the country on a stick drive hidden in a birthday cake. Jafar Panahi's ongoing directorial practice is a testament to the creative spirit, but of course this kind of underground artmaking has its limitations.

In his 2015 film Taxi, Panahi filmed using a dash-cam in his own car, picking up subjects at predetermined times and talking with them as he drove. Hit the Road bears comparison to Taxi in the sense that the confinement of the automobile gives both films their shape. But the younger Panahi, not subject to a ban, can employ an industrial filmmaking apparatus in a manner that his father no longer can. Hit the Road is striking for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most notable impression one gets from it is that it kind of represents a return to the handsome, poetic realism of Iranian cinema in the 90s and 00s -- classic work by Kiarostami, the Makhmalbafs, and of course Panahi senior.

Hit the Road centers on a family road trip that no one is particularly interested in taking. In the course of time, we come to understand why. The matriarch (Pantea Panahiha) has to do a lot of the driving, since her husband Khosro (Hasan Majuni) has his leg in a cast. (Asked how he hurt himself, he deadpans, "I fell from grace.") And although the couple's young son (Rayan Sarlak) is front and center in most of the film's promotional materials -- trying to entice audiences with the promise of a cute, precocious little kid -- the taciturn older brother Farid (Amin Simiar) is actually the reason for the trip. 

Panahi makes the most of the interpersonal claustrophobia such family trips inevitably produce, something that's as close to a human universal as we're likely to find. But when we look closely, we can see that Farid and the parents are hiding something. They are attempting to make things seem normal for the sake of their young son; they eventually tell him that his brother is going away "to marry a pretty girl." But as they get closer to their destination, their sorrow becomes much harder to disguise.

The parents are going to a remote village on the Iran / Turkey border, where they have paid a smuggler to get their son out of Iran. During a discussion late in the film, we learn that Farid has been repeatedly arrested, and is out on release pending trial. Pahani avoids revealing the specifics of Farid's crime, but it would seem to be a significant offense. His parents had to mortgage their house to pay his bail. Hit the Road shows us a father-son conversation between men who are not accustomed to baring their souls, certainly not to each other. Khosro tells his son, "you were not that careful. I caught you" breaking the law in question.

Although some viewers might disagree, I think that Pahani provides hints that Farid's "crime" is that he's gay. Not only is the cover story for his escape that he's getting married to a girl; the parents seem oddly invested in their younger son's heterosexuality, coaxing him to play with "cute" girls, despite his being only ten or eleven. Farid's parents love him, but know they will most likely never see him again, because whatever his crime -- homosexuality, drug abuse, perhaps even subversive filmmaking -- he will be destroyed should he remain in Iran. 

If there is a flaw in Hit the Road, it's that Panahi is a bit too deliberate in withholding and doling out information, organizing the family's relationships with fairly obvious dramaturgy. (This perhaps speaks to the influence of Asghar Farhadi, whose narrative strategies are a bit more forthright than those of Jafar Panahi or Kiarostami.) At the same time, this choice means that we are asked to focus not on some ideological flashpoint within Iranian society, but with the fierce familial bonds that transcend political or religious identity. It's also a reminder that, at the end of the day, all authoritarian regimes are exactly alike, regardless of what brand of fundamentalism they peddle. And ordinary people who just want to live productive lives and hold their loved ones close are an afterthought.