When I think about Iranian cinema, certain adjectives immediately come to mind—allegorical, stark, allusive—but “breezy” isn’t one of them. In that regard, the offhanded narrative style of Pahan Panahi’s debut feature resembles that of no other Iranian director I can think of except his own father, Jafar Panahi, who often injects playful moments into his stories even if the overall stories aren’t playful at all. Hit the Road opens in broad comic mode, with a family-of-four-plus-dog traveling somewhere in rural Iran in a rented SUV, bickering among themselves about things that sound trivial. This setup has the makings of a classic road comedy: the six-year-old hyperactive “little brother” (Rayan Sarlak) constantly talking back to his middle-aged parents and demanding attention; the bearded father (Mohammad Hassan Madjooni), his leg in a cast, cursing good-naturedly at various sleights to his intelligence; and the grey-haired mother (Pantea Pananiha), riding shotgun, trying to hold everything together by keeping things light. The only person who isn’t party to this casual mood is the older twenty-something son (Amin Simiar), who drives with the sullen determination of someone who has more important things on his mind. Once in a while, during breaks in the action, a melancholy Schubert melody plays on the soundtrack.

This intermittent note of sobriety does not convey so much a sense of foreboding—though given where the story is going, it has every right to—but rather a wistfulness that’s meant to counterbalance the mild chaos of the journey, which will end with the older son being smuggled out of the country. True to the usual allusive purposes of issue-oriented Iranian cinema, the family’s mission, which is hidden from the younger son with a story about matrimony, is never spoken of directly, but Panahi nevertheless is open about what’s happening and that the authorities have something to do with it. While it’s sometimes difficult to square the jokey situations—which include a voluble, injured competitive bicyclist, an ongoing argument about contraband cell phones, and what to do with the dog, which is literally on his last legs—with the perilous nature of what the family is doing, Panahi orchestrates it in such a way as to show how the parents have made peace with a decision that has already ruined what appears to be a comfortable middle class life but will at least save their son’s. 

Inevitably, you have to wonder what the authorities think of Hit the Road, especially since Panahi pere has been jailed several times and banned from making films (which he continues to do anyway) because of his subject matter. For sure, there are allegorical touches, like a fantasy sequence in which the family flies out into the universe a la 2001, which the older son cites as his favorite movie. (Is he a filmmaker as well?) But Panahi fils isn’t trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. It’s obvious how this journey will end and why it’s being taken, and what you bring away from it not so much the sadness that the family will live with, but the love that brought them here.

In Persian. Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670).

Hit the Road home page in Japanese

photo (c) JP Film Production 2021