Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Writer/director: Panah Panahi, Rialto Distribution.
A chaotic, tender family is on a road trip across a rugged landscape. There are a few questions.
In the back seat, Dad has a broken leg, but is it really? Mom tries to laugh when she’s not holding back tears. The young brother keeps exploding into choreographed car karaoke. All of them are fussing over the sick dog and getting on each others’ nerves. Only the mysterious older brother is quiet.
Iranian director Panah Panahi’ Hit the Road is incredibly melancholy at it tracks a family’s ordeal helping their elder son (Amin Simiar) clandestinely leave Iran.
Amid the underlying sorrow of the impending separation, as well as the country’s economic and social hardships, humor offers comfort, often thanks to the adorably mischievous younger son, played by a wonderful child actor, Rayan Sarlak.
The role of the parents is, respectively, played by Hassan Madjooni and Pantea Panahiha, both of whom are stage actors. The synergy between the four of them works very well.
About his first feature length movie, Panahi (3 Faces, Días de cine) says he didn’t want to portray a certain type of Iranian family, “let alone my own. However, I’m sure that unconsciously I created these characters based on my own experience, and of family relationships as I observed them.”
From Iran in Farsi, perception of the characters in Hit the Road are left to the viewer to interpret using their own senses and forming their own analyses.
Life and art are packed with paradoxes and they are richer if we are left to explore them individually. It’s about creating an opening, an elevation above the limitations set out by norms, to create surprises that trouble and enchant.
- Hit the Road is in select cinemas on 25 August
