Hit the Road

Part of my coverage of the 57th Chicago International Film Festival. 

HIT THE ROAD   ***

Panah Panahi

2021

IDEA:  A family of four embarks on a road trip to deliver the eldest child to a mysterious checkpoint in the Iranian countryside.

BLURB:  Sharing with his father Jafar Panahi and his late compatriot Abbas Kiarostami a fondness for the cinematic road trip, Panah Panahi places the action of his debut film within and around a traveling car. The ultimate terminus of the vehicle and the family within is unclear; instead of immediately outlining this crucial detail, Panahi spends time fleshing out the familial dynamics of the passengers, whose forced close proximity results in frequently humorous annoyances and squabbles. In a short time, we become familiar with the strong-willed mother; the gruff patriarch, who’s nursing a broken leg and a deeper spiritual malaise; the elder son, who sits sullenly at the wheel; the infirm pooch, Jessy; and the obstreperous kid brother, an ebullient counterweight to what becomes an increasingly solemn journey. With great sensitivity, Panahi gradually shades the family’s interactions with melancholy and pain, tears bursting the dam of willful good cheer. Hit the Road never fully reveals the purpose of the road trip, but it gives us enough information to know that it’s one motivated by sacrifice and a need to escape repressive conditions, and that it will inevitably involve a grudging farewell to a beloved son. That long goodbye, filmed in extreme wide shot, is one of many striking images in Hit the Road that both contextualizes the open spaces of Iran and suggests a relative paucity of attendant social mobility within them. In the face of hardship and heartbreak, however, Panahi never loses his thread of levity and resilience, whether manifested in an imagined, 2001: A Space Odyssey-referencing flight among the stars or a lip-synching karaoke session in the middle of nowhere.