‘Hit the Road’ Goes on an Iranian Journey Powered by Love and Loss
The power of some films is how so much can be said with a single moment, a single image. “Hit the Road” by Iran’s Panah Panahi is fueled by many such moments where a mere stare or tear expresses more than a thousand words. This is an assured, deeply focused feature debut by Panahi, who already hails from highly respected circles in Iranian cinema. He was an apprentice of the country’s most acclaimed director, the late Abbas Kiarostami, and his father, Jafar Panahi, is himself a respected filmmaker forced into exile by the current regime. With refined subtly, one can sense all of these experiences feeding every frame of a movie made in a country where real statements have to be hidden beneath the surface.
The story is a road trip set in the rural areas outside of Tehran. A small family drives down a highway, their names unknown to us. Driving is Big Brother (Amin Simiar). Also inhabiting the vehicle are his Mom (Pantea Panahiha), Dad (Hasan Majuni), who has a leg in a cast, and a Little Brother (Rayan Salark) bursting with (sometimes annoying) energy. The cause of their trip is a mystery. We just know something has prompted the older brother to seek a way out of Iran via the Turkish border. His parents are trying to be discreet around the younger brother, sometimes spinning the notion that his older sibling is trying to elope with a girl. As they get closer to their destination, conversations can flow from meandering to tense. What is certain is that more hurtful emotions are being kept at bay, since the parents are aware that once their son makes it across with the smugglers they are meant to connect with, no one can say when they will see each other again.
What Panahi achieves with “Hit the Road” is an eloquent kind of filmmaking where faces and environments become as compelling as any special effect. He immerses us so well into the world of this family that we can feel the sensation of being on the journey with them. Panahi’s deceptively simple screenplay barely hints at why the older brother is on the run. Dialogue here and there may suggest a house has been sold to pay for bail, meaning he must have been arrested (for political activities, perhaps?). Surely this is how such a scenario must play out in many corners of the world where people find the urgent need to flee their homeland. One can imagine a Mexican or Salvadoran family enduring this same situation as they trek to say goodbye to a loved one making their way to the United States. The scenery the family drives through can be grand and stunning, showing Iran’s hidden wheat fields and forests, complimented by starker terrains and villages. This would be a wonderful vacation if the passengers didn’t carry a weight in their hearts. Like Kiarostami or the great Dariush Mehrjui, Panahi can make a place feel both magical and achingly human.
The performances are luminous and homely. There is also a fine sense of comic relief with the edgy kind of humor that is so Persian. The older brother can’t stand his mother, played by the great Iranian actor Pantea Panahiha, trying to make him smile and treating him like a child. It’s a defense mechanism since he knows she’s trying to preserve some sense of memory and joy before he leaves. Hasan Majuni is the easy-going dad who knows too much about life to lose his temper, but he can be upfront and honest with his son. Without a doubt it is Rayan Salark who will captivate audiences the most as the younger child, so rambunctious and aloof to what’s really happening. He feels like a real kid and not the cliché Hollywood children used for mere comic relief. He lives in a world of Batman and dancing, not contemplating at all why they’re really on the road.
Maybe that’s why Panahi references Christopher Nolan movies in this one, because it’s so much more real than a big-budget spectacle. Small moments become immersive simply by happening, as when the family accidently knocks over a bicyclist who they then give a ride to. His whole little conversation about admiring the disgraced Lance Armstrong, before saying thank you to the people who almost ran him over, is a testament to all the microcosmic lives you can bump into, even when dealing with a wrenching situation.
There is a silent link between post-revolution Iranian cinema and the kind of filmmaking that was common in the Soviet Union. Under the shadow of the Islamic Republic, filmmakers have found ways to tell stories where intricate emotions and scenarios state what can’t be openly said. Iran has always had a vibrant cinema culture going back to the ’70s “filmfarsi” movement of sultry melodramas and crime thrillers during the reign of the U.S.-backed Shah. After the 1979 Revolution, censorship has managed to inspire a different kind of cinema that has still garnered world acclaim. “Hit the Road” may be about a family making their way to the border, but it’s also about the heartbreak of having to leave because of forces that cannot be named. In an early scene the mom grows convinced they are being followed, and no one can be sure if it’s paranoia or true. During a rest stop the car radio plays the music of Hayedeh, the legendary Iranian singer who along with other stars like Googoosh, left after the revolution. Now their music endures like a kind of pop rebellion the regime can never shut down. We don’t know where the son is going with the masked men on motorcycles in the hills, but his mother looks out a window convinced he will find success abroad. Maybe he will join the vast diaspora located in a place like Los Angeles.
Movies like “Hit the Road” can appear and remind us of how good cinema can put us in someone else’s shoes. Some viewers in the United States will not speak Farsi yet be able to relate to the emotions onscreen. If a scene where the mother tries to overcome her great sorrow by singing along to an Iranian pop song, trying to cope as we all do when life stings us, doesn’t move you, then what will? This is a movie about people, it’s a movie about modern Iran, and it’s a movie about those moments where we travel through places augmented by heartbreak. It’s not a bleak film and the ending has its own kind of melancholic joy. “Hit the Road” is about life, pure and simple.
