This is Jafar Panahi. Don’t tell anyone, but he made a movie.

A couple of weeks ago, the Isthmus, Madison’s free weekly assigned me to do a quick 200 word review of Jafar Panahi’s “Taxi” which was showing at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. I submitted the review and have been rewriting it in my head ever since. 200 is not that big of a number, and I had to cut a lot of my thoughts to achieve that goal, which is kind of an insult for a movie of such quality.

To give you an idea of how short of a review that is we are at 100 words now. Right there. My typing of “now” is the 100th word of this piece (not including title). The words just fly by like so many springtimes.

The review came out recently and I have to say that my writing is adequate. The first paragraph is a muddle; the whole thing seems rushed. The article does not convey my excitement and love for this film, its originality and its spirit. The core job of a movie reviewer is to encourage people to see good movies. I think I failed to encourage. I feel I should keep trying until I get it right.
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#1 THE ORIGINAL: MY CAB RIDE WITH JAFAR by Craig Johnson (as published in the Isthmus)

Since 2010 Jafar Panahi has been banned from directing or writing films in his native Iran for flouting the government’s film guidelines. Jafar Panahi’s “Taxi” is set inside one car and is filmed, seemingly, in real time. Panahi poses as a cab driver, picking up fares in the streets of Tehran, allowing them to talk about morality and movies. It would seem to be a gimmick if it were not born of necessity — and if it were not delivered so masterfully. This is one of the better movies about movies ever made. It forces us to ponder the great philosophical questions: “What is truth” and “Can we control anything?”

Taxi walks a tightrope between documentary and what Iran’s government calls “sordid realism.” It is either a fiction about the true challenges Iranians face every day, or it is a true story filled with made-up characters. Where does fiction end when everything said is true and when at any moment the whole cast could be pulled over and arrested?

This should not be as interesting as it is, yet this taxi-bound film creates excitement within its small confines: We see a man needing a hospital, an old woman holding a sloshing goldfish bowl and traffic merging on tiny streets. But in a land with no freedom of speech, the real tension emerges from normal conversation.

[Strangely enough, they ended up giving me 224 words. As you can see, this review is entirely positive. I don’t say anything bad, but it does not seem like it would be encouraging to the casual reader. Really, what I’ve written is kind of a list of notes I took while watching the movie. I didn’t really get into the singular experience of this movie.]
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#2 A MOVIE FOR GOVERNMENTS THAT HATE MOVIES by Craig Johnson

Jafar Panahi’s ‘Taxi’ is also known as Taxi, and also Tehran Taxi. I prefer the first choice. Taxi is bland, and could be confused for both a crappy Queen Latifah movie and a brilliant Judd Hirsch sitcom. Tehran Taxi is technically accurate, but would be a better title for a video game. Jafar Panahi’s ‘Taxi’, perfectly describes the movie, since the movie is set entirely in Panahi’s car as he picks up people and drives them around. But, he’s only posing as a cabbie, refusing payment and getting lost in a maze of streets. So the titular taxi is legitimately a quote-unquote “Taxi .“

[200!  Nailed it!, but still this is lacking: namely, the gutsiness of the whole project.]

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#3 UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED by Craig Johnson

All stunts performed by the actors.

Traditionally, it is the stuntmen who risk their lives for film: Yakima Canute would jump from a moving stagecoach to a horse’s back; Hal Needham could safely fall from a 25 foot tree; Jackie Chan crawled across coals; Buster Keaton dodged a falling house; Zoe Bell rode the hood of a Challenger. All of these people have put it all on the line for the cause of film.

And then we have the entire cast of Jafar Panahi ‘Taxi’ who do nothing more than talk. Ten people enter the eponymous cab, maybe another dozen actors work around it, and then there’s Pahani, the director sitting behind the steering wheel. All of them could be arrested, tortured or even killed for being involved in this movie. Panahi is in the midst of a 20-year ban from making movies in his native Iran, and he’s not allowed to leave. Being a good dissident, he makes movies anyway. This is his latest offering, a real-time drive around the streets of Tehran with various people talking about the nature of law, truth and film. This is filmmaking at its most heroic, as these few find liberty in the confines of a slowly moving cab.

[200, again! It’s easy once you do it once, but still, this sounds more a review of the gimmick, and not a human story about real people]

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#4 CAMERAS WITHIN CAMERAS WITHIN CAMERAS by Craig Johnson

This is a caption about how “meta-” this caption is.

In the illegally filmed Iranian pseudo-documentary Jafar Panahi’s “Taxi,” there is a scene in which Panahi steps out of his cab, leaving his camera running on his adorably precocious 11-year old niece. She kills time by using her own camera to film yet another cameraman filming a bride and groom entering a car. She accidentally catches a boy stealing some money that the groom dropped onto the ground.  She calls over the boy and demands that he give the money back or else her film will be no good, because it cannot show an Iranian citizen breaking the law. She is trying to direct reality, as is the wedding photographer who makes the couple do multiple takes of their once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Art is not easy to control, nor are people nor reality. Of course, Panahi is being controlled by the Iranian government which has banned him from making films for twenty years. But, artists are hard to control, too, and Panahi is a great artist. This scene is the proof: it demonstrates his masterful control of people, reality and art. It’s a perfectly choreographed piece of reality that encapsulates the breathing irony, joy and danger that permeates this little film.

[200! I’m like that kid in Hoosiers who keeps sinking free throws through an entire scene, all done in one shot, except that the baskets have been replaced by 200-word essays. Incidentally, the scene this essay is talking about is done in only one shot which makes it all the more impressive.  And to top it all off, two child actors do all the heavy lifting. I guess the fact I’m still talking about the scene means that I’ve gone well over 200 words.  Whoops. Well, back to the drawing board.]

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#5 SELF DOUBT IN A POST MODERN ERA OF INTERNATIONAL FILMMAKING by Craig Johnson

The movie itself mocks me for trying to describe it.

Have I become that movie critic? The type who declares a dissident Iranian filmmaker’s homemade movie set entirely in a taxi and shot “in real time” the best movie he’s seen this year, who tries to lure audiences in with comparisons to Cleo from 5 to 7 and My Dinner with Andre (first off, this attracts absolutely nobody, and it just sounds like I’m trying to impress people), who says things like “Tehran becomes a hall of mirrors” and “masterful and subtle use of diegetic sound” and “testament to the power of film” like I’m some sort of jerk? Am I tempted to use the word “wistful?”

Am I taking up a cause celebre? Am I using the term “cause celebre?” Is the entire movie a trap for needy critics who think they’ll be more respectable if they put Mad Max: Fury Road as their #2 pick in end-of-year lists and some oppressed Iranian wiseguy in the top slot? Do I love this movie because I feel like I have to, as a movie critic, love this movie?

Or is the movie really that good? I think so. I encourage you to see this movie. Let’s leave it there.

[199 words.  I guess that’s all I needed. I’m sure I could think of one more superlative adjective, or a few hundred more words, but why not quit while I’m ahead, for once?]

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For more of Craig’s writings at the Isthmus, click here. There’s a cute little one about him walking his dog, even.  As for the movie, it’s playing in various small venues around the world over the next few months.  Mostly in large cities, probably a few smaller University towns, but what do you expect? It’s an Iranian movie that takes place in a taxi.