User Reviews

Of course, it is a special feat in itself that a director banned from making movies has yet made another movie and has smuggled it out of Teheran in order to show us what life in Iran is like. Unfortunately, this in itself is not enough to give this film a high rating or enjoy it thoroughly.

The film is funny at times, but perhaps not as funny as I suspected from all the trailers. The passengers are quite obviously all actors (which is understandable considering the political situation in Iran) and the stories they tell appear to be all invented.

The invented story lines and actors however sometimes failed to captivate me. I was intrigued by the dash cam at first, but started feeling slightly bored about 40 minutes into the film. This is a good piece of art by a great artist, but it is unfortunately far from brilliant.

One thing's for certain: no one's out there just watching Taxi Teheran. Anyone who's watched it, or is planning to see it, will do so because of director Jafar Panahi, who was sentenced in 2010 to a six-year jail sentence by the Iranian government and was not allowed to make any more films. Since then, he's continued making films (one of which was smuggled out of Iran on a flash drive hidden in a cake!), including Taxi Teheran, his latest.

Director/actor Panahi drives a cab and picks up a woman and a man who soon start arguing the merits of capital punishment. They soon leave and one man, an illegal DVD seller, remains who recognizes Panahi and mocks him for trying to make him believe those two weren't actors. At this point, with Panahi basically mocking his own film, it's obvious the film's not the documentary I was expecting, but that doesn't stop the film from being riveting from beginning to end. The first few passengers are random people, but soon Panahi's trips become more personal; he picks up his niece and visits a friend he hasn't seen in years.

Going into Taxi Teheran, I'd heard it was a documentary where Panahi disguises himself as a taxi driver, comes into contact with everyday folks and basically shows daily life in Teheran. Turns out that's about half of what I got. The end result is more of a blend between documentary and fiction. Pretty much everything's scripted. From what I can gather, Panahi attempted to film people in his cab, but they kept telling him to stop filming (naturally). So, in the end, Panahi was forced to add some fictional elements. Nevertheless, the real-life situation of the director and the topics discussed by the passengers lend it that decidedly documentary 'feel'. Panahi doesn't say much, but we can feel the frustrations that must be boiling underneath the surface, particularly when his niece discusses how to make a film in Iran without risking jail time. She and her classmates have been assigned a task, you see: to make a film, but they have to follow specific steps that render the film 'watchable.' The whole story is obviously Panahi mocking the limitations forced on Iranian filmmakers.

I doubt whether Taxi Teheran, as it has turned out, was the film Panahi wanted to make from the start, but the end result is still captivating. Let's hope Panahi's next project won't have to be smuggled out of Iran in a cake…

Stray observation:

(Spoilers) I quite liked how the ending referenced the beginning. In the opening discussion on criminal behavior and capital punishment, we're told that the crime committed was an act of theft, (I think) a car was stolen. The woman argues we must examine the context. Simply dishing out punishment and hoping the problem goes away means we'll never arrive at the root of the problem. She tries to look at the situation from the criminal's point of view: what if he desperately needed the money to provide for his family?

Again, at the halfway point, Panahi meets his friend who was also recently robbed, only this time he thinks he knows who did it. He says he's capable of thinking rationally about the matter—that he knows the man is now better off financially—but that doesn't stop the anger inside him from surging every time he sees him.

Fast forward to the end. Panahi's niece discovers a wallet in the backseat and Panahi thinks he knows to which one of his clients it belongs to. They travel all the way to their destination, get out of the car to return the purse. They disappear off-screen and after a lot of nothing, Panahi's cab is broken into, his camera stolen; the film ends. It's a shocking moment, one that of course angers us, but—like the woman in the beginning and Panahi's friend—we have to consider the context.

I refer readers to other comments for more details on the story line itself.

I want to add however although this movie is presented in cinema 'vérité' style (meaning wanting to give the viewer the impression that what is shown is simply reality itself -for instance like the most famous example 'The Blair Witch Project'- the entire movie is however scripted with anonymous actors.

But, this is also the drawback. Although as a viewer one expects to see real life situations as they would have been filmed on the fly while the director picks up random passengers calling a cab, all scenes are an act and one can not feel but a slight disappointment when the illusion is revealed.

Like another reviewer points out correctly; some of the stories, especially the lighter ones in which the director doesn't directly seek to comment or criticize the regime in Iran are funny but feel as a warming up and slightly out of place or only as a counterbalance for the more full on portrayal of what is 'really' happening in Teheran.

It's only from the second act (portraying how all kinds of imposed restrictions and censorship from a government lead to a black market and circumventing censorship) and the dialog with the child that has to meet the same restrictions posed on film-making for an assignment like the director needs to oblige to, the movie becomes a direct statement and outcry for the freedom of thought and expression.

Personally I think that the movie, if it would have been truly a documentary with real passengers, it might even have been a stronger piece of capturing reality. But probably this approach would have been far too dangerous, as the privacy of the passengers would have been breached which might be very dangerous in a clear dictatorship like in Iran.

Now, with a scripted movie sometimes it comes across as a director showing a clear 'see, I can still make movies' to the government that imprisoned him for making movies. I wonder how Iranian government will react when they surely will find out that the director made another one.

Much of the appeal and the praise for the movie can be seen as applauding for the clear message in the film, which is all about the right to question an opposed reality. One can not help feel sorry for imprisoned artists, no matter where. Europeans and Americans might applaud this movie the loudest, but the Edward Snowden or Julian Assange story shows that this movie is not only about the Teheran situation.

Propaganda happens everywhere: be it in Teheran, Islamic countries in general or in western consumerism and capitalism countries.

Most governments try to portray a positive view about one's own culture ('The American Dream', 'Freedom of expression'), head into war either praying to Allah, God or other metaphysical spirits for good luck and strive to export their cultural values elsewhere, at the same time alienating cultures which hold other values.

In Teheran filmmakers can not show men wearing a tie, which might seam strange and unsettling to westerners, but from a Teheran culture point of view, the tie is a sexual symbol pointing to the genitals. As such, one can also ridicule the western view in which men are obliged to wear a tie as dress code, which biologically is nothing but an arrow pointing to one's genitals. Now, how strange is that?

The director however does a very good job of portraying to which surreal situations censorship may lead. Purely technical and from a script point of view it is certainly not a brilliant movie, the loud applause and praise comes from those who are very much into the 'freedom of expression' propaganda and the idea of filming an entire movie in a cab has been done before.

Never the less, it is a must see movie, because it drags the viewers as peeping Tom's into a culture that may vastly differ from their own. One might find that people from other cultures and convictions are first and foremost human.

"Taxi" or "Teheran Taxi" is an 80-minute movie from Iran this year. Anybody who has a bit of interest into cinema from that country/region, will definitely have heard about Jafar Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker who received honors all over the world, but was put into prison and under arrest in his home country. The only other work I have seen from him is "Offside", a movie about a couple young woman who want to watch a football game in the stadium, which is, of course, not allowed for women in Iran.

Panahi is also prohibited from making movies, but as you see from this one here, that won't stop him. Basically, the whole thing is scripted, even if Panahi plays himself here and poses as a taxi driver because he is not allowed to make movies. Several of his friends appear in this movie. We see a motorbike crash, a couple old women transporting goldfish, Panahi's niece, a friend of him who got mugged etc. Sometimes the fine line between reality and fiction vanishes, but that's not a problem at all if you cannot be 100% sure what is going on. Funny also how the guy who sells "Walking Dead", "Big Bang Theory" etc. accuses Panahi of making a movie in his car and that the other passengers were paid actors with him being an actor himself in fact.

I must say there were no real edge-of-seat moments in this one, but it was a decent watch from start to finish. The closest to greatness was possibly the scene with the girl trying to convince the boy to give back the money. It shows us that justice is not lost in the country, but it takes a lot to overcome your demons. I also liked the ending, not only because of the reference to the start, but also because it's actually a pair of criminals who keep this film from running any longer. The irony with the Iranian governments strict policy on Panahi and his works is obvious. And of course, Panahi and his niece get punished the very moment they try to do something good, i.e. bring back the purse to the old ladies. As a whole, I recommend this movie. There is no real greatness in here in terms of the plot, but the background story and filming conditions are the real heart and soul of the movie and also the reason why this one won quite a few awards, especially here in Berlin. Finally, it was nice to see Panahi healthy and in fairly good shape and spirit, after all he had to go through. Recommended.

Although Jafar Panahi's Taxi seems to record the random adventurers of a Tehran cabbie, it's a carefully structured script.

The major themes are established in the first scene. The opening shot is a cabbie's view of a Tehran intersection. The first passengers embody the three intersecting elements: a candid teacher, critical of the country's execution rate (second only to China) and an admitted mugger, who urges the exemplary hanging of even petty thieves. The chubby dwarf's black marketing of forbidden foreign films makes him the combination of the two: a cultural champion necessarily made an outlaw.

The director/cabbie hero and the persecuted lawyer/flower lady are more serious versions of the outlaw champion of culture and humanity. Their antithesis are the two elderly woman whose goldfish mission makes them emblems of ancient superstition, without human consideration. Their anger at the cabbie demonstrates how in that world no good deed goes unpunished.

A closeup of the glorious rose attends the film's distinction between the officially acceptable reality and the "sordid reality" that is prohibited screening. Clearly Panahi exults in the colours and energy of life and human/political engagement. That's why he evades the government's ban against his making films and finds ways to make and release them anyway.

For Pahlavi filmmaking is as vital as life. The activity pervades the film, not just in his own open recording but in his old friend's video record of his torture (by citizens he recognizes), the injured man's recorded will, the niece's school assignment and the wedding recorded in the street behind them.

When the niece coaxes the street urchin to put back the money he found, her moral lesson is secondary to her need for a positive example that would make her film screenable. The boy's father's more urgent need for the money and the groom's indifference to its loss point to the social inequality which the state would hide as its sordid reality. It is real, and the state's priorities and failure to address it make it even more sordid than the situation.

In his devotion to honesty, to dealing with the sordid reality, the director identifies himself as the filmmaker turned cabbie and explicitly refers to his filmmaking in progress. After we've learned that he too -- like his old friend and the lawyer -- were 'interrogated' -- I.e., tortured -- the ending is inevitable. As the cabbie returns the old woman's lost wallet, two masked instruments of the state break into his cab and destroy his camera. They'll get to the director later. The black screen and explanation for the lack of end credits confirm the film's nature: a courageous exercise in outlawed art and humanity.

However harsh the film's revelations about life under Iran's tyranny, the engaging characters, their warmth, virtue and grace under pressure, gives Iran some wonderful human relations. It reminds us that there is more to a nation than its government. This glimpse into the country's humanity is almost enough to make us accept Obama's abject surrender to a nuclear Iran. Almost, because the stakes are too high. Still, this film shows the tyrannical theocracy to be as great an enemy to its own people as to us.