THE SALESMAN (Asghar Farhadi). 125 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (February 3). See listing. Rating: NNN
At the risk of losing my world-cinema credentials, I’m not entirely convinced of Asghar Farhadi’s genius.
Yes, About Elly is terrific, and his Oscar-winning breakout A Separation is very, very good, though I think it ultimately sells out its even-handedness so Western viewers can feel better about their own secular perspective.
But the film that followed, The Past, was undone by Farhadi’s structural pretensions and a self-seriousness that grew more grating with every new plot point. There was a compelling story in there, but it was as though Farhadi couldn’t see it. That feeling tugged at me more than once during Farhadi’s latest.
In The Salesman, which was just nominated for a foreign-language Oscar, Farhadi returns to his core themes of morality and justice in contemporary Iran, as seen through the lens of a couple trying to process trauma while acting opposite each other in a Tehran production of Death Of A Salesman.
After his wife, Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), is assaulted, teacher and occasional actor Emad (Shahab Hosseini), unwilling to involve the police for fear of public humiliation, sets out to find her attacker himself. Meanwhile, the couple confront their issues every night in rehearsal.
The reliance on Arthur Miller’s play feels like a bit of a reach (hey, this movie’s also an allegory for crumbling male selfhood!), and the climax is more than a little manipulative, as though Farhadi doesn’t believe we’ll see his points unassisted.
But Hosseini and Alidoosti find the truth of every scene, and their performances keep The Salesman vital even as you sense the director pulling its strings.
The Oscar nomination still seems a bit much… though maybe a little less so now that Donald Trump’s vile Muslim ban will prevent Farhadi from attending the ceremony. After all, Farhadi makes movies about people struggling under authoritarian regimes.
