The incorporation of "Death of a Salesman" here is brilliant, with the plot perfectly mirroring that play's examination of male hubris and humiliation while never appearing heavy handed. Those acquainted with Farhadi's works can easily see what he is trying to say about the complexity of situations and people's actions, although he is not that successful this time, with the film being too heavy-handed in the way it wants us to sympathize with an aggressor. I can see why this got an Oscar. That is backed up by an interesting story too, which is powerful, and focuses on the effects of post trauma and getting revenge for those you love.
When the film opens, a married couple, Emad Shahab Hosseini and Rana Taraneh Alidoosti must evacuate their apartment as the walls crumble due to nearby construction gone awry. It's an apt analogy of the cracks soon to come in their marriage. Both have taken on the lead roles in the Miller play, with Emad doing double duty as beloved school teacher.
Once safely out of the apartment, the couple move into the temporary digs of a woman who has yet to clear out one room, leaving behind personal belongings and a reputation as a prostitute.
The Salesman (Forushande)
Although the prior tenant never appears in the film, her existence and perceived morality linger over everything that transpires. One evening, Rana prepares to take a shower and buzzes her intercom to presumably let her husband into the building. She leaves the front door open as she heads to the bathroom, the camera lingering on that door for too many beats for anything good to come of it. It's a masterful moment and one in which I felt Farhadi took a giant leap forward in visual, suspenseful storytelling. Rana suffers from a traumatic event, the details of which seem murky at best, and Emad makes it his cause to find the perpetrator to exact some type of revenge against him.
Rana's emotional collapse and Emad's obsessions have an impact on the play, which is itself an examination of the last gasps of male power. It's here where the film's true subversiveness slyly makes itself known. Despite being the victim of a bloody assault, Rana's concerns have little weight next to Emad's quietly seething rage. While assault goes unreported in most of the world, the decision to go to the authorities have much wider ranging implications in more stringent patriarchal societies such as Iran, where the shame brought on the families can outweigh the needs of the victims.
Farhadi excels in these moments where glances replace reams of dialogue to convey the couples' stifled feelings. He's helped immeasurably by two actors at the top of their games. Hosseini justifiably received recognition for perfectly capturing the unraveling of a seemingly gentle man, but it's Alidoosti who astonishes as a woman dying inside not so much from what happened in that bathroom but for being shut out of her own life by the person who loves her the most.
The way she looks at her husband throughout the story feels like a one woman March On Tehran.
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With her gloriously open expressiveness, she slowly but surely exerts her power as best she can. She has a similar gift to that of Amy Adams, the ability to be on the verge of tears while exuding commanding strength. Rather than tend to his wife's needs, Emad plays amateur detective to track down the assailant. The last third of the film, while still well within the realm of neorealism, carries elements of Hitchcockian suspense such as the way Emad chases after a suspect, or in the quietly shocking way the "bad guy" gets revealed. From there, we're left with the unbearable tension of a revenge fantasy come to awkward, real life.
We feel the messiness of it in the way health issues play into the proceedings, in the way a distraught wife painfully navigates a set of stairs, or in the raw brutality of a slap across a face. While growing as a visual storyteller, Farhadi gets a little tripped up with his depiction of the play within the movie. Maybe he resisted the thudding obviousness of using excerpts from the play that has a direct correlation to the main story, but as it stands, the connections seem oblique at best.
It may provide more resonance. The mess is all because of Trump effect, as same reason 'Moonlight' to win the main trophy. At least it was not an average film like 'A Separation', though not a masterpiece like 'The Past' that did not even nominated for the Oscars. It stands between them. The title name is not exactly relevant to the story. But it helped to extend the plot for an extra minutes. An unnecessary subplot, which really were the boring parts. Or you can say, just to attract the western audience with their ingredient and that worked out as planned for the filmmakers.
Except those theatre portions, the rest of the film and its storyline looked like I was watching a French thriller.
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It is about a young couple who are forced to relocate to another house after their apartment building was declared not safe anymore for some kind of construction taking place in the nieghbourhood which is affecting it. The man is managing his job at a school as a teacher and the remaining time as a theatre artist along with his wife.
The life was as usual, till one day something bad happens to his wife at home in his absence. Now he's raged to find the culprit, but once if he did what happens and how the story ends was the another twist. I mean the opening scene was like racy.
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And then following, it slowed to build the momentum. That does not mean the characters were developed so well. It only moves forward with constructing what are all needed for later parts. Once it enters the third act, the scenario changes. It looked like another film, another genre. Too tense moment and tight plot for the grand finale.
Yep, that is the part makes this film to forget everything you saw in the earlier. Whatever happened in that part, I felt it was right, though I think culturally it differs the outcome. I mean, that's not philosophically the Iran we know or the religion they worship. You can say the western films badly portrayed them in their films, but if you look at their history, the film ending was shocking.
So I thought, the end chaos was for among themselves. If the outsiders westerners were involved, it would have been a differently dealt.
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But not perfectly written screenplay as I pointed out a few things in the earlier paragraphs. And another thing was, the character, particularly the mysterious one, I was not satisfied how it had been developed. He enters the frame only at the last moment. The narration was very suspense and a bit thriller, but then all the sudden everything comes crumbling down since the end was very near to cease the procession.
My point is, how that X man was netted does not make sense in reality. Being a film, it has no problem at all. So, it was a good film, but not as good as it was praised or won the Oscars. Yeah, definitely worth a watch. The setting was very good, except the ending, as the opinion differs from people to people and the amount of damage on how to deal with such situation.
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The Salesman () - IMDb
Shahrzad TV Series When a windstorm happens in life, love is the first victim. In Iran, Tehran, The Painting Pool Edit Cast Credited cast: Emad Etesami Taraneh Alidoosti Rana Etesami Babak Karimi Sanam Farid Sajjadi Hosseini The man Maral Bani Adam Edit Storyline Forced to leave their collapsing house, Ranaa and Emad, an Iranian couple who happen to be performers rehearsing for Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" rent a new apartment from one of their fellow performers.
Edit Details Official Sites: Edit Did You Know? Trivia Farhadi was so taken by this project that he decided to stop his ongoing project in Spain with Penelope Cruz and return to Iran to shoot this movie in his home country. Goofs Iranian actresses are not allowed to appear without hijabs. And Iranian women don't wear hijab in their home. Farhadi always find a way to solve this problem like there is always a stranger in the house but in the scene Rana is cleaning the house she is all alone and still wearing a hijab.
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