The Salesman won the Academy award for Best Foreign Language Film. It is the second film by Asghar Farhadi to win the Oscar in that category. It was worth watching.
Emad is an acting instructor at a local school in Tehran. He and his wife Rana are also actors and are rehearsing the production of Death Of A Salesman where Emad plays Willy and Rana plays Linda. One day, their apartment is on the verge of collapsing. All the residents flee including Emad and Rana along with their son. Their fellow actor Babak, who plays Charley, finds a shelter for them in an apartment suite recently abandoned by a woman and still consisting of most of her belongings.
One night, Rana returns to her apartment alone and bathes. Emad returns to the apartment finding Rana absent and blood on the bathroom floor. He learns from neighbors that she is in the hospital after being badly assaulted. Neighbors also reveal that the former tenant of the apartment was a prostitute.
Rana recovers from her injuries and is able to come home, but is traumatized. Despite Emad changing the locks, she’s afraid to bathe fearing a repeat of what happened. She is afraid to go to the police, feeling they’ll question her about her own lifestyle. The frustration leads Rana to break down during rehearsal. When Emad finds the car keys of the culprit left behind in the apartment, he decides to take things into his own hands. He discovers they belong to a pickup truck parked outside. The culprit even left behind his cellphone and money. The stress of trying to locate the man who assaulted Rana adds up on Emad as he falls asleep during one of his film lectures He even blames Babak for what happens and calls him a ‘degenerate’ during rehearsal, despite it not being in the script.
Emad finally gets a lead from one of his students. He learns the truck belongs to a man names Majid who runs a business in downtown Tehran and shares the truck with his father-in-law. Emad learns that the older man is in fact the culprit. Emad calls the culprit to meet with him in the apartment. The man claims he didn’t assault her, but startled her instead. Emad doesn’t believe it. He locks the man in a room to get him to confess everything to Rana and his own family. As the family is just making their way to the apartment, the man appears to have a heart attack. Emad calls Rana in a panic but Rana warns him if he pursues revenge, she will leave him.
Just as the family arrives, Emad offers assistance to the older man. The man doesn’t want his family to know his sordid actions and Emad complies. The family is relieved to see the man and even thank Emad for saving his life. However Emad has one last thing to settle with the man in private. Emad gives the man his money and slaps him, which leads the man to collapse again and the family to fear for his life. The film ends leaving the viewer questioning and even assuming what happened.
This story has a lot of similar aspects with A Separation, Farhadi’s first Oscar-winning work from five years earlier. It presents a story in Tehran and features a male character resorting to his own means to get to the bottom of things. In both cases, it’s likely to sense Farhadi is making a statement about Iranian society. First we have a case where the husband takes the law into his own hands because the police may suspect something of the wife, whether it be done by Iranian law or the nature of the police. Secondly we have the ending climax where the man carries out his intentions and we don’t know what will happen next. Thirdly, we have a case where the protagonist tries to play either the judge, jury or executioner. Finally we have an ending that is ‘silent’ and leaves you wondering what happened and of the relationship of the couple. Those are usually the best endings where one would try to guess what happened or come to their own judgement.
This story is a cat-and-mouse story as Emad willfully takes the law into his own hands and plays vigilante in this situation. You wonder if it’s simply because he’s going along with his wife or because he too knows how one-sided the law is and how they would come down hard on women. As the viewer sees clue after clue, they start to get their own assumption. Once we know, it leads to the climactic ending. However this is a climactic ending that takes a long time to end. The drama in the climatic ending however justifies its lengthiness and even adds a second part to the ending. The final end scene where we only see what we saw and nothing is spoken between Emad and Rana as they’re getting their makeup applied also gets you questioning what happened. Even drawing your own conclusions. Those are usually the best endings where they get the viewer to create their own ending.
The unique thing about this story is how it’s mixed in with theatre. We see the story unfold right as the couple are both rehearsing and performing for Death Of A Salesman. The story in The Salesman does not come across like the story of Willy Loman. Emad is far from the pathetic character Willy Loman is known to be and Rana appears to be stronger-willed than Linda Loman. Yet somehow you sense a connection and try to think back if there is.
Asghar Farhadi does it again. He writes and directs an excellent story that has you following the story and guessing what happens in the end. He also succeeds in again making a statement about Iranian society through the story. This time, he adds the art of theatre intertwined with the story with excellent results. Shahab Hosseini does a very good job in his performance as Emad. He played the temperamental Hojjat in A Separation. Here he delivers a performance that both embodies the character of Emad and says more in Emad’s silence than in his dialogue. Taraneh Alidoosti also did a very good job in her role as Rana. She first comes across as someone hurt and troubled, but reveals at the end she possesses more inner strength than you think. Farid Sajadhosseini also did a very good job in playing the older man with secrets he wanted to hide.
The Salesman is another great film from Asghar Farhadi. It’s a story that says a lot in the drama it presents.
Jon The Blogcentric 