THE SALESMAN – Review

Taraneh Alidoosti as Rana (left) and Shahab Hosseini as Emad (right) in THE SALESMAN, directed by Asghar Farhadi. Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios and Cohen Media Group ©

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who helmed the searing drama A SEPARATION, delivers another moving film that is both a gripping domestic drama and pointed exploration of the challenges of life in contemporary Iran. Iranian filmmakers have along tradition of crafting films of strong social commentary while under the constraints of a restrictive environment. Few contemporaries are as skilled at this as Farhadi, as A SEPARATION showed. That film dealt with a marriage where the future of the couple’s young daughter forced the parents into a choice. Here, another couple faced a different kind of choice, but also one driven by the realities of life in Tehran. Not surprisingly, this taut, emotional, and powerful drama is one of this year’s nominees for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

The Persian-language THE SALESMAN weaves its story a bit like a tense crime thriller but one with an undercurrent of commentary on both human nature and the difficulty of life in Iran. Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) are a young couple living in Tehran. At first, they seem much like a young couple living in any city. Emad teaches English literature at a local high school but in the evenings, both he and his wife are part of an acting troupe that is in rehearsals for a play they are soon opening, Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” One night shortly before the play is due to open, the couple are jolted out of their beds when heavy construction equipment, being used in work in an empty lot next door, unexpectedly damages their building and the are forced to evacuate. With their apartment building now condemned, Emad and Rana are forced to find a new home quickly. A member of the acting troupe offers a recently vacant apartment in a building he owns and they move in.

Their colleague/new landlord fails to mention that the apartment’s previous occupant has a questionable history. One evening, as Rana is home alone taking a shower, the buzzer to the building’s exterior door rings. She had taken their one door key and she is expecting her husband home any minute, so Rana unlocks the door without checking, unlocks the apartment door and returns to her shower, a moment of inattention that leads to a violent assault.

When neighbors call him, Emad rushes to the hospital, where he finds his battered wife in surgery. The doctors shoo him out but the neighbors, who found her, are sitting in the waiting room. They are strangely vague about what happened, suggesting she fell. Back at home, there are signs of home invasion and bloody footprints on the stairs. Her head bandaged, Rana is clearly traumatized but refuses to let her husband call the police to report the attack. He is frustrated and angry.

The salesman is not a reference to the home invader as one might assume but to “Death of a Salesman,” the play the acting troupe is rehearsing. Emad is playing the aging salesman Willy Loman and Rana his wife, and scenes from the play are inserted throughout the story as they rehearse, often underscoring or commenting on what is unfolding in the couple’s life.

Her refusal to bring in the police and the neighbors’ vagueness about what happened puzzles us at first. The couple seems much like modern young couples anywhere, apart from the every-present headscarves, but it gradually becomes clear that life in Tehran is quite different. There are serious reasons for the hesitance. Tensions grow between Rana and Emad over her refusal to call police, and as clues emerge about who attacked his wife, Emad’s anger threatens to explode.

The full nature of that assault and what will be done about it becomes a matter of contention between traumatized Rana and her outraged husband Emad. Their personal story is emotional gripping but the director uses it to explore and comment on life in Iran. The film explores a culture and system of laws that favors men, where victims are tainted by the assault, and public humiliation rather than justice is the likely outcome of a trial. Both Rana and Emad are caught in a net of difficult choices.

Some of the tensions between the two are what you would expect for any couple struggling to cope after an assault, but the particular restraints of Iranian society add an extra level of difficulty. Clues to the attacker’s identity which were left in the apartment and his co-worker/landlord’s lack of honesty about who lived there before complicate matters. The story unfold like a crime drama, building to a tense, electrifying climax.

As in his other films, Farhadi is a master at both building tension in the personal story and revealing unpleasant truths about life in Iran. The photography is finely done but the focus is riveted on the actors and the story’s growing tensions, which fill the air with electricity, awaiting only a spark. .

Shahab Hosseini as Emad is superb, a performance that has won him some awards, and does much in propelling the action. Much of the film focuses on Emad, wavering between being supportive of his injured wife and his thirst for revenge, but other actors shine as well. As Rana, Taraneh Alidoosti portrays a woman coping with the aftermath of an attack as any woman might but also as an Iranian woman, who must remain mindful of the severe costs should her husband’s wish to punish her assailant be unleashed in this particular society. Emad’s frustration with the landlord leads to scenes that give us additional insight on the challenges of life in Iran,while ramping up the emotional fire. What happens at the film’s end is as searing and nail-biting as the best thriller anywhere but the depth of the story and its meaning adds to the satisfying conclusion.

The couple’s struggle to cope, the unexpected parallels to the play’s story and characters, and pointed social commentary on Iran all add up to an excellent, emotionally gripping and though-provoking film, once again proving Asghar Farhadi’s brilliance as a director.

Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars