Lately the acclaimed Iranian drama The Salesman has been making a lot of headlines. This is due not only to the fact that the film is poised to take home this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Film, but also because its writer/director Asghar Farhadi has been denied entry into the country and will therefore not be able to collect the award should the film indeed win. If there is one glimmer of a silver lining to these events, it’s that they have pushed Farhadi’s work further into the spotlight, garnering a level of attention it might not have otherwise received. As a result, the beauty, strength, vivacity, and overall universality of The Salesman have become part of the conversation among certain circles of film lovers who are quickly making it one of the most lauded films of the year.
In The Salesman, Emad (Shahab Hosseini) is content with his life, which includes a career as an English teacher at a boys’ school and a happy marriage to the lovely Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti). The two are both part of a local acting troupe, with Emad directing both Rana and himself in the lead roles of Death of a Salesman. One night after a performance, while Rana is busy unpacking boxes in the couple’s new apartment, she lets in a stranger believing him to be Emad. When Emad does eventually arrive, he finds Rana has been taken to the hospital after being assaulted. Once back home home, Enad tries to hold his marriage together in the aftermath of the attack as he sets out to locate the man responsible.
I think it’s a safe assumption that most people living in Western civilization are unaware of what 21st century life is like in a country such as Iran. Personally, I was quite surprised with the amount Western elements to be found in The Salesman and how they were so skillfully mixed with the more traditional aspects of the land. One of the most upfront images of 21st century life in the film took place in the scenes featuring Enad at school with his students texting, tweeting, and snapping photos on their smartphones as Enad continuously tries to get their attention. Meanwhile, the decision to put the main characters in a production of Arthur Miller’s legendary play, one of the greatest American stage works ever written, was a stroke of genius. The play’s values of striving for a good, solid life mirror that of Enad and Rana, who are searching for the same.
At the same time, many of the country’s traditional values show themselves, such as the scene in a shared public cab where an older woman feels uncomfortable sitting next to Enad and asks to trade seats with another passenger. Equally telling is the moment Enad learns that the woman who lived in the apartment prior to his moving in was one of “ill repute,” causing him to become angry and disgusted at “all of the men that have passed through our bedroom.”
The fact that both types of values and qualities turn up in The Salesman means that the character dynamics throughout are never anything short of fascinating. Nowhere is this more so than in the reaction from Enad and Rana towards the attack itself. Like the time and place they are living in, both character’s emotional responses are interestingly conflicted. Rana, displaying all the typical symptoms any woman would exhibit after such an attack, goes through bouts of fragility and shame, even refusing to report the crime to the police. As she begins to put her life back together, she finds it hard to shake off a new layer of toughness she’s developed as a result of what’s happened to her.
It’s a testament to how much of a loving and enlightened husband Enad is that he does everything he can to make sure his wife has everything she needs to feel safe and secure, which includes being as patient with her as possible as she remains guarded and closed-off for a time. However, when all of his efforts seem to have no impact, he becomes endlessly frustrated and hell-bent on revenge by finding his wife’s attacker through any means necessary.
The two leads of the film are simply captivating. Alidoosti and Hosseini share such a potent chemistry as husband and wife, reading each other’s cues and gestures so well that there’s never any question about their believability as a couple. It’s this factor makes everything that happens after the attack all the more riveting.
Farhadi’s film retains such a quiet, yet pulsating electricity throughout, that one is constantly asking: how will he choose to end this? The answer to this is, of course: perfectly. The director takes The Salesman into thriller territory (while keeping the story grounded) in its final act as he shows Enad become more and more obsessed with exacting revenge, despite Rana’s mixed feelings. When the attacker is found and forced to answer for what he’s done, the amount of remorse, shame, and regret is certainly felt. The fact that it’s felt from all three sides on different levels, however, is even more of a testament to the director’s power of a storyteller and the sheer, universal beauty of cinema itself.
