Asghar Farhadi is in the current director pantheon, in my opinion. Farhadi, Richard Linklater, Park Chan-wook, and Adam McKay are on the Mt. Rushmore of directors I will see a movie they create with zero questions asked. The Salesman is Farhadi’s attempt to parallel Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman with a real life story. This is not Farhadi’s best work, but not being as great as the greatest divorce story in movie history is fine, in fact, some scenes are as good as the ones in that film.
Emad (Shahab Hosseini) is a well liked high school teacher, dad, and amateur thespian. He is happily married to Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), his co-lead in Death of a Salesman, which they are performing in together. Due to their building instability, the family is forced to vacate and move above a fellow thespian’s (Babak Karimi) house. That apartment had some previously shady residents and visitors, one of which accosts Rana one day. Emad is rightly furious, and goes on a personal hunt for the man that wronged his family while Rana drifts down a dark path coping with what happened to her.
I guess this is Farhadi’s detective story. But Farhadi is smart enough to build the story through character development which he has mastered. The search for the assaulter is well staged totally believable, but its tension lies in Emad’s descent into vigilante justice for his wife’s attacker. We see Emad’s single mindedness affect his mood wildly, with simple words triggering powerful emotional responses, mostly anger upon his students or fellow actors. His desperation makes you want him to just stop being in pain, and hope to find the bad guy sooner or later. All the while, Rana becomes justifiably scared and demanding of her husband, following him around to make sure she’s protected. However, she is also justifiably emotionally scarred by what happened, and struggles mightily with basic activities like rehearsing, getting groceries and such. The traumatic event causes the two to become distant and angry until the eventual third act confrontation.
I won’t spoil the details, but the third act of The Salesman is Farhadi at his best. He uses the setup and building tension and suspense to execute in classic Farhadi fashion: play with power structure between characters. Farhadi uses startling reveals, which lead to surprising but consistent character choices which upends the previous status quo, which further shuffles the power dynamic with character’s reacting to those choices. Yes, I know most movies do this, but Farhadi writes/directs this in a way that is consistent to the character and is musicless to let the silence sit and unease everyone watching, unsure what will happen next. Brilliant work by the two leads and the other parties in the room culminates in a powerful scene orchestrated by one of the greats.
Asghar Farhadi will hopefully become an internationally recognized movie treasure. His films are written and directed by a man with a powerful understanding of how to illicit emotional reactions from an audience. Makes me wonder if Michael Bay should do some studying in the Iranian movie industry; maybe he can learn a thing or two about what a character is.