So what? Prizes certainly elicit our interest, but is The
Salesman really any good; and is it worth seeing? In this case, yes and
yes.
Farhadi works in and is a master of the genre of domestic
dramas – by which I mean that his films are about human beings, the complexity of human relationships, and the kinds of incidents occurring in the lives of ordinary
people - often seemingly little things that turn out to have an outsize effect –
impelling them to make choices that reveal some unexpectedly deep things
about themselves and fatefully impact their most important relationships. Along
the way we get subtle and not so subtle social commentary about class, the idea
of progress, gender roles, the role of law, culture and custom. We Westerners
get an additional bonus: an insider’s revealing depiction of the lives and
milieu of middle class Iranians. It is fascinating to see these people in their
world, and guess what? They are pretty much the same as us.
This may be one reason that The Salesman works so
well and is so interesting to Western audiences. The story involves a young, attractive couple,
Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), who are actors in a
company putting on a production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in Tehran. He plays the tragic hero Willy Loman
and she is Willy’s wife, Linda. We meet them as they are awakened by great
hubbub at their Tehran apartment building in the middle of the night. The building
is subsiding and threatened with collapse. Window glass breaks and great cracks
appear in the walls. Everyone must immediately evacuate. Emad leaps into action
and helps lead the evacuation effort. (Yes, this is dramatic foreshadowing.)
[Spoiler non-alert: What follows seems detailed, but
only touches on early events that set the heart of the story in motion. This is
for context, but does not reveal most of the plot and will not spoil your
enjoyment.]
The couple is able to find a new temporary apartment, but it
comes with a hitch: the previous occupant left in a hurry, leaving a bunch of
her clothes and furniture locked in one of the two bedrooms; and she keeps
deferring plans to remove this stuff. We
never meet this phantom character, but her legacy is felt. One day, thinking Emad is downstairs, Rana buzzes
him in and leaves the apartment door open for him as she goes to take a shower.
But it is someone else. When Emad does arrive home, there’s blood on the floor,
and Rana is being treated for a head injury. Exactly what happened is neither shown nor
made entirely clear, but she had been assaulted by someone.
That the specifics of the assault remain foggy has to do
with a major theme of Farhadi in this and his earlier movies: communication. Time
and again characters withhold information from one another, communicating only portions of
the whole story. Rana tells Emad that she doesn’t remember much of what
happened, for example; but we get the sense that she recalls more than she
says. Whether her reticence derives from a need to bury painful memories, or from
shame, or to spare further anguish to her husband or for fear of his possible
reaction is not clear.
She doesn’t want to report the incident to the police; but
Emad can’t just let it go. He has to find out who did this, and obtain some
kind of justice. With him, we are drawn into a mystery-detective story. He
mostly goes about this without discussing or explaining to his wife what he’s
doing or why he’s doing it. And we must wonder too, is Emad seeking justice?
vengeance? expiation of shame? Whose shame? Vengeance for who? What is
increasingly clear is that an incident
that might have brought this couple together instead is creating marital stress.
Later, when a suspect is identified, The Salesman becomes an intricate cat
and mouse psychological drama on top of everything else. The power of the film
just builds and builds.
Part of this power derives from the way we get to know these
characters. Part of that is Farhadi’s tight story structure and brilliant
writing which slowly, steadily builds the dramatic and emotional pressure and
allows us inside the psychology and souls of his very human characters. Part is
the wonderful acting by the two leads and by Farid Sajjadi Hosseini, who gives
a quite moving supporting performance as the suspect, known in the credits
simply as “the man”. By the end it’s hard to know who to have sympathy for. Me, I felt for everyone.
How is all this connected to Death of a Salesman? There are many connections that can be drawn between
the characters and themes of Arthur Miller’s play and those in The Salesman.
Most of these parallels are indirect or thematic, rather than literal. Some relate
to Emad and/or his relationship with Rana; some to “the man”, his place in
society, and his relationships. One need not be familiar with Death of a
Salesman to understand and appreciate The Salesman, but for those who are,
there’s an additional dimension of interest. It's fun to consider and discuss where parallels may
exist. Farhadi has commented on one ironic
similarity: “On stage Emad and Rana play the roles of the salesman and his
wife. And in their own life, without realizing it, they are going to be
confronted with a salesman and his family” with a role in deciding his fate.
One of Miller’s themes had to do with the effects of
change on old-timers exemplified by Willy Loman – confronting a new generation with different business
practices, changing neighborhoods, the rise of a new post-war middle class, and so on. The
unfettered new construction in Teheran referenced in the first scene of The
Salesman mirrors such concerns, and so do some of the circumstances of “the
man” as we later discover. In Iran, says Farhadi, “Things are changing at a
breath-taking pace, and it’s adapt or die. The social critique at the heart of
the play is still valid in our country today.”
The Salesman is a finely wrought, beautiful,
intelligent and affecting film that deserves to be seen. (The same can be said for Farhadi’s other
films referenced above.) If you appreciate drama, you won’t be sorry.
Grade: A
The Salesman is currently
being shown in select theaters nationwide.
If you haven’t seen some of the earlier Farhadi movies:
About Elly is
available streaming and on dvd from Netflix
A Separation is
available streaming from Filmstruck, Amazon, iTunes, GooglePlay, and elsewhere;
and on DVD from Netflix
The Past is
available streaming from Amazon, GooglePlay, Vudu and elsewhere; and on DVD
from Netflix
Postscript:
The Salesman has been in the political news recently.
Because of President Trump’s recent executive orders blocking immigration from
the Muslim world and all travel to
the US from Iran (and six other predominantly Islamic nations), and the uncertainty
along with increased international tensions that this has caused, he and his
lead actors have cancelled their plans to come to the US for the Oscar
ceremonies. In announcing this decision, Farhadi released the following statement
Hard-liners,
despite their nationalities, political arguments and wars, regard and
understand the world in very much the same way. In order to understand the
world, they have no choice but to regard it via an “us and them” mentality,
which they use to create a fearful image of “them” and inflict fear in the
people of their own countries.
This is not
just limited to the United States; in my country hardliners are the same. For
years on both sides of the ocean, groups of hardliners have tried to present to
their people unrealistic and fearful images of various nations and cultures in
order to turn their differences into disagreements, their disagreements into
enmities and their enmities into fears. Instilling fear in the people is an
important tool used to justify extremist and fanatic behavior by narrow-minded
individuals.
However, I
believe that the similarities among the human beings on this earth and its
various lands, and among its cultures and its faiths, far outweigh their
differences. I believe that the root cause of many of the hostilities among
nations in the world today must be searched for in their reciprocal humiliation
carried out in its past and no doubt the current humiliation of other nations
are the seeds of tomorrow’s hostilities. To humiliate one nation with the
pretext of guarding the security of another is not a new phenomenon in history
and has always laid the groundwork for the creation of future divide and
enmity. I hereby express my condemnation of the unjust conditions forced upon
some of my compatriots and the citizens of the other six countries trying to
legally enter the United States of America and hope that the current situation
will not give rise to further divide between nations.
Once again, an excellent review Len. A wonderful movie, but I must confess the death of a salesman theme eluded me.
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