The Salesman

Year: 2016
Genre: Drama
Directed: Asghar Farhadi
Stars: Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti, Babak Karimi, Mina Sadati, Farid Sajjadi Hosseini, Mojtaba Pirzadeh, Emad Emami, Maral Bani Adam, Mehdi Koushki, Sam Valipour, Shirin Aghakashi
Production: Farhadi Film Production

The draw of director Asghar Farhadi oeuvre at times feels very political. The widening cultural, religious and diplomatic gap between the United States and Iran has thus far been stabilized by chilly detente of necessity. Yet if we take our current political climate seriously, such distanced estrangement wont likely last past the New Year.

Still film artists like Farhadi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf and the late Abbas Kiarostami have been at the forefront of this complex sandbox of truces and tough talk, making films about Iranian society that easily find reception among America's leftist intelligentsia. Their work, while often critical of Iranian society, nevertheless channels some powerful messaging. They often feel like cries for temperance and peace in a world that becomes ever more belligerent with each passing moment.

The Salesman doesn't break that continuity, once again garnering a cultural exchange while engaging its audience with an innately human story. The film begins abruptly with a young couple, Rana (Alidoosti) and Emad Etesami (Hosseini) being forced out of their apartment in the middle of the night along with their neighbors. Their building has become unstable after an earthquake and they are desperate to find a place to stay. Babak (Karimi), a fellow player in the couple's production of "Death of a Salesman," suggests they replace one of his tenants who has been struggling to pay her rent.

If you haven't seen A Separation (2011), what are you waiting for?

To explain more would ruin the discovery of one of the most morally complex and painfully human stories since A Separation (2011) to come across the screen. All of the character choices seem genuine and perfectly understandable given the circumstances yet the buildup from those decisions come back in interesting and often devastating ways.

Emad, a schoolteacher, approaches most of his problems through an amalgam of analysis and judgment yet the implications of the script trap him in a doleful dilemma he simply can't shake. So too does the script trap the sensitive Rana, who at a pivotal moment becomes fractured like the windows of the couple's slowly collapsing apartment. She suffers through sullen drifts and withdrawals, angry outbursts and bouts of pity; and does so through a filter of feminine devoir.

As our female lead, and really, our emotional interpreter, Taraneh Alidoosti's is frightfully on point. Her continual work with Farhadi over the years seems to have given her the ability to really take chances with this role. Her every gaze feels like a provocation and her character's improbable honor wells with a sense of sad power thanks largely to her expressive face.

The fact that The Salesman features Arthur Miller's ode to the common man is very appropriate indeed. While the play within the movie balances themes of justice, trust and the abstraction of political violence, the film takes those same themes and filters them through the emptiness of personal revenge. How appropriate then that Emad, plays Willy Loman, a character who's powerlessness leads to his ruination.

Much like About Elly (2009) however, The Salesman has a habit of reaching its moral conclusion far before reaching its actual, physical conclusion. The third act, while strong and refreshingly classic in its humanism, can't help but feel like it's dawdling; leaving its human frailties exposed like bleaching bones. Additionally, in today's political climate, Farhadi's chase for universality can't help but look like he's purposely pandering to his western audience. Don't get me wrong, the film is still very much a depiction of modern Iran in microcosm, but now there's a lens of compromised diplomacy.

That said, The Salesman is still a strong work of social commentary that approaches the staid, workmanlike zenith of Farhadi's best works. Shahab Hosseini and especially Taraneh Alidoosti are pitch perfect as a young, childless couple that struggle with tough moral dilemmas and the feckless invisible structures that force them to plow through them.

Final Grade: B