Feb 10, 2017
Amid the worldwide chaos wrought by President Trump's ban on allowing the citizens of seven Islamic nations including Iran into the United States, one particular person's case stood out from the rest. Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, who won the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2012, would have been prevented from attending the Oscars on February 26- and likely miss out on picking up another Oscar for his currently nominated film, "The Salesman."
Farhadi immediately stood on principle and said that even if a special exception were made to allow him to attend the ceremony, he would stay in his beloved homeland in protest against the policy that is affecting his fellow countrymen. This series of events drew a great deal of attention to "The Salesman" when it opened in arthouse theaters (including Pasadena's Laemmle Playhouse 7) last weekend, and will very likely guarantee him the Oscar, not only because the movie is a superb and riveting piece of work, but also because rewarding the film would be the most powerful rebuke Hollywood could offer to the controversial policy.
Similar to "A Separation," in which a failing marriage turns into a psychological thriller, Farhadi's new film starts out as a simple slice of life and becomes a tragic, edge-of-your-seat experience. Emad (Shahab Hosseini) is a Tehran-based theatre director preparing a production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," starring himself as Willy Loman and his wife Rana (Taranah Alidoosti) as Willy's wife.
The couple are between apartments and in danger of sleeping in their theater when a fellow cast member lets them know he has an apartment that's available, but on one condition. The prior tenant was a single woman who moved out abruptly, leaving one of the rooms stuffed with her belongings. She has begged the apartment owner to keep the room intact until she can return, but when she keeps delaying and seems to disappear, Rana insists that the room be emptied and the possessions stored in back of their building.
Emad is ethically conflicted but goes along, and bad karma soon hits the couple with force. They slowly learn that the prior tenant was highly promiscuous and possibly a prostitute, and they start receiving random mysterious phone calls from men looking for her. Things escalate when Emad comes home one night to find the apartment door open and blood on the bathroom floor, then learns that Rana is in a hospital ER with a nasty gash in her forehead and no full memory of what happened.
She does recall that a man entered the apartment while she was in the shower and tried to grab her, then ran when he realized she wasn't the prior tenant. Rana's injury came as she fell while trying to fight him off, and the only clue to the intruder's whereabouts is the pickup truck he abandoned outside while running away.
Thus begins a slow-burning but absolutely gripping thriller in which Emad becomes obsessed with finding out who the intruder was and what the prior tenant was actually doing while she lived in the apartment. Rana, meanwhile, is dealing with PTSD from the attack and their marriage and the play is being affected on a nightly basis.
That's a lot of setup, but the brilliance of Farhadi's work is such that he takes a seemingly simple situation and turns it into a never-ending series of twists and turns that work as both Hitchcockian thrillers, as well as simple human tragedies worthy of Ingmar Bergman. The fact that his films work so strongly for me, as someone who disdains subtitles and rarely sees foreign-language films, also is a strong indication that both "A Separation" and "The Salesman" will work wonders for any audience member seeking an intelligent night out at the movies.
The real-life tragedy of the times we live in is that, while Iran has long been regarded by our presidents as a state supporter of terrorism, that labeling caused by a tiny percentage of evildoers winds up hindering the ability of millions of other citizens to live their lives openly with the rest of the world. Farhadi's films tell universal tales of innately human dilemmas and circumstances that transcend borders and cultures, and show anyone who has the blessing to see them the chance to have their eyes opened to the fact that humans anywhere are far more similar than different from each other.
"The Salesman" is rated PG-13, but only has two mild swear words in subtitles, and the rest of its intense subject matter is handled with taste and mostly implied. For instance, the viewers never see the shower confrontation. It's fantastic viewing for serious-minded teens and adults.
My hope is that "The Salesman" will win on Oscar night and that Farhadi will be able to at least address the world via Skype, showing us all that the face of Iranians isn't just one of terrorists and radicals. It is a reflection of us all – good, bad, old, young, male, female, human.