The Salesman

THE SALESMAN

Director : Asghar Farhadi

Year : 2016

Genre : Drama

Rating : ***

Despite rave reviews from critics, Asghar Farhadi's second Oscar winner 'The Salesman' is, alas, not his strongest work. Nonetheless, it is still an emotionally rich piece of neorealist cinema that explores some very upsetting themes with dignity and respect - even if those themes have been explored to greater effect in other superior movies. 

Farhadi regular Shahab Hosseini gives a terrific performance as Emad, a young Iranian teacher whose seemingly idyllic personal life irrevocably falls apart when, while starring in a production of Arthur Miller's 'Death Of A Salesman', his wife Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) suffers an horrific and violent assault. What ensues is a thrilling and sometimes disturbing drama as Emad attempts to identify the culprit of the attack while Rana suffers the insularity, fear and shame of post-traumatic stress disorder.

As he has proved with movies such as the gripping drama/thrilling 'About Elly' (2009) and the aforementioned 'A Separation' (2011), Farhadi is a wonderfully poignant yet darkly funny filmmaker and 'The Salesman' confirms this fact. His script, which won the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival is a deeply provocative and intelligent one that effortlessly, if not unsubtly finds parallels between the conflicted character of Hosseini's Emad with that of Willy Loman, his equally pained on-stage alter ego.  Meanwhile behind the camera, the typically unobtrusive direction by Farhadi is simple yet undeniably effective thereby helping us to become that much more enveloped in the plight and struggles of our very likeable lead protagonists. 

With its unanimously brilliant performances, genuinely gripping story and expertly executed scenes of tension, 'The Salesman' is yet another fine picture from the always reliable Farhadi.   However, it must be said that while I certainly enjoyed and admire the film very much, I'm not so sure if its worthy of an Academy Award. At time of writing, I haven't seen 'Toni Erdmann', 'Tanna' or any of the other Best Foreign Language feature nominees for this year so it would be egregious for me to speculate how it compares but what I can say is that when put alongside Asghar Farhadi's other more challenging movies, 'The Salesman' undeniably falls short of true greatness.