Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman, an Awarded Iranian Drama

The Salesman (Forushande in Farsi, in original) is an outstanding and mesmerizing Iranian movie released in 2016. I think I like the word mesmerizing. This movie won the Oscar for the Foreign Language Movie in 2017, a controversial year with weak movies. The Salesman came up like the oil in water. As a reminder, 2017 was the year I haven’t published my Oscar winners because of movies like Moonlight, La La Land, 20th Century Women… On top of that, the circus at the ceremony, the embarrassment… were too much. I thought I’ll never write about Oscars again. Jimmy Kimmel saved the moment, a reason to be invited again this year. What a mistake… Seth Meyers hosting the Globes with Kimmel at the Oscars, were both appalling in 2018.

[source for all pics: imdb.com]

This movie revolves around Iran’s religious rules and restraint. Doesn’t matter the Persians are Shiites, the Holly Kuran is the same book for all Muslims. Being put together more recently than what we call the Bible, there are fewer misinterpretations about it. Anyway, it’s stated that families have to keep Zenana, a house quarter exclusively for women (and small children), where only the man of the house has access. There live his wives, women relatives, concubines and female servants. If that’s not possible, in the “modern” families, women are not allowed to be alone in a room with a stranger man. That if she’s not accompanied by her husband or her own brother. I’m not sure about her husband’s brother, because to me he seems no different from a stranger, but maybe he’s allowed to chaperone his sister in law. Oh, I forgot that in Islam, they often marry in the family, mostly first degree cousins, so if the woman married her father’s brother son, his brother is her cousin too.
 

Plot without Spoilers

In The Salesman, there is a family of intellectuals who move in another apartment because of some natural danger, earthquake, land sliding doesn’t matter. The man is a teacher during the day, and an actor in the evenings, accompanied by his wife. They act together in The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.

A friend from the theater is the one who found them the apartment to move on at short notice. He is the new building’s administrator. The apartment looks nice, but there is only one problem. The former tenant, a woman, left a lot of belongings. This fact leads to an incident which shaped the whole movie.

 

The Salesman – Cast

Taraneh Alidoosti is Rana Etesami, Emad’s wife. She plays Linda in “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller. Shahab Hosseini is Emad Etesami, the husband, also the one playing Willy Loman in Miller’s drama. Babak Karimi is Babak, the friend from the theater, the new building’s administrator.
Written, directed and produced by Asghar Farhadi.

Asghar Farhadi is the one who directed A Separation, another Foreign Language Oscar winner. Maybe I would deal with A Separation in another post. I already have prepared an article about some Iranian movies which include both The Salesman and A Separation. I have watched three more movies directed by Farhadi, but only two of them were put on my list. These movies are all dramas, some of them even tragic. At the core is usually a religious anomaly or custom, based of course on the extremes of interpreting an issue or another.

 

Trailer

Taraneh Alidoosti and Shahab Hosseini are favorite actors for director Asghar Farhadi. Shahab Hosseini plays in A Separation as well. I also want to add that Mr. Farhadi’s movies are way up from boring. There is a tension in them, keeping you alert from start to the end.

 

If you liked what you read (and for that I humbly thank you for your patience), subscribe to this blog by Email! Follow this blog on Twitter, and on Facebook! For a joyous day, check out my pins on Pinterest or my grams on Instagram 😄. I hope you like this blog so much that you think it’s time to take a step further by becoming yourself a blogger; in order to do that have the kindness to read the Own Your Website offer I have prepared for you! You won’t regret. Thanks for passing by 😄 Speak your mind, don’t be shy!

Copyright © 2018 Rodolfo Grimaldi Blog – Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman, an Awarded Iranian Drama

If you liked this article, tell someone about it