Death of an Iranian Salesman

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This article was published 15/02/2017 (3476 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It doesn’t take long for Iranian director/writer Asghar Farhadi to establish the mood in The Salesman.

When married couple Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) and Emad (Shahab Hosseini) return to their apartment to collect their belongings after being evacuated (the building is unstable because of a nearby construction project), an ominous web of cracks has broken up the wall above their bed.

It’s a not-so-subtle sign that all will not be well with the couple, though the Oscar-winning Farhadi (A Separation took home the 2012 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film; The Salesman is nominated in the same category this year) comes nowhere near melodrama in this quietly tense film about the futility of vengeance.

The Salesman (in Persian, with English subtitles) is, in the vein of Farhadi’s previous films, a domestic drama set in modern-day Tehran.

Rana and Emad work “in culture” (maybe only in Iran is this information greeted with reverence rather than dismay by the neighbours), as actors who are playing Linda and Willy Loman in a production of Death of a Salesman. Emad also teaches high school literature; he’s a well-liked instructor whose students seem to respect him.

When they find themselves temporarily homeless owing to the evacuation, an actor friend offers up an apartment he rents out. The last tenant, however, a single woman with a kid, has left behind most of her belongings and proves reluctant to pick them up. There’s something portentous about her shoes and clothes in the closet, the crayon drawings her child has scrawled on the bedroom wall.

The neighbours, however, have a “good riddance to bad rubbish” attitude, implying the woman was a prostitute.

Then, in a scene that’s all the more chilling for the fact we see nothing, Rana is attacked; it might be that the violence was intended for the previous tenant.

Her head is stitched up at the hospital (although there are possibly other wounds that go unspoken), and she’s sent home, but the attack drives a wedge into the relationship.

Emad’s personality shifts as he struggles to cope with his tamped-down rage. He’s curt with his students and impatient with Rana, seemingly unsympathetic to her fear of being left alone.

Farhadi carefully ratchets up the tension — there’s the sense of bad decision being piled on bad decision — as Emad, rather than consoling or comforting Rana or going to the police, opts for vigilante justice.

This is not John Wick-style hail-of-bullets revenge, of course. It’s small and sad and wrong-headed and destined to fail, but no less devastating.

The director is aided by his two leads, who are as committed to realism as he is. Alidoosti portrays the inner struggle of a woman who wants to return to normal but can’t, while as Emad, Hosseini is a man who realizes his life is being poisoned but picks the wrong antidote.

Much in The Salesman is implicit — the Iranian government’s censorship code would likely forbid referring directly to prostitution (the female tenant “had many acquaintances”) or explicitly saying Rana was sexually assaulted.

Farhadi even pokes fun at it himself; in the production of Death of a Salesman, Willy’s seductress is clad in a long-belted trench coat and hat, despite the script’s reference to lingerie, and the play’s director mentions some of Arthur Miller’s scenes may have to be cut to pass muster.

But when it comes to his own work, Farhadi uses the implied nature of Rana’s injuries to the film’s advantage. Neither she nor Emad ever directly speak of it, but the possibility of her rape hangs over every moment afterward, freighting their actions with shame and impotence, and ensuring peace, or even closure, is not an option.

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @dedaumier