Review of The Salesman / فروشنده, directed by Asghar Farhadi

For those of you who have never set foot virtually into this space, welcome! This is my blog, which serves as an online diary and digital archive of everything I’ve watched, read, and experienced in the past few years. Recently, it has become a source of income for me, and a crux as I faced unexpected unemployment after an opportunity I was told I had fell through. Feel free to click around if you liked this post.

In addition to this become a vital income source while I’m unemployed, I’ve been actually catching up on my content game. There are so many movies, television shows, and books I’ve watched and read throughout the years but never had the chance to review, so while I’ve had the free time, I’m dedicating more time to catching up on these reviews.

Today’s post is centered towards something near and dear to my heart: Iranian film. I’m Iranian American, and although I do not speak Farsi because I was the stereotypical immigrant kid who’s dad went to work at a restaurant 24/7 instead of being at home (my mother is not Iranian), I came more into the culture as an adult and on my own.

That said, film has been a way for me to feel more connected to Iranian culture, as well as my academics. I went to graduate school and did a lot of research on feminism and abuse within Iranian households, which connected the dots for me about what I had seen and witnessed.

I watched The Salesman a while back, as I own a copy of the movie. I half-wrote this review way back when because of that, but am only getting around to editing and revamping it now.

This is a long introduction, so let’s cut it short and get to the meat of the post! I don’t want to ramble too much.

After a woman is assaulted in her home, her husband goes out and tries to find out who the culprit is.

The protagonists of this movie are Rana and Emad, a married couple who are currently working on a theatrical production of Death of a Salesman in Tehran. In addition to this, Emad has a side job where he teaches at a nearby school in the neighborhood, and the students like to poke fun at his role in the play and call him a salesman.

The conflict of this movie begins when the apartment building the couple lives in collapses, and they have to leave their home behind. An actor friend, Babak, gets them a place to stay, as the woman who lived in their quickly left and is nowhere to be found. They leave the previous girl’s belongings outside, as she didn’t pack them, but when Rana is home alone one night, she takes a shower.

While she’s in there, someone breaks in and assaults her. When Emad comes home, she is nowhere to be found and there is blood on the bathroom floor. He heads to the hospital, and then finds out that she is in there and the neighbors advise him to change the locks immediately. It seems that Rana left the guy in thinking it was Emad, and that the woman who had fled the apartment before was a prostitute with some clients that most likely are angry with her.

This entire incident screws Rana up, and she’s traumatized. She doesn’t want to go to the police and now has a fear of the bathroom because of what happened in there. It’s impacting her job as an actor, and Emad, seeing what happened, gathers the evidence left behind: a cell phone and money.

He also blames Babak for what happened. In the middle of a performance, he goes off on Babak, who is also on stage, going off of the script completely.

Emad decides to take justice into his own hands and asks one of his students for help. The student’s father formerly worked for the police, and Emad is able to find out the owner of the truck involved with the attack. The guy’s name is Majid, and Emad decides to lure him out to the former apartment, but then discovers the attack is actually Majid’s father-in-law.

Emad summons the man’s entirely family to expose him, but then the guy has a heart attack. Emad calls Rana, and she tells him if he continues with this, their marriage will be over. She condones this completely.

The family arrives and they think they were called because of a medical emergency. They thank Emad for his service, and then Emad asks to give the money he left while assaulting Rana behind to “settle his debt.” He slaps the guy when the family isn’t looking, who collapses.

The family calls an ambulance. Emad leaves, and the movies ends with Rana and Emad going to their performance of Death of a Salesman.

Overall Thoughts

This is a classic Asghar Farhadi movie, and it pretty much follows the contemporary Iranian tradition of social realism through film. It’s a bit more mild though, as it had to get out into the world somehow without some form of censorship.

All in all, using the theatrical play as a device to frame the plot of this one is pretty interesting to me. So is how Farhadi used the plot and characters to get at what he was trying to critique in Iranian society, which, if you start breaking down the film, comes in layers.

I found this to be a pretty compelling movie at the end of the day, and it’s something I have returned to throughout the years. I think if you’re interested in and haven’t watched already, you should definitely go and try to watch it eventually. It’s a modern classic of Iranian cinema for sure.

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