The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi)

[number8]

IMDB

[Lazlo]

This is pretty good, really great performances, but it's a bit of a retread of things Farhadi's done better elsewhere.

[baby doll]

Anybody else think the lead actor looks distractingly like the dude from Office Space?

[Stay Puft]

This is pretty good, really great performances, but it's a bit of a retread of things Farhadi's done better elsewhere.

Yeah, I sort of felt the same way walking out, but even Farhadi simply doing Farhadi things still puts it well above a lot other stuff I've seen lately. The guy knows how to whip up a fucking movie. The slow, steady buildup to the intensely drawn out, suffocating conclusion is great stuff. I couldn't breathe by the end. I had some quibbles along the way, it's certainly not the tightest or most complete package he's produced, but it's still dramatically complex and rewarding and worth seeing.

I didn't realize this is technically 2017 after all (not even a single week run in NY or LA last year?), so I guess that makes this my frontrunner for best of the year... until The Death of Louis XIV opens in a few weeks.

[number8]

I didn't realize this is technically 2017 after all (not even a single week run in NY or LA last year?)

Nope. If you're asking this because of its Oscar eligibility, the Best Foreign Language category is exempt from that rule. For it, the rule is that they need to be released in their country of origin in that year.

[Stay Puft]

Ahhh yeah I wasn't event thinking. Always forget how that categoray works. Was disappointed I didn't get to it in time for the MC ballot deadline but hey it doesn't matter.
Now I gotta remember it a year from now, assuming anybody is still posting here. It'll be five of us just staring at each other arguing about Justice Leauge at that point.

I'll get my opinion out of the way: justice league sucks. I vote nay.

[dreamdead]

Solid as usual from Farhadi, though seeing Fireworks Wednesday a few days before this one made his earlier film's impeccable structure stand out even more.

One thing that we were trying to discern was what actual contributes to Rana's decision to forgive her transgressor. There's nothing internal that really justifies her move toward that decision, beyond the fact that she never explicitly vocalizes animosity towards him. Had there been more of a concentration on that move, we'd have felt more justified in the drama that plays out between her and Emad. The most we could pull from the film's script was that Rana doesn't want her trauma playing out in public.

That said, we were interested in how Farhadi not so much uses Miller's play as a paratext but instead the reference to Gholam-Hossein Saedi The Cow, which cements the death and transformation of Emad from human to animal.

Not as sold on the final close-ups on Emad and Rana as I've been on the final images of his prior films, though; it feels like less of an earned epiphany and more of a random final shot...

[number8]

I never got the impression that she forgave him, just that she never wanted a confrontation to begin with and is doubly more uncomfortable because he's revealed to be a vulnerable family man rather than the boogeyman she's been having lingering fear of.

[Peng]

Turning the "what" of his last three films into "who" for this one proves quite tricky for Farhadi the screenwriter. Instead of a compelling roster of perspectives coming onto one event, we get a more straight-line narrative of revenge-fueled whodunit, and Farhadi seems to wobble a bit on developing deeper characters needed for this kind of story to measure up to his past works. His usual elusiveness of details for a central event, this time surrounding a violent incident, somehow seems a bit counterproductive in this context, shying away from delving into a trauma that becomes the husband's main drive later on. It also makes the wife's characterization shakier and almost more vague than it needs to be. And the last act maybe has at least one reversal of events too many, so the bitterness after the film ends is a tad more on the sour side than the haunting kind.

Farhadi the director may have never been better here though, capable of ratcheting up a scene's tension so long until it becomes almost unbearable, or delivering a full-body chill at the sight of a door left ajar and slowly creaking open. The last act, flaws in structure asides, is as nerve-wracking a morally complex, sympathy-switching back-and-forth as he's ever orchestrated, with all three main actors selling the heartbreak of the situation beautifully. 7.5/10