rockman182 This film made waves at the Academy Awards (not just for the Academy boycott). I've been meaning to check it out at some point, and finally had the opportunity to watch it on an airplane during a flight. I've heard of A Separation but never watched it. Going in pretty blind into this film, I was very pleased with the end product. I read Death of a Salesman in high school and was able to spot some parallels.The film is about a husband and wife who work in theatre (on a production of Death of a Salesman). One night their apartment starts collapsing so they move into a new apartment. Soon the wife gets attacked in the shower while waiting for her husband. The husband becomes consumed with finding out who attacked his wife and attempts to pursue the culprit even as relationships around him start falling apart.A lot of people didn't find this to be as good as A Separation, or so I've heard. I thought the script for the film was quite sharp. Like Billy Loman in Death of a Salesman , Emad's relationship is on the rocks. He must also try to avoid the humiliation of what occurred within his family and must wrong the right. While the film is a bit of a slow burn on finding out who committed the act, the clues leading up to the reveal and the ride is very fun to be a part of.I found the last 30 minutes or so of the film to be powerful and it also helps to ascend the film to a higher rating. Its gripping and hard to keep your eyes off of what happens next. Its suspenseful but yet innocuous You know there's no immediate danger to the lead but wow its a joy to watch what transpires. I will have to eventually check out A Separation, especially if its more acclaimed than this.8/10

evanston_dad Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi delivers another slow-burn domestic drama in this movie about patriarchal insecurity and helplessness.The film isn't as gripping as "A Separation," but it's still a fascinating character study of a middle aged actor whose wife is assaulted (the details of her assault remain vague, both to him and to the audience) and sets off on a grim mission to seek vengeance on the attacker in whatever way it presents itself. Juxtaposed to these scenes are ones showing him perform in an Iranian production of "Death of a Salesman," the ultimate male mid-life crisis story. Like watching a car accident in slow motion, we see him move closer and closer to his goal even as his wife wants him to quit and we gain some sympathy, however slight, for the attacker. As in "A Separation," Farhadi constructs a complicated set of characters with complicated emotions, not interested in good vs. bad or even right vs. wrong, suggesting instead that perhaps everything is to a greater or lesser degree a shade of gray. But the story he builds around these events isn't as compelling as "A Separation," so the film doesn't have that earlier one's dramatic punch.Winner of the 2016 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, though the excellent German film "Toni Erdmann" really should have won.Grade: A-

Mac Murrah This movie is a beautiful drama, the build up is gradual and the intensity reaches a crescendo during the last 30 minutes which is an absolutely spell binding piece of acting and storytelling.The film shows Iran as a very normal and sensible society yet because of the respect the culture awards older people which makes the climax even more astonishing.It took a while for me to get into it, I was on a flight and was dozing in and out until around 44 minutes before the end, when its just engrossing.

fowler-16 The Salesman" has a lot going for it, and I understand why the Academy voters felt good about honoring it with an Oscar. The drama is tense, and the morality is surely correct. Revenge is a blunter of other, more civilized emotions. I can't buy the whole package, however, because it doesn't fulfill its promise of matching the trauma within a contemporary urban marriage to the framing medium of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman." I would have been content to follow the Iranian couple's drama alone, without the "clever" adjunct of the American classic, but since writer-director Farhadi draws such attention to Miller's play, I found myself constantly distracted by his misunderstanding of certain primary facets of that play.I realize several major critics, including A.O. Scott of the NY Times, have lauded how Farhadi uses "Death of a Salesman" to illuminate his tale of a modern rape and revenge--most of them laying stress on the "sales" aspect of one or more of the movie's characters who present a false facade to the world. Frankly, that's a very generalized reading, one idea plucked from the many themes at work in "The Salesman." To me, the only scene in Miller's play that connects with "The Salesman" is in Willy Loman's hotel room, when his son Biff learns that his dad has a hooker in the bathroom. To his credit, Farhadi shows that exact scene for a time, but this focus, while apt as far as it goes, overlooks the deeper side of Willy, that his entire life is devoted to a false idol, an illusion, the "American dream" of every salesman, of making one's way in the world "on a smile and a shoeshine." To Willy Loman, the only thing that matters on this earth is "to be well liked." Where does this factor into "The Salesman"? None of the characters exemplifies that jovial spirit, verbosity, and fake good humor that characterize the salesman type. I kept wondering why Farhadi kept referencing Miller's play while leaving this out. But then he doesn't seem to have studied the play, or he wouldn't have cast such a youthful "healthy" leading man to play Willy. Nor would any theater director have permitted Shahab Hosseini to play a 1940s American traveling salesman with that beard! (A more believable Willy might be the elderly rapist who appears later in the film, but we never learn much about him, and he's not playing the part for the theater troupe.)Both of the Lomans are miscast. They are nearly 30 years too young, a serious matter for characters with a lifelong devotion to the capitalist creed and a nearly paid-off mortgage. The makeup artists have to work overtime to try (unsuccessfully) to age them, drawing attention to another strange detail. Do Iranian actors not do their own makeup? I'm not speaking of pampered film stars, but of so-called "legit" actors. Western actors take it for granted that, except for highly unusual cosmetic effects, the actor is responsible for his/her own makeup. I wondered if this was a movie director's wrong assumption about stage practice.None of this absolutely ruins what is strong in this film. It is certainly worth our time to witness city life in contemporary Iran, even if it is a glum vision overall. The tautness of the one-on-one encounters is mesmerizing. You can't look away. In the interaction of husband and wife, one can see all the glaring omissions and missteps that doom the couple--and may save viewers many hours of marriage counseling.