The Salesman (2016)

This distinguished film by esteemed filmmaker Asghar Farhadi is a must watch for lovers of world cinema. The themes are thought provoking and the story is absorbing. Featuring top notch performances The salesman should be on the top of foreign films you should see. (An Iranian masterpiece)

Walked out. Film is stupid, annoying: The movie is so anti-sex that the characters kept accusing a prior neighbor of promiscuity, to blame her and explain the ensuing evil (the rape, primarily). The supposedly intelligent husband stupidly assumes, without talking to her about it, that his wife is ready to jump right back on stage after being violently raped and hospitalized.

I decided to watch The Salesman when I found out that it beat the brilliant Land of Mine to best film in a foreign language at last years Oscars. Was it as good as Land of Mine ? well maybe not quite but I'm really pleased I watched it. It's the story of a couple are forced to leave their collapsing apartment building, when a friend offers them a flat to live in but he doesn't tell them this it was formerly inhabited by a prostitute. While home alone at night and taking a shower, the wife is attacked, and has difficulty coping with the aftermath. This is a film set in Iran but it could be set anywhere. The people in this film are just like you and me and although there are cultural difference you wouldn't really know it in this film. Writer and director Asghar Farhadi has made thought provoking film about disgrace , revenge , and pride and the cast do him proud. The Salesman is available on Amazon.

I applaud director Farhadi for making Iran more accessible to outsiders, focusing on modern urban issues, and making Tehran more internationally relatable. But I'm not a fan of his pacing or how he plays out the drama. I had low expectations as "A Separation" lost me due to the unrelenting yelling between its characters. "The Salesman" was more lively and allowed its characters to have more emotions. But two things ultimately distracted me: the first was the uneven pacing. The movie would pick up but then drag, and the worst part being the final act; just as the dialogue, drama, and suspense were at its best, and Farhadi has you feeling empathy for everyone, he does not know when to quit, and gives us almost 20 minutes of people crying.The second one was: I realized that he was just making an Argentine film. If you've seen Argentine cinema, that you'll notice that, aside from the occasional dark comedy, they're mostly slow-paced melodrama about relationships between family members and the communities, where people go from being numb to an ultimate eruption of emotions. Even their thrillers play out this way. Shahab Hosseini looked and acted like Ricardo Darin, down to the body language and linguistic pacing. Thus, I felt like I had seen this movie a dozen times before.It is no surprise to me that Farhadi's next film is set in Argentina and involves Darin.