Responses to Questions About the Film 'The Salesman'

Iranian cinema made headlines again last week with the awards that Asghar Farhadi's film 'The Salesman' received at the recent Cannes Film Festival. While it is not new for Iranian cinema to generate news about its awards, the volume of reactions and follow-ups regarding the recent awards for 'The Salesman' indicated the special status and position of its creators. 'The Salesman' was screened at Cannes without being shown in Iran, with minimal information about its content and structure released beforehand. Even the cinema officials at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, who are responsible for overseeing film production, confirmed that they had not seen the final version of the film and had only granted a production permit based on a brief synopsis of a few pages. The curiosity to see the final product likely led various Iranian journalists and filmmakers, including Hojjatollah Ayoubi (Head of the Cinema Organization) and Alireza Tabesh (Director of Farabi Cinema Foundation), to attend the Cannes Festival to be among the first viewers of 'The Salesman' worldwide. What kind of film is 'The Salesman'? 'The Salesman' is another tense drama from Asghar Farhadi that involves its characters in events and accidents that gradually push their lives to the brink of crisis. In this film, as in his previous works, the audience is engaged in a suspenseful process of a series of events that encompass challenging themes such as judgment, forgiveness, and revenge. A young couple of theater actors are forced to relocate their home in Tehran. They find themselves in an emergency situation in a place where the previous tenant was a sex worker. The consequences of that woman's work heavily impact the couple's lives. Farhadi's treatment of this story is different from previous examples seen in contemporary Iranian cinema. The screenplay is filled with details and precision in narrating each part of the story, and alongside it, the creator's perspective on certain social issues is refreshing. For instance, the living situation of a woman who is a sex worker does not carry the usual clichés, and it seems we are faced with an ordinary character. In 'The Salesman', Asghar Farhadi employs a parallel narrative of literature, theater, and cinema, utilizing some notable Iranian and foreign works to accompany the audience with those works while watching the film. The play 'Death of a Salesman' by American writer Arthur Miller, the story of 'The Cow' from the book 'Mourners of Bill' by Gholam-Hossein Saedi, and the film made by Dariush Mehrjui from this story are among the works referenced in 'The Salesman', with traces of their themes visible in the film's events. Is 'The Salesman' a reflection of social events in Iran? Shahab Hosseini plays the role of a theater actor and a high school teacher in 'The Salesman'. An incident involving his wife leads to a change in the character's behavior that he portrays. This behavioral change even drives him to undertake actions that contradict the performance and character we previously saw in the film, including interrogation and torture. I asked Asghar Farhadi at the film's press conference about the reasons for this behavioral change and whether it could reflect what is happening in society and the government. Mr. Farhadi responded: 'In fact, the contradiction and paradox, and the main question of the film is how we get from this type of person to that type of person at the end of the film. A kind person who helps everyone, loves his wife, and at the beginning of the film is worried about the neighbor's child. He is very kind and feels responsible. What makes a person go from that point of feeling responsible and kind to here? The question is, who transforms this person into someone who expresses that violence, both in words and in behavior with that person and in what he does?' Is 'The Salesman' better than Farhadi's previous films? Nick James, editor of the prestigious Sight & Sound magazine, noted that 'The Salesman' faced various reactions from critics after its screening at the Cannes Film Festival. While some praised it for presenting a strong, impactful, and psychological drama from contemporary Iran, others found it disappointing compared to Farhadi's other films. Nick James was one of those critics. I asked him at Cannes about the reasons for his viewpoint: 'I'm sorry, but I was a bit disappointed with this film by Asghar Farhadi. It does not meet the standard of his usual works. He was trying to address significant and complex issues but did not fully succeed. The parallel narrative between theater and story by the actors was interesting. However, in the first half, we witnessed theatrical performances against natural performances in the realistic section, but in the second half and the end, all performances became theatrical. The last 25 minutes are very unnatural and do not work. But I don't think all of this is the main problem. The main issue is that the film's ideas and themes are not interconnected and cohesive. They lack continuity. Overall, we are not facing a film as good as 'About Elly' and certainly not as good as 'A Separation'.' Similar to Nick James's viewpoint, some other critics, including writers from the prestigious Cahiers du Cinéma, shared the same sentiment. Mohammad Abdi, a critic and film writer, evaluated the perspective of this group of critics and their reasons for opposing Farhadi's new film: 'In my opinion, it is more of a misunderstanding of Farhadi's cinema. Perhaps these critics expect a person to change continuously throughout their life. But that is not supposed to happen. Mr. Farhadi himself said in the press conference that I am the same person I was 10 or 15 years ago with the same concerns, and I try to express them more completely and in different ways. I think this is essentially what auteur cinema is about. That is, a person has a series of specific concerns, like Ingmar Bergman or Alfred Hitchcock or all the other great filmmakers in this style who show those concerns in various places and address them in different ways. It is true that the structure and atmosphere of the film may remind one of Farhadi's previous films, but he is still doing something new. This time, for instance, he has brought theater into the middle of the film and mixed the world of performance with the world of characters, and he has done this very well. In fact, some people objected to why he brought the world of theater, claiming it does not harmonize with the world of reality. But I think exactly the opposite. There are many signs and details that enter the real world from the theater and vice versa. For example, we never see Ahoo with her child in the film, but there is a woman and child in the play that we see. It is as if a ghost of Ahoo is present in the world of the performance. However, critics from Cahiers du Cinéma have never had a favorable opinion about Farhadi's films. But I can say that most American critics and a few English critics and some festival directors I spoke with really liked the film. Why are the awards for 'The Salesman' important? Shahab Hosseini (right) and Asghar Farhadi, after receiving their awards at the Cannes Festival, received the most significant awards that Iranian cinema has received in the past two years. The last major award for Iranian cinema was the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, which Jafar Panahi received two years ago for his film 'Taxi'. However, the awards for 'The Salesman', according to many analysts, differ from previous Iranian cinema awards due to their focus on areas such as screenplay and acting. Jamshid Akrami, a university professor in the U.S. and a film writer and researcher, is among these experts: 'Iranian cinema has a reputation as a cinema with auteur filmmakers. Therefore, when a film comes out of Iranian cinema, it is more the director of the film that is highlighted. They say this is a film by Mr. Kiarostami or Mr. Panahi or Mr. Farhadi. This somewhat overshadows the other elements of those films. Therefore, it is gratifying that other aspects of Iranian cinema have also received attention. I should note that many people think Iranian cinema has lost its past glory. I, however, disagree with this view. I have heard from many American critics that Iranian cinema was a wave that once had a leap, and that leap has now subsided. In response, I tell them that wasn't it last year that Mr. Panahi received the top prize in Berlin, or now these two very important awards that Mr. Farhadi and his film received at the Cannes Festival? Every national cinema has a kind of reputation. For example, the reputation of American cinema is based on making big, popular films that are recognized globally. Iran's reputation is also based on its role as a creative cinema on a global scale. These successful festival appearances help maintain that reputation. Now, if Iranian cinema is not a wave, we can say it is a steady but enduring creative current.' In most polls of critics at the Cannes Film Festival, films such as 'Toni Erdmann' by Maren Ade from Germany, 'Graduation' by Cristian Mungiu from Romania, 'Paterson' by well-known American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, and 'Elle' by Paul Verhoeven were seen as the top films of this year's festival. Among these films, only 'Graduation' was able to jointly win the Best Director award at the closing ceremony with 'Personal Shopper' by Olivier Assayas, while the other films left the festival empty-handed. This itself indicates a significant divergence of opinions between the judges and critics in this festival edition.