The Salesman

The Salesman Movie (DVD)

Directed by: Asghar Farhadi

Actors: Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti

In Farsi with English subtitles

With “The Salesman,” Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi creates another spellbinding domestic drama

Winner of 2017 Academy Award  for Best Foreign-Language film, Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman is a dazzling, darkly funny, quietly devastating human drama from the Islamic Republic of Iran. If you know Farhadi's work – and if you don't, search out About Elly, A Separation, Fireworks Wednesday and The Past — you know you're in the hands of a major film artist. He is not one to underline the meaning of his films. He throws audiences into the thick of things and leaves us to parse its meaning. It's a compliment Hollywood films rarely afford us.

The title refers to a local production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman starring the film's two protagonists in, of all places, present-day Tehran. Shahab Hosseini won the best actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his deeply affecting and layered performance as Emad Etesami, a literature teacher who is also playing Willy Loman. Emad's wife, Rana (the splendid Taraneh Alidoosti) is portraying Willy's wife, Linda, in the play. The symmetry allows the filmmaker to contrast the intense American family depicted in Miller's theatrical landmark with the more measured family life in Iran. Hosseini and Alidoosti, doing double duty, are both superb.