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Review: The Salesman (فروشنده) (2016)
I hadn’t realized this movie was directed by the same director as A Separation, and now that I know, I see similarities in style. Nonetheless, The Salesman was an interesting movie on its own. I’d recommend this as a good drama movie.
Spoilers.
Story
Emad and Rana were a married couple who were acting in a production of Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. They’d just moved into a new apartment and there were troubles with the previous tenant having left her things there. One day, Rana had inadvertently let in an unknown person who had assaulted her and left. Rana suffered major injuries. Though she was physically able to walk and do things for herself, she was clearly battling with PTSD from the attack.
Emad worked to track down the assailant. They had left their keys and Emad had found that it matched a pickup truck. They had kept it in the apartment’s parking garage, but it was taken when Rana parked the car outside for convenience. So Emad asked one of his students whose father used to work for the police to track down the license plate number. The pickup was the delivery truck for a bakery.
Emad asked a worker from the bakery to help him do a delivery, but the worker’s father-in-law came instead. After some heavy interrogation, it was revealed that the father-in-law was the man who had assaulted Rana. The previous tenant of their apartment seemed to be a prostitute or a promiscuous woman and the father-in-law was a client who had come to visit. When he saw that Rana was not that woman, he panicked and fled.
Emad called Rana over to talk to the father-in-law. However, Emad also called the father-in-law’s family, wanting to expose his behaviour. Rana drew the line at that, saying that if he said anything about this to the family, they’d be over. The father-in-law had a health scare where he fainted, so when the family came over, Emad seemed more sympathetic. In private, Emad returned the father-in-law’s items to him and then slapped him. On the way out, the father-in-law collapsed and was taken to the hospital.
The movie ended with Emad and Rana getting dressed for another performance of Death of a Salesman.
Unfortunately, I have not read Death of a Salesman, and I fear that because of that, several of the themes will go over my head. My only frame of reference for Death of a Salesman are the parts of the play that were actually seen on screen and the Wikipedia summary.
What is this movie about? It’s about several things, about society, about men and women, but also about Emad as a character and as a man. I thought that it delved into each of these things briefly, but in a way that all kind of seemed interconnected. Decent story.
Production
Some of the visual direction was creative. I felt the director Asghar Farhadi liked using mirrors and window screens a lot. When Emad and Rana were moving in to their new apartment, someone was bringing a mirror up the stairs, and in that mirror, we saw the cityscape, before it passed and we saw Emad and Rana’s apartment. There was also another scene where Emad and other movers were sitting outside and having a bit of fun, and a mirror inside the apartment showed that scene.
Like I said, lots of windows were used in this movie as well. In the beginning, when Emad and Rana’s apartment was collapsing, the neighbours were all talking to each other through a number of windows (particularly because the apartment seemed to be in a loop shape and so there was an empty space in the middle). The new empty apartment, the one that Emad and Rana intended to move into, also had a number of windows, particularly to set apart the kitchen with the rest of the apartment.
I wonder if the use of mirrors and windows was meant to emphasize the story within a story component of this movie, showing that we are only seeing things through a lens, through the tint of someone’s bias.
Like in A Separation, there were a lot of scenes of showing, particularly in relation to the crime and sleuthing. And it also helped exemplify some of the more obsessive behaviour of Emad.
Characters
Emad
Emad was presented to us as an understanding and likable man. He was relied upon in the neighbourhood, and as a teacher, he connected with his students. In the scene where Emad took the taxi, he showed that he understood the troubles of women and that was why he did not say anything when the woman sitting next to him was uncomfortable.
However, we saw his flaws after the incident. Rana was clearly reeling from the PTSD, and all Emad could do was tell her to get it together. Clearly he found her wariness to be troublesome. He just wanted things to get back to how they were. It was troublesome to him that Rana couldn’t even use the washroom alone (as the assault happened in the washroom and it brought back bad memories). But he was unwilling to change his life for Rana, not looking for a substitute teacher as he told Rana he would.
I think Emad’s downfall was possibly his pride. Pride as a person, pride as a man. I think he enjoyed a level of likability and dignity in society as a teacher and a person in society that people look to for help. However, that changed when it came to his own wife. As mentioned, he seemed to exhibit understanding of women’s troubles, but he was unsympathetic to Rana’s trauma.
As he became agitated, Emad also became an unlikable teacher. He was losing sleep and his students caught him sleeping. When he realized they’d taken photos of them, he took the phone of a student and went through his photos to make sure those of his were deleted, even if it meant he would go through his private photos. Emad had said that maybe he should call the student’s father, and another mentioned that their father had died. Emad just became very irritable and unlikable.
The deal that Emad cut with Rana was that either they would go to the police, or they would let it go. I guess Rana decided that they would let it go. And yet he was the one who continued to obsess over finding Rana’s assailant. I mean I don’t fault him, just for the truth of it. But I wonder how much of it was a pride thing, the fact that he was looking for the man who hurt his wife, as opposed to looking for a man to apologize and give his wife closure. Two different approaches.
Emad did not let go when it came to interrogating and pinpointing the father-in-law. And he was vengeful. He called Rana over, and the father-in-law didn’t even apologize to her. Instead, Emad was going to call the father-in-law’s family to tell them what kind of man he was. He had a daughter who was going to be married, and Emad wanted to exact revenge by telling them that the father-in-law went to prostitutes.
Rana was very uncomfortable with this. And when the family came over, I think Emad felt at least a little bad. So he didn’t reveal the information, feeling that perhaps the father-in-law had suffered enough. His family loved him a lot, and perhaps the guilt of betraying them would have been enough. But Emad wouldn’t let it go, returning his things and then slapping him once. That was the punishment. But the father-in-law still collapsed from it.
At the end of the movie, Rana and Emad were getting their hair and makeup done for another performance of Death of a Salesman but clearly they were not in a good mood. What kind of mood was Emad in? I’d say maybe he was feeling a bit of guilt. He got caught up in his ideals of revenge and pride and someone got hurt. Some would argue that he was justified, since Rana got seriously hurt (though the father-in-law insisted that he didn’t do anything and just left, while Rana said that he put his hands in her hair). Is there trouble in an eye for an eye type of retribution?
I think the ordeal showed that Emad was not as upstanding of a man that he hoped he was. It showed that there was a part of him that was hateful and driven. When he got into arguments with Rana, he would bring up the neighbours, and Rana asked why he cared about what the neighbours thought. And I think that also reflected his prideful side.
Rana
Rana was Emad’s wife, and an actress in the play. I don’t know if she had another occupation. Rana was in the washroom when someone had buzzed to come in. Rana had assumed it was Emad and didn’t ask, just letting him in. However, the visitor was the father-in-law, thinking he was visiting his old lover.
Rana was taken to the hospital by some neighbours. The neighbours said that there was some yelling, and so they had gone over to see what had happened. The neighbours said that the scene was extremely grisly, they had assumed Rana had killed herself, and that Emad wouldn’t have been as nonchalant as he was if he had seen her in that state, which shed light on Emad’s lack of sympathy for his wife.
Rana dealt with PTSD when she returned home. Of course, it’s tough not feeling safe in your own home because that was where she was attacked. She felt uncomfortable using the washroom alone. And Emad did not help. He just thought it was a bother that he had to accommodate for her so much. I wonder if Rana felt any encouragement from Sadra, the son of another actress at the play. Rana had convinced Sadra’s mother to let him come to her place, probably because he was bored having to hide backstage all the time, and Rana didn’t like being at home alone. At one point, Sadra was a little wary of going to the washroom alone because it was dark. But he said that he wanted to go alone, and so Rana let him go alone. (Side note, Sadra was really cute!)
Over time, Rana slowly recovered. She confronted the things in her life that gave her trauma, like driving the pickup truck of her assailant, being more independent, and returning to the stage.
Rana was uncomfortable with Emad’s need for vengeance. She told him that if he was going to expose the father-in-law to his family, they would be over. She was going to let him go too. It almost seemed a bit over the top for Rana to be so protective of the man. But it highlighted the differences between Emad and Rana. Regardless of what the father-in-law had done to Rana, she was uncomfortable with a person getting hurt because of them. Since Rana had decided that they weren’t going to go to the police, she did let the situation go and healed on her own, and it was Emad who couldn’t let it go. I think Rana was upset with Emad for his extreme actions and that remained unresolved at the end of the movie, but just as we did, Rana discovered this other side to her husband.
Babak
Babak was a friend of Emad and Rana. He also acted in the play, and he helped Emad and Rana find their current apartment. It was Babak’s property, and he was renting it out to the previous tenant. He was frustrated that she hadn’t come back to get her things, locking them in the room and taking the key.
After the incident, Emad was furious that Babak hadn’t told them what kind of person the previous tenant was. At that point, he had learned that the previous tenant was a prostitute and he had devised that the assailant had intended to visit her. He was angry that Babak had introduced them to a bad location. Babak’s defense was that it was business. He needed a tenant.
When Emad was investigating the assailant, he listened to the old messages on the phone, and discovered one from Babak, showing that he had also been a client of the prostitute. Emad was angry and added some insulting lines to the play, which Babak took offense to.
Father-in-law
The father-in-law was a client of the prostitute. It seemed they had a long-running relationship, as he had bought a bike for her child. She was angry with him and was ignoring his calls and texts and that was why he decided to visit the apartment.
The son-in-law Majid was the worker from the bakery who drove the pickup. Emad was insistent on Majid doing some deliveries for him on his weekend. Majid didn’t want to do it because he didn’t want extra work, but he gave in. However, he was busy on the day that Emad had set, so he’d sent his father-in-law. Emad sat the father-in-law down to ask him about his son-in-law and the pickup truck. When Emad learned that the father-in-law did significant business with the pickup truck, he interrogated the father-in-law further. The father-in-law didn’t have his son-in-law’s number because he had a new phone, because he had left the old one at Emad and Rana’s apartment. He had also injured his foot, and the assailant had left bloody footprints when fleeing Emad and Rana’s apartment.
The father-in-law didn’t show as much remorse as fear. He was afraid for his own life. And while I felt a little bad, I also felt a little angry that he was trying to remove himself from the situation which was Rana’s injury. The father-in-law was very afraid that Emad was going to humiliate him in front of his family, and Emad was insistent on carrying out.
Things changed when the father-in-law fainted, and his family got all worried. I think Emad didn’t want to hurt the family too much more. But Emad still had his personal account to settle, where he returned his things and then slapped him. Majid was very confused about the things that Emad returned, and the father-in-law did not explain.
I think the father-in-law collapsed because of guilt and shame. Guilt and shame at being found out, that someone knew him as a man who had a relationship with a prostitute and was not the family man people thought he was. Guilt and shame at his entire family fussing over him when he had fainted because of his own stress at being found out. I think he knew that all of this came about because of his own actions.
The father-in-law’s fate was unknown. He went to the hospital, but that’s all we know.
Themes
Men and women
There were inherent differences between men and women in the society that was presented to us. Other than the fact that women had to wear hijabs, we saw that women were also in general more wary of men, like the woman in the taxi. Emad appeared understanding of this.
There was also an imbalance between men and women as shown in the theme of prostitution. The actress who played the prostitute in the play felt that another actor was laughing at her for playing a prostitute. He was laughing at the irony of her lines (where her character was supposed to be partially clothed, but in reality she was covered up). But I understand that any mockery of her would have seemed a mockery of her station. She was also a single mom who did not get along with her ex-husband, so she was living a tough life. Then of course, there was the situation with the prostitute who used to live in Emad and Rana’s apartment. She had lots of visitors, including Babak, her landlord, and married men who lied to their families like the father-in-law. Sleazeballs like those men would come to prostitutes and when they were unavailable, that was considered a bother. When reading up on the story in Death of a Salesman, Willy was sleeping with a prostitute, and even after he was found out by his children, he continued to act high and mighty around them, like infidelity was something that could be swept under the rug.
I also wondered if the differences between Emad and Rana were supposed to represent differences between men and women, or if it was a personality difference. I can’t help but think of Emad’s need for vengeance as a masculine sort, that he had to seek revenge for his wife being hurt, as opposed to doing things to help her directly, like being more sympathetic to her struggling with PTSD. He was the one who wanted to hurt the father-in-law, when Rana had already put it behind them like they’d agreed.
The father-in-law’s wife in particular was in an uncomfortable situation. She said that her husband was her entire life, and that’s not surprising, particularly in a more conservative/traditional family where wives and mothers are full-time homemakers. Clearly she relied on him a lot, both financially and as someone she built her life around. And meanwhile he was fooling around on the outside.
Home
Emad and Rana struggled to find a home that they liked. Their old one had collapsed due to the construction happening next door. Their current one was not ideal, it was a bit rundown. When Rana turned on the light in the washroom, the lightbulb had exploded, and there was also leaking. But they took it because it was the only thing they could get in a short period of time. The third apartment they took was a bit better on the outside, but inside we saw that the windows were broken. I don’t know enough about Iran, but I wonder if there was something to be said about the state of housing in the urban areas.
Another theme relating to the home was the fact that their current apartment had become a place of fright for Rana. She struggled to be at home because she could only be reminded of the attack. She couldn’t even use the apartment alone. The only time the apartment felt nicer was when she’d brought Sadra, back. Sadra approached the home with an entirely new perspective. He was asking about all of the items left behind by the old tenant, he was colouring in the pictures left by the old tenant’s child. And the washroom was scary, but he decided he would be brave enough to use it on his own.
I don’t know that the new apartment will be any better for Emad and Rana, because they’re going to be thinking about the ordeal with the father-in-law when they move in. Yikes.
Truth
Death of a Salesman was censored in order to be performed in Iran. I’m not sure what lines exactly were censored, but it was discussed with Emad. We had other instances of censorship, like the women having to be modestly dressed and hiding their hair, even if the script said that they were partially clothed or had their hair out. At the same time, I think it was something that the audience members would have understood. I think it’s something that people adapt to in circumstances of censorship. They learn to read the tropes and understand the actual meaning behind, both in more direct cases like here, and in cases where tropes or euphemisms are used to express the truth.
At one point, Emad had some books returned to him by the librarian, because the librarian said that they were not appropriate for the students. I didn’t understand the full gist of that situation. I wondered if it was books that Emad was donating to the library. The students found it funny, probably thinking they were pornographic materials.
I think this theme of censorship was a little relevant to the vengeance story line, in which Emad wanted to tell the truth to the father-in-law’s family. But Rana forbade him from doing so. Emad ended up telling a watered-down, censored version. He didn’t say it explicitly to the family, but he returned the things he’d lost, and implied that there was some other account between them. The family was distracted by the father-in-law’s collapse, but Majid, showing confusion at the items in the plastic bag, might come to that realization later.
Story within a story
I mentioned this before with the visual story being told through mirrors and windows that perhaps it was an attempt to remind us that we were viewing a story within a story, all tinted by someone’s point of view.
In terms of the references within this movie, there were a few. The concept of a prostitute with a child was mirrored with the single mom who brought her child along to shows, while the previous tenant at Emad and Rana’s apartment also had a child. Emad had discussed going elsewhere for the night when Rana was feeling uncomfortable in their own house. Rana had brought up how odd it would be to just show up and ask to shower, when that was exactly what Willy had done in the play to convince his son that the prostitute was just borrowing the shower.
While Willy’s story line is not the same as Emad’s or the father-in-law’s, I think the idea is that all of them slowly declined in social standing over the course of their stories. Willy presented himself as an upstanding businessman, but as the story went on, he was shown to be less than perfect, and it affected his social standing. Rana, seeing Emad as an unsympathetic and prideful man who would go to extremes, now probably did not love him as she used to. The father-in-law’s family did not find out anything about him, so they continued to love him and cherish him.
Trauma
Rana was clearly dealing with some heavy PTSD, and Emad was completely unsympathetic, it was a little appalling. He was not affectionate with her to begin with, but that was not the problem. He refused to change anything about his lifestyle to accommodate his wife. He thought it was silly that she wanted to come with him to school just so she could be away from the house. He refused to find a substitute teacher to be with her. He didn’t see why she wanted to clean the washroom. He literally told her that she had to get it together. For what reason? So that he could get back to normal, I suppose. Emad tracked down the father-in-law in the name of justice for his wife, but what did he do for her? Not much.
Overall
Good drama film. It was simple, not with a lot of major characters, but I found that the characters were well-explored.
Spoilers.
Story
Emad and Rana were a married couple who were acting in a production of Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. They’d just moved into a new apartment and there were troubles with the previous tenant having left her things there. One day, Rana had inadvertently let in an unknown person who had assaulted her and left. Rana suffered major injuries. Though she was physically able to walk and do things for herself, she was clearly battling with PTSD from the attack.
Emad worked to track down the assailant. They had left their keys and Emad had found that it matched a pickup truck. They had kept it in the apartment’s parking garage, but it was taken when Rana parked the car outside for convenience. So Emad asked one of his students whose father used to work for the police to track down the license plate number. The pickup was the delivery truck for a bakery.
Emad asked a worker from the bakery to help him do a delivery, but the worker’s father-in-law came instead. After some heavy interrogation, it was revealed that the father-in-law was the man who had assaulted Rana. The previous tenant of their apartment seemed to be a prostitute or a promiscuous woman and the father-in-law was a client who had come to visit. When he saw that Rana was not that woman, he panicked and fled.
Emad called Rana over to talk to the father-in-law. However, Emad also called the father-in-law’s family, wanting to expose his behaviour. Rana drew the line at that, saying that if he said anything about this to the family, they’d be over. The father-in-law had a health scare where he fainted, so when the family came over, Emad seemed more sympathetic. In private, Emad returned the father-in-law’s items to him and then slapped him. On the way out, the father-in-law collapsed and was taken to the hospital.
The movie ended with Emad and Rana getting dressed for another performance of Death of a Salesman.
Unfortunately, I have not read Death of a Salesman, and I fear that because of that, several of the themes will go over my head. My only frame of reference for Death of a Salesman are the parts of the play that were actually seen on screen and the Wikipedia summary.
What is this movie about? It’s about several things, about society, about men and women, but also about Emad as a character and as a man. I thought that it delved into each of these things briefly, but in a way that all kind of seemed interconnected. Decent story.
Production
Some of the visual direction was creative. I felt the director Asghar Farhadi liked using mirrors and window screens a lot. When Emad and Rana were moving in to their new apartment, someone was bringing a mirror up the stairs, and in that mirror, we saw the cityscape, before it passed and we saw Emad and Rana’s apartment. There was also another scene where Emad and other movers were sitting outside and having a bit of fun, and a mirror inside the apartment showed that scene.
Like I said, lots of windows were used in this movie as well. In the beginning, when Emad and Rana’s apartment was collapsing, the neighbours were all talking to each other through a number of windows (particularly because the apartment seemed to be in a loop shape and so there was an empty space in the middle). The new empty apartment, the one that Emad and Rana intended to move into, also had a number of windows, particularly to set apart the kitchen with the rest of the apartment.
I wonder if the use of mirrors and windows was meant to emphasize the story within a story component of this movie, showing that we are only seeing things through a lens, through the tint of someone’s bias.
Like in A Separation, there were a lot of scenes of showing, particularly in relation to the crime and sleuthing. And it also helped exemplify some of the more obsessive behaviour of Emad.
Characters
Emad
Emad was presented to us as an understanding and likable man. He was relied upon in the neighbourhood, and as a teacher, he connected with his students. In the scene where Emad took the taxi, he showed that he understood the troubles of women and that was why he did not say anything when the woman sitting next to him was uncomfortable.
However, we saw his flaws after the incident. Rana was clearly reeling from the PTSD, and all Emad could do was tell her to get it together. Clearly he found her wariness to be troublesome. He just wanted things to get back to how they were. It was troublesome to him that Rana couldn’t even use the washroom alone (as the assault happened in the washroom and it brought back bad memories). But he was unwilling to change his life for Rana, not looking for a substitute teacher as he told Rana he would.
I think Emad’s downfall was possibly his pride. Pride as a person, pride as a man. I think he enjoyed a level of likability and dignity in society as a teacher and a person in society that people look to for help. However, that changed when it came to his own wife. As mentioned, he seemed to exhibit understanding of women’s troubles, but he was unsympathetic to Rana’s trauma.
As he became agitated, Emad also became an unlikable teacher. He was losing sleep and his students caught him sleeping. When he realized they’d taken photos of them, he took the phone of a student and went through his photos to make sure those of his were deleted, even if it meant he would go through his private photos. Emad had said that maybe he should call the student’s father, and another mentioned that their father had died. Emad just became very irritable and unlikable.
The deal that Emad cut with Rana was that either they would go to the police, or they would let it go. I guess Rana decided that they would let it go. And yet he was the one who continued to obsess over finding Rana’s assailant. I mean I don’t fault him, just for the truth of it. But I wonder how much of it was a pride thing, the fact that he was looking for the man who hurt his wife, as opposed to looking for a man to apologize and give his wife closure. Two different approaches.
Emad did not let go when it came to interrogating and pinpointing the father-in-law. And he was vengeful. He called Rana over, and the father-in-law didn’t even apologize to her. Instead, Emad was going to call the father-in-law’s family to tell them what kind of man he was. He had a daughter who was going to be married, and Emad wanted to exact revenge by telling them that the father-in-law went to prostitutes.
Rana was very uncomfortable with this. And when the family came over, I think Emad felt at least a little bad. So he didn’t reveal the information, feeling that perhaps the father-in-law had suffered enough. His family loved him a lot, and perhaps the guilt of betraying them would have been enough. But Emad wouldn’t let it go, returning his things and then slapping him once. That was the punishment. But the father-in-law still collapsed from it.
At the end of the movie, Rana and Emad were getting their hair and makeup done for another performance of Death of a Salesman but clearly they were not in a good mood. What kind of mood was Emad in? I’d say maybe he was feeling a bit of guilt. He got caught up in his ideals of revenge and pride and someone got hurt. Some would argue that he was justified, since Rana got seriously hurt (though the father-in-law insisted that he didn’t do anything and just left, while Rana said that he put his hands in her hair). Is there trouble in an eye for an eye type of retribution?
I think the ordeal showed that Emad was not as upstanding of a man that he hoped he was. It showed that there was a part of him that was hateful and driven. When he got into arguments with Rana, he would bring up the neighbours, and Rana asked why he cared about what the neighbours thought. And I think that also reflected his prideful side.
Rana
Rana was Emad’s wife, and an actress in the play. I don’t know if she had another occupation. Rana was in the washroom when someone had buzzed to come in. Rana had assumed it was Emad and didn’t ask, just letting him in. However, the visitor was the father-in-law, thinking he was visiting his old lover.
Rana was taken to the hospital by some neighbours. The neighbours said that there was some yelling, and so they had gone over to see what had happened. The neighbours said that the scene was extremely grisly, they had assumed Rana had killed herself, and that Emad wouldn’t have been as nonchalant as he was if he had seen her in that state, which shed light on Emad’s lack of sympathy for his wife.
Rana dealt with PTSD when she returned home. Of course, it’s tough not feeling safe in your own home because that was where she was attacked. She felt uncomfortable using the washroom alone. And Emad did not help. He just thought it was a bother that he had to accommodate for her so much. I wonder if Rana felt any encouragement from Sadra, the son of another actress at the play. Rana had convinced Sadra’s mother to let him come to her place, probably because he was bored having to hide backstage all the time, and Rana didn’t like being at home alone. At one point, Sadra was a little wary of going to the washroom alone because it was dark. But he said that he wanted to go alone, and so Rana let him go alone. (Side note, Sadra was really cute!)
Over time, Rana slowly recovered. She confronted the things in her life that gave her trauma, like driving the pickup truck of her assailant, being more independent, and returning to the stage.
Rana was uncomfortable with Emad’s need for vengeance. She told him that if he was going to expose the father-in-law to his family, they would be over. She was going to let him go too. It almost seemed a bit over the top for Rana to be so protective of the man. But it highlighted the differences between Emad and Rana. Regardless of what the father-in-law had done to Rana, she was uncomfortable with a person getting hurt because of them. Since Rana had decided that they weren’t going to go to the police, she did let the situation go and healed on her own, and it was Emad who couldn’t let it go. I think Rana was upset with Emad for his extreme actions and that remained unresolved at the end of the movie, but just as we did, Rana discovered this other side to her husband.
Babak
Babak was a friend of Emad and Rana. He also acted in the play, and he helped Emad and Rana find their current apartment. It was Babak’s property, and he was renting it out to the previous tenant. He was frustrated that she hadn’t come back to get her things, locking them in the room and taking the key.
After the incident, Emad was furious that Babak hadn’t told them what kind of person the previous tenant was. At that point, he had learned that the previous tenant was a prostitute and he had devised that the assailant had intended to visit her. He was angry that Babak had introduced them to a bad location. Babak’s defense was that it was business. He needed a tenant.
When Emad was investigating the assailant, he listened to the old messages on the phone, and discovered one from Babak, showing that he had also been a client of the prostitute. Emad was angry and added some insulting lines to the play, which Babak took offense to.
Father-in-law
The father-in-law was a client of the prostitute. It seemed they had a long-running relationship, as he had bought a bike for her child. She was angry with him and was ignoring his calls and texts and that was why he decided to visit the apartment.
The son-in-law Majid was the worker from the bakery who drove the pickup. Emad was insistent on Majid doing some deliveries for him on his weekend. Majid didn’t want to do it because he didn’t want extra work, but he gave in. However, he was busy on the day that Emad had set, so he’d sent his father-in-law. Emad sat the father-in-law down to ask him about his son-in-law and the pickup truck. When Emad learned that the father-in-law did significant business with the pickup truck, he interrogated the father-in-law further. The father-in-law didn’t have his son-in-law’s number because he had a new phone, because he had left the old one at Emad and Rana’s apartment. He had also injured his foot, and the assailant had left bloody footprints when fleeing Emad and Rana’s apartment.
The father-in-law didn’t show as much remorse as fear. He was afraid for his own life. And while I felt a little bad, I also felt a little angry that he was trying to remove himself from the situation which was Rana’s injury. The father-in-law was very afraid that Emad was going to humiliate him in front of his family, and Emad was insistent on carrying out.
Things changed when the father-in-law fainted, and his family got all worried. I think Emad didn’t want to hurt the family too much more. But Emad still had his personal account to settle, where he returned his things and then slapped him. Majid was very confused about the things that Emad returned, and the father-in-law did not explain.
I think the father-in-law collapsed because of guilt and shame. Guilt and shame at being found out, that someone knew him as a man who had a relationship with a prostitute and was not the family man people thought he was. Guilt and shame at his entire family fussing over him when he had fainted because of his own stress at being found out. I think he knew that all of this came about because of his own actions.
The father-in-law’s fate was unknown. He went to the hospital, but that’s all we know.
Themes
Men and women
There were inherent differences between men and women in the society that was presented to us. Other than the fact that women had to wear hijabs, we saw that women were also in general more wary of men, like the woman in the taxi. Emad appeared understanding of this.
There was also an imbalance between men and women as shown in the theme of prostitution. The actress who played the prostitute in the play felt that another actor was laughing at her for playing a prostitute. He was laughing at the irony of her lines (where her character was supposed to be partially clothed, but in reality she was covered up). But I understand that any mockery of her would have seemed a mockery of her station. She was also a single mom who did not get along with her ex-husband, so she was living a tough life. Then of course, there was the situation with the prostitute who used to live in Emad and Rana’s apartment. She had lots of visitors, including Babak, her landlord, and married men who lied to their families like the father-in-law. Sleazeballs like those men would come to prostitutes and when they were unavailable, that was considered a bother. When reading up on the story in Death of a Salesman, Willy was sleeping with a prostitute, and even after he was found out by his children, he continued to act high and mighty around them, like infidelity was something that could be swept under the rug.
I also wondered if the differences between Emad and Rana were supposed to represent differences between men and women, or if it was a personality difference. I can’t help but think of Emad’s need for vengeance as a masculine sort, that he had to seek revenge for his wife being hurt, as opposed to doing things to help her directly, like being more sympathetic to her struggling with PTSD. He was the one who wanted to hurt the father-in-law, when Rana had already put it behind them like they’d agreed.
The father-in-law’s wife in particular was in an uncomfortable situation. She said that her husband was her entire life, and that’s not surprising, particularly in a more conservative/traditional family where wives and mothers are full-time homemakers. Clearly she relied on him a lot, both financially and as someone she built her life around. And meanwhile he was fooling around on the outside.
Home
Emad and Rana struggled to find a home that they liked. Their old one had collapsed due to the construction happening next door. Their current one was not ideal, it was a bit rundown. When Rana turned on the light in the washroom, the lightbulb had exploded, and there was also leaking. But they took it because it was the only thing they could get in a short period of time. The third apartment they took was a bit better on the outside, but inside we saw that the windows were broken. I don’t know enough about Iran, but I wonder if there was something to be said about the state of housing in the urban areas.
Another theme relating to the home was the fact that their current apartment had become a place of fright for Rana. She struggled to be at home because she could only be reminded of the attack. She couldn’t even use the apartment alone. The only time the apartment felt nicer was when she’d brought Sadra, back. Sadra approached the home with an entirely new perspective. He was asking about all of the items left behind by the old tenant, he was colouring in the pictures left by the old tenant’s child. And the washroom was scary, but he decided he would be brave enough to use it on his own.
I don’t know that the new apartment will be any better for Emad and Rana, because they’re going to be thinking about the ordeal with the father-in-law when they move in. Yikes.
Truth
Death of a Salesman was censored in order to be performed in Iran. I’m not sure what lines exactly were censored, but it was discussed with Emad. We had other instances of censorship, like the women having to be modestly dressed and hiding their hair, even if the script said that they were partially clothed or had their hair out. At the same time, I think it was something that the audience members would have understood. I think it’s something that people adapt to in circumstances of censorship. They learn to read the tropes and understand the actual meaning behind, both in more direct cases like here, and in cases where tropes or euphemisms are used to express the truth.
At one point, Emad had some books returned to him by the librarian, because the librarian said that they were not appropriate for the students. I didn’t understand the full gist of that situation. I wondered if it was books that Emad was donating to the library. The students found it funny, probably thinking they were pornographic materials.
I think this theme of censorship was a little relevant to the vengeance story line, in which Emad wanted to tell the truth to the father-in-law’s family. But Rana forbade him from doing so. Emad ended up telling a watered-down, censored version. He didn’t say it explicitly to the family, but he returned the things he’d lost, and implied that there was some other account between them. The family was distracted by the father-in-law’s collapse, but Majid, showing confusion at the items in the plastic bag, might come to that realization later.
Story within a story
I mentioned this before with the visual story being told through mirrors and windows that perhaps it was an attempt to remind us that we were viewing a story within a story, all tinted by someone’s point of view.
In terms of the references within this movie, there were a few. The concept of a prostitute with a child was mirrored with the single mom who brought her child along to shows, while the previous tenant at Emad and Rana’s apartment also had a child. Emad had discussed going elsewhere for the night when Rana was feeling uncomfortable in their own house. Rana had brought up how odd it would be to just show up and ask to shower, when that was exactly what Willy had done in the play to convince his son that the prostitute was just borrowing the shower.
While Willy’s story line is not the same as Emad’s or the father-in-law’s, I think the idea is that all of them slowly declined in social standing over the course of their stories. Willy presented himself as an upstanding businessman, but as the story went on, he was shown to be less than perfect, and it affected his social standing. Rana, seeing Emad as an unsympathetic and prideful man who would go to extremes, now probably did not love him as she used to. The father-in-law’s family did not find out anything about him, so they continued to love him and cherish him.
Trauma
Rana was clearly dealing with some heavy PTSD, and Emad was completely unsympathetic, it was a little appalling. He was not affectionate with her to begin with, but that was not the problem. He refused to change anything about his lifestyle to accommodate his wife. He thought it was silly that she wanted to come with him to school just so she could be away from the house. He refused to find a substitute teacher to be with her. He didn’t see why she wanted to clean the washroom. He literally told her that she had to get it together. For what reason? So that he could get back to normal, I suppose. Emad tracked down the father-in-law in the name of justice for his wife, but what did he do for her? Not much.
Overall
Good drama film. It was simple, not with a lot of major characters, but I found that the characters were well-explored.