The Salesman

The Salesman Story: Rana is assaulted in her new home, and while the attack exhausts her physically and emotionally, it is her husband Emad who spends sleepless nights toiling away in search of her faceless abuser.

The Salesman Review: In 1978, the Vinod Mehra - Rekha movie, Ghar, was said to be ahead of its time for depicting rape and its consequence on marriage. There too, two people move into a new apartment for a new start but their lives are brought to a grinding halt when the wife is gang-raped and the husband is left scrambling for answers.

The Salesman briefly reminds you of Ghar, but quickly moves into unexplored territories. Here, the attack takes place within the house. Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) is waiting for her husband to return home and casually unlocks the door for him before going into the loo to wash up. An unseen intruder breaks into the house and molests Rana. Her husband Emad (Shahab Hosseini) hears about the incident, and it opens the doors to a patriarchal sense of rage in him that he seemed to have locked away.

The movie delivers on all the expectations one has come to attach with Asghar Farhadi's work. Like his previous breakout, A Separation, this is also a highly volatile story contained within the four walls of a house. No option for the characters but to bounce off the walls!

The nervous energy of every character is palpable and makes you restless. The weight of the story shifts from the actual assault to its impact on the male ego seamlessly and you find yourself pondering a different social issue altogether. In the film, Emad plays Willy Loman (the titular character) in a local production of Death of a Salesman and soon finds himself in Loman’s shoes, approaching insanity in pursuit of a mirage.

Taraneh Alidoosti’s vulnerability pierces your heart and you feel hurt on her behalf. Shahab Hosseini has been given a difficult role and walks the tightrope between being chauvinistic and compassionate.

This Iranian drama is chock-full of intrigue and has a lot of parallels with Indian sensibilities. There are a lot of reasons to watch it, least of all the fact that it is this year’s Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film.