Wednesday, January 3, 2024

The Salesman (2016)

IMDb plot summary: While Ranaa and Emad, a married couple, are participating in a production of "Death of a Salesman," she is assaulted in their new home, which leaves him determined to find the perpetrator over his wife's traumatized objections.
Directed by Asghar Farhadi. Starring Taraneh Alidoosti, Shahab Hosseini, and Mina Sadati.

The Salesman is an Iranian film about a couple who are involved in a local production of Death of a Salesman, thus the title. But after the couple moves into a new home abruptly, the wife is attacked by an intruder, and the rest of the film follows her and her husband's attempts to deal with the aftermath. Like other films by the same director, this is a slow moving film that rests heavily on just watching characters interact in very human ways. The catalyst of this story, the actual attack, is never actually seen to my recollection, but we see the after effects of it so clearly that it feels just as vivid as anything in the rest of the film. I also love that we see the difference between the two ways that the husband and the wife respond to this, whether it's by seeking revenge or just trying to go on as normal, and watching the tension escalate is a lot more thrilling than I would have expected from the pace of this movie. It's well made, it's worth watching.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Salesman > The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
The Salesman < Dark Passage
The Salesman < Don’t Look Up
The Salesman > Is It Fall Yet?
The Salesman > Spider-Man 2
The Salesman > Event Horizon
The Salesman > Space Sweepers
The Salesman < Die Hard
The Salesman > A Scanner Darkly
The Salesman > The Romantics
The Salesman < The Night Before
Final spot: #1459 out of 3841, or 62%.

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