Delayed Reaction: The Salesman

The Pitch: Iranian Death of a Salesman but not really, but that's a fun misdirect, isn't it?

A man tries to track down the man who assaulted his wife while his wife copes with her PTSD over the experience.

This film won the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2017 (for 2016), which was seen as a political pick as much as a quality pick. I know most critics at the time seemed to think the race was between A Man Called Ove and Toni Erdmann, and mostly determined that The Salesman was a lesser effort from Asghar Farhadi, compared to his 2011 film A Separation. I haven't seen any of those other movies, so I can't really say how true any of those assessments are. I supposed seeing The Salesman is my first step to figuring this out.

It's a good movie. I kept expecting the story to explode into something bigger than it was trying to be. Instead of the previous tenant being a prostitute (or maybe just "loose"), I expected her to be connected to the city's criminal underbelly. Instead of the wife being assaulted, I expected rape or death. Instead of the husband stumbling onto her assaulter, I expected a bunch of false leads and maybe some deceit. I don't know how much of these expectation came from how the movie was first pitched to me and how much was director Asghar Farhadi skillfully maintaining tension without forcing more plot. Regardless, I liked how small and personal it was. The leads, Shahad Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti gave great performances.

I'm not crazy about the ending. That's when the stakes finally got too big, with the old man dying. The end all felt thematically on the nose and obvious. It's like  Farhadi got worn down trying to keep the movie small for 90 minutes then got tired and let go for the last 30 minutes. It wasn't awful. The end just didn't match what I'd liked until that point.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend