DARING, DIFFICULT AND PROVOCATIVE
Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi takes a solemn, subtle look at horrific deed
Rape culture is a persistent social issue throughout the world, often complicated by a stigma against victims — a primary reason so many survivors stay quiet. In Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s latest film, The Salesman, the subject is never raised and the attack is barely described by the victim, Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), to her husband Emad (Shahab Hosseini).
And for that, we as viewers are pushed to assume the worst.
Rana and Emad are actors in a local production of Death of a Salesman, with some fictional details of Arthur Miller’s play eerily reminiscent of their own life. They’ve moved into a new apartment that unknown to them was vacated by a prostitute. One night, Ran inadvertently buzzes in a client of the prostitute, assuming it’s Emad. She’s attacked in her shower, but we never see the assault, only the aftermath as she’s being treated for head injuries, with the rescuing neighbours describing to Emad what they heard. But the show must go on. Rana and Emad attempt to get back to their lives — with limited success. She doesn’t want to be left alone or use the bathroom. She’s dealing with a trauma that clearly extends beyond typical physical assault, but she can’t talk about it. Instead, she tries to communicate the seriousness of what happened through her actions. Emad doesn’t understand — or perhaps, ashamed, doesn’t want to.
He unconsciously blames their relationship’s breakdown on the perpetrator instead of his own inability to handle the attack. While Rana stoically tries to move on, Emad impulsively acts on his feelings with absolutely no regard for how it may affect Rana, who actually experienced the traumatizing assault.
Like Farhadi’s previous films, The Salesman consistently tries to show us the subtle difficulties Iranian women face in their daily lives. The Islamic influence on Iranian culture has resulted in an honour/shame system that frequently blames rape victims — thereby ensuring survivors stay quiet even with their loved ones.
The Salesman, then, is obliged to portray the silenced role honour continues to play in Iranian society, even in contemporary middle-class life. In the process, Farhadi criticizes his culture’s patriarchal structure. Slowly but surely, though, it becomes a rape-revenge movie, as Emad obsessively tries to track down the rapist.
To maintain the mystery of what happened, the audience can’t see too much of Rana, but Farhadi’s insistence on providing us more of Emad’s perspective may have unintended consequences. At first, we sympathize with Emad, but as his obsession grows, we begin to criticize his focus on finding the rapist at the cost of his relationship.
What Farhadi is really trying to do with The Salesman is turn an old commercial style of Iranian movie on its head: the jaheli film, a hyper-masculine genre in which the good guys avenge abuses against women, children and the poor, to save their honour.
Rape is the particular horrific misdeed in the best and mostpopular examples of the genre and its revenge fantasy certainly solidified the self-righteous feelings of male viewers back in the day. The Salesman uses a mild-mannered actor/teacher instead of the typical “tough guy” to illuminate how such vengeful feelings are still present no matter how educated or civilized a man may be. Unlike the escapism offered in jaheli films, Farhadi wants us to know just how unsatisfactory and damaging such honour-obsessed displays of machismo really are.