This Iranian domestic drama from the director of A Separation lays its symbolism on with a trowel – but it works
Asghar Farhadi is not a director who hides his symbolic subtext. The imagery in this engrossing drama, about a couple of actors whose marriage is tested when she is violently assaulted in their new home, is so overt, Farhadi might as well be sounding a klaxon. There’s the choice of the play within the film – a Persian translation of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman’s impotence and frustration permeate the film like cheap aftershave. And there’s the reason that Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) and Emad (Shahab Hosseini) have to move house in the first place – their original apartment building is collapsing. The cracks in their home life are literal as well as figurative.
With a writer-director less skilled than Farhadi, this occasional lack of subtlety might be a problem.
Asghar Farhadi is not a director who hides his symbolic subtext. The imagery in this engrossing drama, about a couple of actors whose marriage is tested when she is violently assaulted in their new home, is so overt, Farhadi might as well be sounding a klaxon. There’s the choice of the play within the film – a Persian translation of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman’s impotence and frustration permeate the film like cheap aftershave. And there’s the reason that Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) and Emad (Shahab Hosseini) have to move house in the first place – their original apartment building is collapsing. The cracks in their home life are literal as well as figurative.
With a writer-director less skilled than Farhadi, this occasional lack of subtlety might be a problem.
- 3/19/2017
- by Wendy Ide
- The Guardian - Film News
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