Worth: $18.00
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Cast:
Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Sahar Goldust, Fereshteh Sadre Orafaiy, Ehsan Goodarzi, Sarina Farhadi
Intro:
… will both grip and enlighten audiences.
People familiar with world cinema will know that Iran makes a very significant contribution. This ancient Persian culture, whose people today are partly in tension with the cold grip of a theocracy is also a modern and fast developing country. Perhaps partly because of the aforementioned tension, it has produced a clutch of world class directors. One of these is Asghar Farhadi. His brilliant 2011 film A Separation brought him to the attention of a wider audience when it won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. In this new film, he has produced yet another sophisticated and morally intricate drama that will both grip and enlighten audiences.
The plot/set up is quite simple but small changes in emphasis, or developments triggered by characters’ decisions, combine to make it a very tangled web by the end. We start with Rahim (Amir Jadidi) given a short release from his prison term (a punishment for not paying a debt). He wants to make these few days count, either by raising the money or persuading Bahram (Mohsen Tanabandeh), the man he is indebted to, to change his mind. When Rahim comes upon a stash of gold coins lost by a woman in the street, he thinks his fortunes have changed. However, ironically, it seems that every decision he makes only hems him in even more.
Themes of honour and indebtedness, and of compassion and masculine pride and shame are woven into this tale with great sophistication. Above all, what lifts Farhadi’s films is his compassion for his characters and his non-judgemental view of the entirely human mistakes they make.
Like the best novels and plays, his film always make you identify with each of the characters without ever dismissing any of them. Everyone here has their reasons and, though they don’t always act in the way they perhaps should, they are never wholly stupid or wrong. It is in the shades of grey that life’s moral dilemmas have to be lived out.
The film is also interesting for its consideration of how modern technological developments have been a fatal admixture to the old systems of exchange and debt. The use of mobile phone filming and social media, both as a means for good and for blackmail, is one case in point.
True to its premise, the film does not offer easy answers, but the journey is so satisfying that you feel somehow the wiser for having engaged with it.
