Review of The Salesman (2016) by Shakib_Sheikhi — 26 Feb 2017

Although Farhadi has some noteworthy Cinematic ideas throughout the movie, it is limited to those ideas and does not constitute a movie as a whole.

Using a stage for playing Miller’s “death of a salesman” is one of those notable ideas which provide us a possibility to watch how the lives of people is in some degree just a show and the distinction between the show and the real life is of critical matters of modern life. The other notable idea is a well-illustrated three-dimensional interior space of buildings in both opening and ending sequence of the movie which has a lot to say about how each character is related to the other and to the social life as some sort of a “big other”.

The script of the movie is highly engineered which makes somehow annoying and unbelievable; the set of items left behind by the intruder is just one of them. This all could be neglected if we could pursue the movie but the #1 thing on the “cons” column of this movie is lack of characterization of the woman (Ra’na) which lives us with our pre-existing judgments about the human emotions and society to help us sympathizing with her, or have any meaningful relation with her situation what so ever; and this makes “the salesman” a mediocre film.