An Iranian couple faces a tough test

In The Salesman, director Asghar Farhadi's latest, nothing is as simple as its characters wish.

Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman is an Oscar nominee for this year's best foreign-language film. If you've been following the news (and who hasn't?), you already know that Farhadi, an Iranian, would be prohibited from attending this year's ceremony if the seven-country immigration ban instituted by the Trump administration goes into effect. The ban currently is moving through the courts, but Farhadi already has said that he won't attend.

Perhaps court action will allow Farhadi and actress Taraneh Alidoosti, who also said she wouldn't be walking any red carpets, to attend Hollywood's annual ceremony.

Say this, though. When one of the world's best filmmakers can't attend Hollywood's biggest ceremony, something has gone seriously wrong.

Those familiar with Farhadi's work (Fireworks Wednesday, About Elly, The Past and the Oscar-winning A Separation), already know that Farhadi is a deeply humanistic director who deals with the personal lives of his protagonists as influenced and sometimes constrained by Iranian cultural imperatives.

Although set mostly in Iran, the characters in Farhadi's films never seem totally unfamiliar.

As if to underscore that point, The Salesman has an American play at its core. An Iranian actor couple (Alidoosti's Rana and Shahab Hosseini's Emad) are staging a version of the Arthur Miller classic, Death of a Salesman. The issues in Miller's play and the issues faced by the characters are meant to mingle in illustrative ways.

The movie begins when the apartment building where Rana and Emad live begins to collapse as a result of nearby construction. The couple must find new digs. Both are in the process of rehearsing Death of a Salesman when one of their colleagues tells them that he knows of a vacancy where they can take up temporary residence.

The former tenant of this new apartment may have been a prostitute, but Rana and Emad know nothing about the previous occupant, except that she's supposed to turn up at any moment to pick up the belongings she has left behind.

A pivotal plot point occurs when a stranger shows up at the apartment. Rana, who's taking a shower, forgets to lock the door, and is assaulted by this stranger. She winds up in the hospital.

This incident becomes the motor that drives the rest of the story. Rana falls into a depression, and Emad feels that his manhood has been challenged. He becomes obsessed with avenging what he regards as an affront to his honor.

Always a nuanced director, Farhadi brings the drama to an intense ethical confrontation that plays out in thought-provoking ways.

Farhadi is too good a director to draw clear-cut moral lines: good, bad, etc. The beautiful Rana is easily damaged. The robust Emad has strong creative impulses, so we're a little surprised to learn that culturally reinforced machismo so dominates his attention. Even the perpetrator of the attack on Rana -- vaguely defined to begin with -- evokes some pathos.

I don't think the movie reaches the level of complexity Farhadi achieved in A Separation, and the connection between Miller's play and the couple's reality makes The Salesman feel less organic that most of Farhadi's previous work. But that shouldn't stop you from seeing a movie about characters who must deal with one another, with their social environment, and, perhaps most importantly, with their flawed but recognizable humanity.

As is the case with many fine movies, you carry these characters forward after the movie's conclusion, knowing that they have been transformed in ways that will echo profoundly in the rest of their lives.

And just to put a cap on this review, one more observation. I would hate to see a time when a director such as Farhadi can't or won't visit American film festivals or accept an American award in person. The shame would be totally on us.

Secrets of the Iranian middle class

About Elly is another fine film from Asghar Farhadi, director of The Separation.

If you don't know the work of Asghar Farhadi, you should.

A major figure in Iranian cinema, Farhadi won an Academy Awarding for A Separation, a movie he followed with The Past, a complex family and cultural drama set in France.

Gifted and smart, Farhadi is one of the few directors working today who makes believable movies about adults. He's also particularly skilled at conjoining personal and social issues in ways that allow us to look deeply into both the souls of his characters and the social pressures they face.

About Elly previewed at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009, but only now is finding its way to the U.S. It's Farhadi's fifth movie, and we're lucky that the distribution problems that kept it from us have been resolved.

The story couldn't be simpler: A group of friends travel from Tehran to spend a weekend at the seaside. Among other things, they seem eager to find a match for one of their number, a young man (a fine Shahab Hosseini) who recently returned from Germany and is recovering from a bitter divorce.

The target for the young man: the beautiful but shy Elly (Teraneh Alidoostie), the teacher of one of the couple's kids.

When the group arrives at the resort, they learn there's a problem with the house they were supposed to occupy; they solve their problem by taking a rundown, abandoned beach house that they'll have to clean during their three-day stay.

The house has no heat, and evenings by the shore can be chilly, but the three couples talk themselves into persevering.

At first, the ebullience and good humor of Farhadi's middle-class characters made me wonder whether I was in for an Iranian Big Chill. The mood is one of cordiality and fun. The kids are cute. In the evening, everyone gathers for charades. We relax into the movie, even though suggestions of tension arise.

Of course, the story can't remain in this faux middle-class Eden forever. The near-drowning death of one of the kids sets up the movie's central conceit: Elly disappears from the beach. Has she drowned in an effort to save the boy? Has she returned home? Why was she insisting on leaving before the weekend was done?

As the group tries to unravel what happened, trouble beneath the happy surface emerges. Not only do we understand all of the characters better as the movie progresses, but we begin to see that they may not be quite as liberated as they thought.

All the performances are good, but the work of Golshifteh Farahani qualifies as exceptional: She plays Sepideh, the woman who's most tormented by the unfolding events.

Toward the end, Farhadi's screenplay may have a bit too much on its plate, but About Elly stands as another fine achievement from someone who's emerging as one of the world's most important directors.

'A Separation' is one of the year's best

This Oscar-nominated film takes a revealing look at life in Iran.

When western audiences first began to discover Iranian film, viewers were caught by the beauty and simplicity of stories that often focused on children, perhaps to avoid the stultifying intrusions of censors. Iranian film has evolved since then, and nothing stands as a better emblem of its potential maturity than A Separation, a powerful and emotionally involving drama about a husband and wife who separate and are then caught up in a legal battle involving the woman who takes care of the husband's aging father.

Though steeped in all manner of personal and social conflict, A Separation is one of those rare movies that respects every character's point of view, offering a complex and realistic portrait of characters operating under intense pressure: the urgent need to find custodial care for a demented father, the desire to open new opportunities for a daughter, the pain of a troubled marriage, the resentment bred by those who think society has pushed them toward the bottom and the sense of entitlement felt by a middle class that's not beyond condescension toward those assigned to lower status.

It's ironic, I suppose, thatA Separation -- nominated for Oscars as best foreign-language film and in the best original screenplay category -- arrives at a time when it's impossible to pick up a newspaper without reading about tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Those of us who've loved and championed Iranian film find it deeply disturbing that some of the country's finest filmmakers -- Jafar Panahi, for example -- are in jail. Others -- Abbas Kiarostami -- are working outside the country. It may not bring great joy to the likes of Ahmadinejad, but a movie such as A Separation has the kind of refreshing candor and authentic humanity that's at the core of exceptional drama.*

Director Asghar Farhadi begins the story with an Iranian couple mired in conflict. As A Separation unfolds, we start to suspect that this couple embodies many of the difficulties of life in Iran on both personal and political levels, which inevitably spill over into the realm of religion. These conflicts feel both familiar and strange, built on recognizable human frustrations, yet pushed to extremes in a society in which conflict resolution can be cumbersome.

The movie's crumbling marriage serves as a backdrop for everything else that transpires. Simin (Leila Hastami), a doctor, wants to find new opportunities abroad, presumably because of the way women are restricted in Iran. Simin wants to take her 11-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) with her. Her banker husband (Peyman Maadi) is willing to grant the divorce, but wants his daughter to remain in Iran.

Simin won't leave the country without Termeh, but she does leave her husband. She moves out of the couple's apartment and takes up residence with her parents.

Meanwhile, Maadi's Nader feels trapped by a sense of love and duty. He refuses to abandon his aging father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi) who suffers from dementia and needs 24-hour care. Semin's departure leaves Nader, who works as a banker, in desperate need of someone to watch his father.

Eventually, Nader hires Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to care for his father. It doesn't take long for another conflict to emerge, this one between Nader and Razieh. This clash is bolstered by the staunch religious convictions of Razieh's resentful, unemployed husband (Shahab Hosseini). Razieh says she's uncomfortable with duties that include changing the clothes of Nader's incontinent father, something she views as improper and perhaps a violation of Islamic law.

I won't burden you with more plot description, but know that Farhadi weaves a tangled web of cross-purposes in which the movie's characters struggle to advance their various points of view. And don't think that Nader carries the torch for reason in the face of Islamic fundamentalism. He's a flawed man whose behavior contributes to his problems.

Farhadi also takes the characters through Tehran's legal bureaucracy as the parties seek redress. We begin to feel that life in Iran is beset by complications that prevent the movie's adults from attaining any sense of sustained equilibrium.

Farhadi provides enough information for us to understand each characters, although it's never easy to say who's right or wrong. Interestingly, the movie opens with both Simin and Nader pleading their case to an unseen judge, who's supposed to rule on their divorce. Let's just say, you wouldn't want to be that judge.

Given its complex scenario, it should come as no surprise that A Separation generates plenty of tension about the fates of its characters. Farhadi takes us into a highly stressed society that's full of irreconcilable conflict. That's a lot of thematic territory for what could have devolved into a domestic soap opera, but A Separation is much too perceptive for that. It's an insightful and honestly observed piece of work.

*In an interview, Farhadi told TimeOut London that censorship in Iran is a bit like British weather, "one day it’s sunny, the next day it’s raining. You just have to hope you walk out into the sunshine." The censors allowed Farhadi to film the script he submitted, a process no Iranian filmmaker can avoid unless he or she wants to work underground. I hope the sun of sanity shines on more of them.