The Salesman (Forushande) Film Analysis

The Salesman (Forushande) Film Analysis

The Salesman tells the story of an intellectual, middle-class couple in Iran who experience a traumatic event. In the screenplay for this film, Asghar Farhadi establishes deep stylistic and thematic connections with Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman. The story of the couple, who are staging Miller’s play, runs parallel to the events of the aforementioned work.

With The Salesman, Farhadi won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards and the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival. Shahab Hosseini won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his outstanding performance in the film.

Content Features

Story

Rana and Emad are a married couple staging Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Due to construction work next to their building, their apartment building is shaken and damaged. For this reason, they have to leave their home and move into a new apartment found by their friend from the theater, Babak. The previous tenant of this new apartment was a prostitute. One day, while Rana is alone at home, she is assaulted by one of the former tenant’s clients. This event creates a silent trauma in Rana, while igniting a desire for revenge in Emad. Driven by this desire, Emad finds the attacker and inflicts severe psychological damage on him. This damage causes the attacker to have a heart attack. After witnessing all this, the lives of Rana and Emad are no longer the same.

Although the question of the attacker’s identity is answered in the film’s story, the attacker’s health status at the end is unknown, which is why we can say the story has an open ending. Additionally, due to the significant transformations he undergoes, we see Emad as the central character of the story. Looking at the narrative style, we can say that the story progresses linearly.

Plot

Rana and Emad are forced to move into a new apartment recommended by their theater friend Babak after their old home is damaged. The former tenant of this new apartment was a prostitute who left her belongings in one of the rooms. Rana and Emad move these belongings to the building’s terrace. The next day, while Rana is in the bathroom, she is assaulted by a stranger and taken to the hospital by her neighbors. After Rana is discharged, they return home. Emad finds the attacker’s van and parks it in the building’s garage. Traumatized by the event, Rana is taken out of the play they are working on. Emad insults and argues with Babak on stage for not providing information about the former tenant. Afterward, Emad begins his search for the attacker. He investigates the van’s license plate and finds its owner, a young man named Majid. Emad lures Majid to their old apartment under the pretense of a job. However, Majid’s elderly father-in-law shows up for the job instead. By questioning the Old Man, Emad learns that he is the attacker. Emad locks the Old Man in a room and goes to the theater to perform their play. After the play, Emad returns home with Rana. The Old Man has a heart attack. Emad gives him the medicine he found in the man’s van, and the man recovers. Shortly after, the Old Man’s family arrives. Emad threatens the Old Man, calls him into the room, and slaps him. Under the impact of this event, the man faints again and starts having another heart attack while going down the stairs. An ambulance arrives. It is unclear whether the man dies at this moment. The film ends with a shot of Rana and Emad back in the theater dressing room, their faces blank as they get their makeup done before the show.

The film’s plot is built on a cause-and-effect relationship. Each event follows the other. The only gap in the plot is the scene of Rana’s assault. Asghar Farhadi omits this scene. We learn the details of the event through dialogues.

Theme

The Salesman contains multiple themes. The first is a critique of Modernism. “Modernization in traditional Iranian society has been rapid and uncontrolled. For this reason, social problems have emerged.” Emad’s following words are very important in relation to this theme:

“Emad: Look what they’ve done to the city… I wish we could just tear it all down and rebuild it.” [1]

What Emad means by tearing down is not just the buildings, but the social atmosphere created by capitalism and political authority. It is impossible for healthy individuals to grow in this atmosphere. In this context, the answer Emad gives to a student’s question about Dariush Mehrjui’s film Gaav is very significant:

“Student: Sir, how can a person turn into a cow? Emad: Slowly…”

Emad’s answer is highly ironic because Emad himself is slowly undergoing this transformation in the film. While he embraces modern values at the beginning of the film, he later adopts a traditional and patriarchal perspective as a result of the events that befall him. This is an example of an individual being crushed under social pressure.

A theme can also be derived from the fact that Emad and Rana do not go to the police. This theme can be expressed as: “In societies where the justice system does not function properly, people try to enact their own justice.” Indeed, the character Emad chooses to enact his own justice and drives the Old Man to his death.

Another theme in the film is related to the “collapse of the American dream” theme in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman. The equivalent of this theme in the film can be expressed as the “collapse of the Iranian dream.” In the film, a group of people tries to do theater. However, censorship and other social conditions prevent this.

Characters

Most of the central characters in the film are middle-class intellectuals.

The Old Man and his family, who appear towards the end of the film, belong to the lower class.

The common feature of these characters from two different classes is that they live under the same poor social conditions. Therefore, all characters can be seen as victims crushed under social conditions.

Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti): A middle-class married woman who works as an actress. She is brave enough to do theater in Iran despite social pressure and censorship. She is respectful of others’ living spaces. Despite the traumatic event she experiences, she does not seek revenge.

Emad (Shahab Hosseini): A middle-class man who works as a teacher and an actor. At the beginning of the film, his sensitivity towards his neighbors, students, and any passerby is highlighted. Additionally, he is shown to have a modern worldview. Emad can also be seen as the abstract equivalent of Willy Loman from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. This is because Emad’s death in this film is a spiritual one. After his wife Rana is assaulted, Emad displays a traditional and patriarchal perspective. He wants revenge instead of justice. The sensitive man from the beginning of the film is gone, and he is spiritually dead.

The Old Man (Farid Sajjadi Hosseini): A lower-class married man. He is a character who cheats on his wife, is with prostitutes for money, and is devoid of virtue to the point of assaulting a woman when he finds her defenseless. However, he is also a man who is deeply loved by his family and works to support them despite his old age. Therefore, he is a character who harbors two separate worlds within him. This character can also be seen as the concrete equivalent of Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman. Because at the end of the film, he faces a concrete death, just like Willy Loman.

Conflict

The main conflict emerges in the very first scene of the film. Rana and Emad are forced to leave their building due to construction work being done without notifying the residents. In this scene, the vehicle excavating the building’s foundation is like a representation of the capitalist modern world.

Another conflict in the film is intensely processed through the characters of Emad and Rana. This conflict is the individual’s conflict with society.

After the incident Rana experiences, the neighbors pressure Emad to take revenge. Rana, on the other hand, has left the Old Man to divine justice because she has no faith in the human justice system.

Although not very prominent, we can say there is a class conflict in the character design of the film.

We also see that these people from different classes clash in terms of their outlook on life.

Style Features

Cinematography

Asghar Farhadi’s choice to position the camera towards the door of Emad and Rana’s bedroom in a dark environment in the first scene is a very important one.

This choice positions the viewer with a voyeuristic gaze. For the rest of the film, the viewer is like a stranger who has entered the private life of a couple.

A handheld camera is used in many parts of the film, especially in the opening scene, to create a realistic atmosphere. In some scenes, we see that the camera is positioned statically to increase the tension or reflect the characters’ state of mind. The tension created by the static camera in the scene where Rana leaves the door open is an example of this.

Medium shots and medium-long shots are used throughout the film. The shots are mostly at eye level. In the scene where Emad’s neighbor incites him and again when Emad confronts the Old Man, low-angle and high-angle shots are used. This way, the neighbor’s dominance over Emad and, in the other scene, Emad’s dominance over the Old Man are shown.

A realistic approach is also seen in the lighting. Daylight is used in daytime scenes, while streetlights and indoor lamps are used in night scenes.

The film’s color palette is predominantly gray, white, and pale red. The lights used in the theater have special lighting as it is a play within the film.

Mise-en-scène

In The Salesman, natural locations such as a house, streets, a hospital, a school, and a theater are used. The design of these locations supports the film’s dramatic structure. In particular, the shaking of the old building where Rana and Emad live and the cracks appearing on its walls and windows are directly linked to the film’s main theme. The state of this building concretely reveals the reflection of modernization through urban transformation on Iranian society.

We can also see that the space provides clues about the relationship between the characters. The best example of this is hidden in the prominent crack on the wall of Emad and Rana’s bedroom.

This crack can be interpreted as a foreshadowing of the problems that will arise between the couple in the later parts of the film.

We also see that the props used in the film have an indirect relationship with the main theme.

“It is noteworthy that in the scene where Emad arrives home before the attacker and waits for him, there is a poster of the Swedish master director Ingmar Bergman’s film Shame (Skammen, 1968) in one of the rooms. The poster of the film, which deals with the disappearance of the future dreams of an apolitical couple who were once musicians and isolated themselves on an island, indifferent to the approaching war, their drift into nothingness, their fragmented relationship, and the shame that comes with moral collapse after the war, being placed in Rana and Emad’s crumbling house allows us to draw a connection between the two films and their characters.” [2]

A realistic approach is also preferred in the costume design of the characters. While Emad, Rana, and their friends wear more modern clothes, the Old Man and his family are seen in more traditional attire. These costumes reveal the general structure of Iranian society and the class distinctions between the characters. The costumes used in the play within the film are also designed according to the social structure of Iran. The fact that the character Sanam, who plays a naked prostitute in the play, wears red clothes to represent nudity is an example of this.

Non-diegetic music is predominantly used in the film’s music. Natural ambient sounds are mostly used. Diegetic music is only used in the opening and final scenes.

Professional and amateur actors are used in the film. The acting performances are natural. Even the child actors deliver realistic performances that support the dramatic structure and atmosphere. The actors in the film are also actors playing a play within the film. Therefore, they deliver a layered acting performance.

Editing

The fictional time of The Salesman progresses in a way that is consistent with the natural flow of life, in the present tense. Cuts are predominantly used in the film’s transitions. This way, the editing does not make itself felt, and the action is not interrupted.

In the editing, we see that editing techniques are used to express the relationship between real life in the film and the reality of the play being performed in the film. The most prominent example of this is seen in the cut from the scene where Emad turns off the circuit breaker in the old house to the scene of the theater play in the final scene.

The circuit breaker that Emad turns off in another location causes the lights in the theater play to go out through the cut. This reveals the relationship established between the film The Salesman and the play Death of a Salesman.

Some of the transitions used besides cuts are dissolves, fades, and fade-ins. We see that these effects are used in transitions from real life in the film to the theater play. For example, a dissolve is used in the transition from the backstage to the theater stage in the first performance of the play, a fade is used in the scene where Rana leaves the stage crying and goes backstage, and a fade-in is used in the transition from the time Emad leaves the old house to the time he is in the coffin on stage.

Narrative Structure

The prologue of The Salesman shows the sets of Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman.

Immediately after, we cut to Emad and Rana’s bedroom, where they are shown being forced to leave their building. The claim here is this: This film is in contact with the play Death of a Salesman in terms of style and content. However, the story of this film belongs to a married couple living in Iran.

As can be seen, a change occurs in the characters’ lives right at the beginning, and they are forced to take action and leave the house. This first action will trigger the events that Emad and Rana will experience later. This situation is supported by the crack that forms on the wall of Emad and Rana’s bedroom. Nothing will be the same again.

The next day, the main characters of the film are introduced. As he will undergo a major transformation towards the end of the film, the focus is predominantly on the character of Emad. Emad is a teacher at a school. He is a sensitive person who wants to be useful to his students. At the same time, he is an actor in a theater with his wife Rana. The person who finds a solution to Emad and Rana’s search for a new home is their friend from the theater, Babak. Through Babak, a new adventure begins for the main characters.

Emad and Rana move into their new home. At this point, the former tenant is introduced into the narrative as an element of mystery. This woman named Ahoo is a prostitute. She has left the house, but has not taken her belongings. These belongings are like the past of the former tenant. This past clings to Rana and Emad when one of Ahoo’s clients comes to the house. The client comes to the house and assaults Rana. Asghar Farhadi does not show the assault scene to the audience. Therefore, a mystery about the identity of the attacker arises in the rest of the film. The character Emad, who is pressured by his neighbors and transforms into a patriarchal man, will solve this mystery.

Emad follows the clues, reaches the attacker, and decides to punish the culprit in order to take revenge. Emad’s choice of personal revenge instead of justice is reminiscent of the actions of tragic heroes in tragedy. The punishment Emad wants to inflict on the attacker is not so much about violence as it is about shaming, which has a more devastating effect in Iranian society.

“The audience, who can initially identify with Emad’s desire for justice and revenge for the assault on his wife, begins to break this identification in this scene as Emad ignores the feelings and demands of Rana, the actual victim of the harassment, and turns the sexual assault into a case of saving his own male honor. On the other hand, the fact that the perpetrator is a sick and old man arouses feelings of compassion and pity in the audience, preventing the catharsis that the audience would experience by identifying with the good character and punishing the bad character in classical narrative cinema.” [3]

Emad gives up on shaming the Old Man in front of his family and calls him into the room and slaps him. This does not save the Old Man from shame and causes him to have a heart attack. The Old Man is then taken to the hospital by ambulance. It is not clear whether the Old Man dies. At this point, we can say that Asghar Farhadi does not bring the dramatic structure of the film to a definite conclusion, and therefore the film has an open-ended structure.

In the finale, we see Rana and Emad preparing for the play in the dressing room. They both look sadly at their reflections in the mirror. Their lives have turned into a tragedy, just like the play they are performing.

Table 4: The place of “The Salesman” in the narrative style table:

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Farhadi, A. (Director). (2016). The Salesman (Forushande) [Motion Picture].
2. Günhan, M. (2019). An Analysis of Asghar Farhadi’s Films based on the Iranian New Wave. Marmara University - Institute of Social Sciences R.T.S. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Istanbul. p.181
3. Günhan, M. (2019). An Analysis of Asghar Farhadi’s Films based on the Iranian New Wave. Marmara University - Institute of Social Sciences R.T.S. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Istanbul. p. 183