The Salesman

Asghar Farhadi won his second Academy Award for The Salesman, and this time he didn't attend the ceremony in protest of the Trump administration's travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries. His absence was a political statement; the film itself is more complex.

Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) are a theater couple rehearsing Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman when Rana is attacked in their new apartment by an intruder. The parallel between the play — Willy Loman's humiliation, the failure of dignity — and the couple's private crisis is never overstated but always present. Emad becomes obsessed with finding the attacker. His quest for justice curdles into a need for revenge that damages both of them.

Farhadi's genius is in making the attacker not a monster but a broken, elderly man. When Emad finally confronts him, the revenge feels hollow. The real question the film asks is not "who is guilty?" but "what does justice look like when everyone involved is someone's father, someone's husband, someone's broken human?"