A Marriage Is Put to the Test After Wife’s Rape in Compelling Iranian Drama ‘The Salesman’

Sandra Miska

The Iranian drama “The Salesman” follows a young couple as they navigate a crisis. Schoolteacher Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and his wife Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) find themselves without a home after they are evacuated from their crumbling apartment building, which turns out to be only the beginning of their troubles. With the help of their landlord friend Babak (Karimi), another actor in their theater troupe, they find a new place; the only downside is that the former tenant, a mysterious woman whom Babak infers is a prostitute, has left most of her belongings. But her physical baggage isn’t the worst of it.

The couple’s nightmare begins one evening after Rana comes home before Emad and goes to take a shower.  The buzzer goes off, and she opens the door before heading into the bathroom, believing the person waiting for entrance is her husband. What happens next is not shown, which adds to the terror when Emad comes home to find a trail of blood leading on the stairs to the empty apartment. Fortunately, some neighbors came to Rana’s rescue and took her to the hospital, where her husband finds her being stitched up. For multiple reasons, the couple choses not to go to the police, and Emad takes it upon himself to play detective and track down the assailant. Helping him are the cell phone and pickup truck the man left behind in his hasty exit.

Not surprisingly, Rana becomes fearful following the assault, and while Emad is initially patient with her, his priorities shift as he becomes more and more obsessed with finding the assailant. All of his digging leads to a tense, complex conclusion as Emad makes a surprising discovery and his actions lead to his having to choose between his marriage and his pride.

The title “The Salesman” comes from the adaptation of Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” that Emad and Rana’s theater troupe is producing, with the couple in the lead roles. This play-within-the-film illustrates cultural differences between Iran and Miller’s USA. Even though artists have more freedoms than they did in the years following the revolution, Iran is still a conservative country, which is made evident when the troupe is forced to censor certain lines.

Also, an actress becomes frustrated after her male co-star laughs because she is playing a promiscuous woman (not unlike the previous tenant in the apartment) while being fully clothed. By including the play, it was likely director Asghar Farhadi’s intention to draw parallels between Emad and Miller’s Willy Loman.

Emad is an intriguing character, because while in many ways he is a modern man, he still sticks to an old-fashion moral code at times. For example, he almost blames the unseen former female tenant for Rana’s attack almost as much as the perpetrator himself. He also expresses disgust to Babak over the fact that the lady assumedly brought various male companions into the bedroom that he and his wife now occupy. However, he isn’t above recognizing the faults of men. Religion doesn’t play as much of a role in “The Salesman” as it did in Farhadi’s previous film “A Separation,” but personal morality certainly does in this compelling film that is more about human nature than crime.

“The Salesman” opens Jan. 27 in select theaters.