The Salesman

Movie Information

In Brief: When I reviewed Asghar Farhadi's Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winner The Salesman in March, a great deal of attention was being devoted to Farhadi's Oscars acceptance speech, in which he decried President Trump's so-called "Muslim ban." While I still support Farhadi's statements, I wish I had saved more print space for the movie itself rather than fixating on its political context. The Salesman is a dark, nuanced character study — in other words, Farhadi's strong suit. It boasts stellar performances from stars Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti, and deserved every award it took home. If you missed it when it played Asheville, you should take advantage of this chance to see a dynamic and moving piece of understated filmmaking from a master of world cinema.
Score:

Genre: Drama
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Starring: Shahab Hoseini, Taraneh Alidoosti, Baba Karimi, Farid Sajjadihosseini, Mina Sadaati, Maral Bani Adam, Mehdi Kooshki
Rated: PG-13

Classic World Cinema by Courtyard Gallery will present The Salesman on Friday, August 11, at 8 p.m. at Flood Gallery Fine Art Center, 2160 U.S. 70, Swannanoa.

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2 thoughts on “The Salesman

  1. Fran

    Hello Scott. Thanks for this review.
    I have a question about some of Ken’s writing. Is there any way to access his “Screening Rooms” any more from this website? Thanks so much for any help you can give me.

  2. Scott Douglas

    Great question, Fran. The short answer is “yes,” but there are some definite caveats. Most of the Screening Room columns are on the website, but not all of them will come up on a cursory search for “Cranky Hanke’s Screening Room” — and some of the earliest iterations of what would become the Screening Room are not titled as such. I often come across the old columns when I’m searching the site to see when we last screened titles I’m considering for the AFS schedule, so I know they’ll turn up if you search a specific title that was referenced a particular Screening Room. That said, I don’t know of a way to pull them all up in one place for easy browsing. You can find them by clicking Ken’s byline and sifting through the pages, but there are 245 of those available on the website, so it’s not the most user friendly process in the world. I’ll pass your request on to our web people and see if we can figure out what’s going on.

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