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Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The 2017 best foreign language Oscar went to this staggering indictment of physical slight & the enveloping revenge which consumes an Iranian couple. A theatrical adaptation of Death of a Salesman is being put on by an Iranian acting troupe when a married couple, involved in the affair, need to move to a new apartment. Once in their new place an incident occurs, due to confusion on the attacker's part sending the husband on a trail of disappointment, resentment & impotence to regain face & bring honor back to his family.

One of the most beautiful films of the year. It's a simple thing for Europeans. It's a common misunderstanding. But it is a great tragedy for Iran. Because a foreign man saw a woman naked. They are even embarrassed to tell the police.

The film presents a charismatic couple whose their lives that has been forever changed after moving into an apartment unit just recently vacated by a shady tenant. As the try to restrain the emotions that are left to simmer and grumble beneath the surface, they do their best to reclaim the normality in their lives. Mr Farhadi virtually took the same elements that had been engaging and successful in his 2011 child-custody drama, A Separation, but this time, he shuffled those elements a bit, used a way more darker color palette in detailing life in contemporary Iran and added a theatrical play in the equation. Having seen only two of his films so far, I can't assume that this is a recurring style in his body of work, infusing that element of mystery in a domestic drama setting where the audience gets to observe the protagonists collect clues and hints that they eventually then assemble like a pieces of jigsaw puzzle only to discover a grotesque image of some uncomfortable truths. And these are the spectacles I always enjoy witnessing. I would definitely look forward into checking out some of his previous works and anticipating his future ones because what these sorts of films do to me is the same thing that the actress' kid did in this film when Rana (the wife), out of boredom, borrowed and took him home with her, added some curious and insightful doodles into the graffiti and scribbles already present in the walls of my mind. My rating: A-plus

The Salesman" has a lot going for it, and I understand why the Academy voters felt good about honoring it with an Oscar. The drama is tense, and the morality is surely correct. Revenge is a blunter of other, more civilized emotions. I can't buy the whole package, however, because it doesn't fulfill its promise of matching the trauma within a contemporary urban marriage to the framing medium of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman." I would have been content to follow the Iranian couple's drama alone, without the "clever" adjunct of the American classic, but since writer-director Farhadi draws such attention to Miller's play, I found myself constantly distracted by his misunderstanding of certain primary facets of that play.I realize several major critics, including A.O. Scott of the NY Times, have lauded how Farhadi uses "Death of a Salesman" to illuminate his tale of a modern rape and revenge--most of them laying stress on the "sales" aspect of one or more of the movie's characters who present a false facade to the world. Frankly, that's a very generalized reading, one idea plucked from the many themes at work in "The Salesman." To me, the only scene in Miller's play that connects with "The Salesman" is in Willy Loman's hotel room, when his son Biff learns that his dad has a hooker in the bathroom. To his credit, Farhadi shows that exact scene for a time, but this focus, while apt as far as it goes, overlooks the deeper side of Willy, that his entire life is devoted to a false idol, an illusion, the "American dream" of every salesman, of making one's way in the world "on a smile and a shoeshine." To Willy Loman, the only thing that matters on this earth is "to be well liked." Where does this factor into "The Salesman"? None of the characters exemplifies that jovial spirit, verbosity, and fake good humor that characterize the salesman type. I kept wondering why Farhadi kept referencing Miller's play while leaving this out. But then he doesn't seem to have studied the play, or he wouldn't have cast such a youthful "healthy" leading man to play Willy. Nor would any theater director have permitted Shahab Hosseini to play a 1940s American traveling salesman with that beard! (A more believable Willy might be the elderly rapist who appears later in the film, but we never learn much about him, and he's not playing the part for the theater troupe.)Both of the Lomans are miscast. They are nearly 30 years too young, a serious matter for characters with a lifelong devotion to the capitalist creed and a nearly paid-off mortgage. The makeup artists have to work overtime to try (unsuccessfully) to age them, drawing attention to another strange detail. Do Iranian actors not do their own makeup? I'm not speaking of pampered film stars, but of so-called "legit" actors. Western actors take it for granted that, except for highly unusual cosmetic effects, the actor is responsible for his/her own makeup. I wondered if this was a movie director's wrong assumption about stage practice.None of this absolutely ruins what is strong in this film. It is certainly worth our time to witness city life in contemporary Iran, even if it is a glum vision overall. The tautness of the one-on-one encounters is mesmerizing. You can't look away. In the interaction of husband and wife, one can see all the glaring omissions and missteps that doom the couple--and may save viewers many hours of marriage counseling.