Movie poster
A miracle of Iranian filmmakers is that under the strict censorship system, they still open up a huge creative space, donate a large number of excellent works, and repeatedly win awards at international film festivals. Asha Fahati, the director of "A Farewell" and "Salesman", who won two Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, is one of such miracles.
Ashar Fahati’s film is realistic, telling a complete story while carefully presenting its environment; but its theme is unconditional, and it discusses generalized moral issues that transcend the environment.
This is true for both "A Farewell" or "Salesman".
Morality is heavy and complicated, which may be the reason why Ashar Fahati’s movies are always so sad. As a kind of belief, people hope to summarize the various situations of human life and draw a series of exact moral codes that are suitable for all our lives; but as a practice, all the exact things in morality are subject to doubt in real life. , Into a gray territory, so much so that it can be traced back to the philosophical thinking of why people are humans.
In a sense, the essence of morality is doubtful, and a moral person also means having the courage to doubt and even deny.
In my opinion, "Salesman" is exactly such a movie: in order to pursue justice and maintain his inner order, the protagonist turns from a victim to a judge, but when he changes from a judge to a law enforcement In, new changes and the addition of facts disintegrated the moral foundation he believed in during the "judgment", and turned himself into a "judged", judged by his own conscience.
This movie has three strong metaphors: the dangerous building where the protagonist originally rented, the representative of Iran's New Wave "The Cow", and the classic American drama "Death of a Salesman".
The first scene of the movie is the set up scene of the drama "Death of a Salesman". The empty indoor night scene is strong and lonely, like before the opening and after the end, the rendering of this atmosphere established the calm but sad tone of the movie. . The real plot began with the relocation of a dangerous building. In the night, the news that the apartment was about to collapse caused confusion among the people living in the apartment. The protagonist Aimed and his wife Lana had to find another place to live. With the help of colleagues from the troupe, they moved to a new residence, but the belongings of the former female tenant (sex worker) remained in the house and were not taken away. One night, Lana came home from the rehearsal site before Emad. Knowing that her husband would be back soon, she opened the door without confirmation after hearing the door bell of the apartment, but it was not Emad who entered the house. .
Lana, who was taking a bath, was attacked. She fell into a panic but did not want to report the crime. Through her students, Aimed found the attacker Ismat (one of the benefactors of the former female guest). Aimed used moving books as an excuse to lure Ismat into the dilapidated house he had previously rented, and locked him in a dark room until he suffered a heart attack. Aimed called Ismat’s family and asked him to confess what he had done before them. Lana opposed him to do so. At last Aimed called Ismat into the room in front of everyone. He slapped the face, and the unknown Ismat family helped him away. When he went downstairs, he suffered a heart attack again, and was carried into an ambulance amidst the panic crying of a family member, his life or death was unknown.
If there is no such thing as his wife being attacked, Amed in life is a respectable and lovely person. The film uses many details to express his conscience and spirit of thinking as an intellectual: in the crisis of the collapse of the building, he took the neighbor out of the building regardless of the danger; in his spare time, he recommended Iranian art films to the students and acted like a friend. He is patient; when he goes out to carpool, the woman sitting next to him guards against him. He explained to his fellow students that it was because she had a shadow in her heart and didn't care about it. In his spare time, he actively participated in drama performances and maintained harmony with his colleagues. Relationship.
Among the three metaphors in the movie, the "salesman" in the play is the most obvious. The protagonist, Aimed’s real profession is a middle school teacher, and acting in drama is his hobby. In "Dead", Aimed is the last salesman who died, and in this movie, he became the murderer who caused others to die, and part of his heart died. The salesman in the drama is the person who is insulted and harmed, while the protagonist of the movie is the person who insults and harms, similar but opposite.
The metaphor of "dangerous building" is suggestive. The main plot of the movie starts and ends in the dangerous building. The danger of a dangerous building, the countless possibilities between falling and not falling, is a kind of suspended state. In the movie, when the crisis of a dangerous building first broke out, there was a close-up shot of an excavator working, which seemed to indicate that the cause of the crisis was the destruction of the foundation. The climax of the movie also happened in the dangerous building. A slap in the room by Aimed put Ismat into a dying situation. The danger of the dangerous building was transferred to people, and Ismat’s life and death were hanging on the line. It is unknown, but it is knowable that Amed felt guilty.
The metaphor of "cow" runs through the entire transformation process of Amed. "Cow" is an Iranian pioneer movie in the 1960s. It has ten separate plots: In a barren Iranian mountain village, the only cow in the village suddenly died when the owner was out. The cow owner who could not accept this result went into madness and finally fantasized that he was a cow. , Make weird behaviors such as cow eating grass, hitting the wall and so on.
When Aimed recommended this movie to his students, a student asked him: "How do people become cows?" He replied, "They slowly become cows." Two interpretations of this dialogue can be made: First, there are countless possibilities for human transformation, even if it becomes an extreme situation like a cow, so humans can be both good and evil; second, anyone can change. A process, that is, human behavior can be explained and controlled.
Even in a narrow space, a person still has a certain right to choose, and the process and result of the choice determine whether a person's behavior is justice, and the degree of justice, so everyone should be responsible for the result of their choice.
Throughout the story, Amad has experienced several important choices. Almost every time he chooses, there is a force that prevents or pushes him to the abyss.
The first choice occurred in the debate about whether to report the crime. Lana refused to report the crime because it would make her recall and narrate the incident again in front of the police. It was a repeated injury; Aimed tended to report the crime, so he kept the blood stains on the steps, but the reason for the report may be that he still reported it. No clues were found and the assistance of the police is needed.
The second choice is whether to use illegal means to locate the suspect. Aimed found the keys that Ismart had left in his house in a panic. After trying one by one, he confirmed Ismart’s car. He drove the car to the apartment’s underground garage and wanted to wait for the other person to take the bait. So the blood stains on the stairs were also washed away, and he decided not to call the police and settled privately. Unfortunately, because the car occupies the neighbor's parking space, Lana couldn't bear the frequent mention of the injury in order to move the car, so she drove the car outside again and was driven away by Ismart. Aimed cut off the clues, so he asked his students for help, using the power of the parents of the students, to learn the identity of the car owner-Ismart's future son-in-law.
The third choice, and the most critical, was the fatal slap in the dangerous building. Lana was urgently called to the dangerous building once rented by Amad. She saw the man who had assaulted herself, an old man like her father, who was in a fragile and humiliated situation at the moment. Lana was full of contradictions in her heart, and finally chose to forgive. But Aimed insisted on clarifying the matter in front of Ismat’s family. Lana threatened him not to do this with a divorce. He agreed, but finally slapped Ismat in the hut and became Ismat. The fuse of Mart's heart attack again.
In each choice of Aimed, there is an opportunity to give up, but there is also a reason to persuade him to continue. The power to give up mainly comes from others, and the reason to stick to it comes from himself. Therefore, what pushed Ismat to the brink of death was the result of Aimed's choice, and he had to take responsibility for it.
In the first choice, Amad can either choose to call the police, or he can accompany Lana to heal and choose to forget; in the second option, Amad can abandon the tracing after the clue is interrupted, or hand over the evidence to the police for further processing; In the three choices, Aimed was able to let Ismat leave at Lana's request, but he slapped him in the face. Whether Ismat died of illness in the end is unknown, but his life must have been destroyed like that dangerous building. He not only encountered health threats, but also lost his dignity.
For Aimed, if it is not a special situation, his series of choices are still justice despite the mixed elements of revenge. We can imagine that if Ismat is not an old man, if he does not have a heart disease and does not have a family who loves him, then the slap in the face of Aimed will be regarded by us as a gratitude and enmity, which is moral.
Ismat's identity, age and illness, and the final result of the whole thing only illustrate the fact that morality is not absolute, morality is conditional, it flows like water.
A moral person is that he can identify these conditions and control his emotions; morality must not only have wisdom, but also have a strong will. But in reality, what we encounter is that in specific incidents, we have played the role of legislator, judge and law enforcer, so in order to emphasize our correctness, we conduct circular demonstrations of our actions: Our judgment is to prove the correctness of our argument, and our action is to prove the correctness of the judgment.
In the movie "The Cow", how did the owner of the cow become a cow? I think it was because he was sunk in his own world-the world of cattle. How did the "salesman" become a cow? Why do ethical people do immoral things? In my opinion, it was also because he was obsessed with the matter itself and gave up the consideration of surrounding factors.
From a certain perspective, a single person is not a complete person. A person is not omnipotent even for himself. Sometimes it is necessary to think of oneself as an object. This also means that morality needs to have openness and transcendence in order to be perfect.
Everyone is trying to establish their own inner order, or explain this order, this order is actually a person's self-knowledge, values and beliefs. We hope that this order is a correct structure and feel the solid sense of self-existence, but the reality is that the inner order may not exist, because whenever we are convinced, doubts follow; this order also It may not be important, because the order of others will push it to inconspicuous corners.
In fact, a person who values inner order may not be a strong person. On the contrary, he may be fragile because he cannot face the challenges of self-denial and self-doubt. We are also unable to resist such self-doubt, just as we can’t control our own feelings. In terms of a possibility, we live in a fateful world, just like Aimed, despite the full opportunity of choice. It is impossible to avoid the worst results.
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