Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival last year, A hero is available in North America on the Amazon Prime Video platform. While the doors of movie theaters are still closed, the new opus of the most famous Iranian filmmaker of our time is without a doubt one of the major works to which moviegoers have access at the start of the year.
Posted at 7:30 a.m.
When he shoots in his country, Asghar Farhadi regularly offers great films. The past, shot in France, and Everybody Knows, filmed in Spain, are obviously worthy of interest, but the feature films that the filmmaker has shot abroad have so far not reached the greatness ofA separation or Customer (two Oscar-winning feature films for best foreign language film).
Thanks to A hero, whose plot is set in Shiraz, Asghar Farhadi finds his best marks.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY AMAZON STUDIOS
Amir Jadidi is the headliner ofA hero, a film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi.
The filmmaker, whose screenplays are often marvels of writing, once again starts from a seemingly banal situation to build a complex story, through which he can explore the small and large paradoxes of the human condition. Inspired by newspaper articles recounting the heroic actions of anonymous individuals, who thus suddenly achieve unexpected notoriety, Asghar Farhadi describes the journey of a man whose good intentions quickly turn against him. And suddenly paints a fascinating portrait, whose themes find a universal echo.
A relentless mechanism
A man without stories and well in all respects, Rahim (formidable Amir Jadidi) is serving a prison sentence because of a debt that he could not repay with a moneylender. Taking advantage of a two-day leave, he tries to find a solution so that the creditor can withdraw his complaint. Things get complicated when his spouse offers to repay part of the debt with gold coins she found by chance in a bag at a bus stop. Moral dilemma. Solve the problem with a sum of which we do not really know the source? Or try to find the owner of the bag to return the coins to her by giving herself the paternity of this altruistic act? Rahim chooses the second option, hence the title of this feature film.
This decision, which earned Rahim the great sympathy of the population as soon as the media took hold of the story, nevertheless hides darker aspects, to the point that the one we celebrate one day quickly becomes the one we castigate the the following day. From Rahim’s first lie, innocuous in the eyes of the protagonist, Asghar Farhadi brilliantly builds an implacable mechanism, nourished in particular by social networks. Thanks to a story in which contradictions often collide, both on the side of the hero and on that of all the people involved in this story, the filmmaker orchestrates a thrilling suspense, very revealing of the society in which he lives, which could also be ours. Don’t be surprised if Farhadi ends up at the Oscars again.
A hero is available exclusively on Amazon Prime Video, in the original Farsi version with English subtitles.
Drama
A hero
Asghar Farhadi
With Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Fereshteh Sadre Orafaiy
2:07 a.m.