Post by Dracula on Nov 21, 2021 15:17:56 GMT -5
A Hero(10/24/2021)
“Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive” is a quote that is often misattributed to Shakespeare but was actually written by Sir Walter Scott. Either way you will likely see this quote used in a substantial number of reviews for Asghar Farhadi’s latest film A Hero, which is a pretty distilled exploration of a situation where little white lies and not so little and not so white lies pile up and capture someone in the middle of a huge trap of their own making. The film looks at a man Rahim who was imprisoned for failure to pay a debt (debtors prisons are apparently still a thing in Iran) and is given a two day furlough and while on that leave he has to decide if he’s going to use some money that his fiancé found in a purse that was left at a bus stop. He ultimately decides to try to track down and return the money and the media eventually hears about this and it becomes a human interest story about a man’s generosity, but he did omit some key details like his girlfriend having been the one to originally find the purse, which seems trivial at first but comes to really hurt him as people start investigating his story and he eventually has to start telling other lies that he thinks will back up the greater truth but which end up making it all look like a greater lie. Eventually this gets to the point where the true story becomes too unwieldly to easily explain to anyone who isn’t very patient and willing to listen. As you can tell from that description the high concept here is a little hard to describe to people and things can be a bit tricky to follow if you’re not paying very close attention. Stick with it though and you will be treated to one of Asghar Farhadi’s signature dramas in which you can kind of see everyone’s side in a difficult conflict without easy answers, the difference being that there really aren’t going to be any winners in this one. The film does not reach the heights of A Seperation or The Past but it is a rebound after a pair of disappointing films from the auteur and I hope he can keep up the momentum.
**** out of Five
“Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive” is a quote that is often misattributed to Shakespeare but was actually written by Sir Walter Scott. Either way you will likely see this quote used in a substantial number of reviews for Asghar Farhadi’s latest film A Hero, which is a pretty distilled exploration of a situation where little white lies and not so little and not so white lies pile up and capture someone in the middle of a huge trap of their own making. The film looks at a man Rahim who was imprisoned for failure to pay a debt (debtors prisons are apparently still a thing in Iran) and is given a two day furlough and while on that leave he has to decide if he’s going to use some money that his fiancé found in a purse that was left at a bus stop. He ultimately decides to try to track down and return the money and the media eventually hears about this and it becomes a human interest story about a man’s generosity, but he did omit some key details like his girlfriend having been the one to originally find the purse, which seems trivial at first but comes to really hurt him as people start investigating his story and he eventually has to start telling other lies that he thinks will back up the greater truth but which end up making it all look like a greater lie. Eventually this gets to the point where the true story becomes too unwieldly to easily explain to anyone who isn’t very patient and willing to listen. As you can tell from that description the high concept here is a little hard to describe to people and things can be a bit tricky to follow if you’re not paying very close attention. Stick with it though and you will be treated to one of Asghar Farhadi’s signature dramas in which you can kind of see everyone’s side in a difficult conflict without easy answers, the difference being that there really aren’t going to be any winners in this one. The film does not reach the heights of A Seperation or The Past but it is a rebound after a pair of disappointing films from the auteur and I hope he can keep up the momentum.
**** out of Five
