No good deed goes unpunished in A Hero, the feted Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi’s latest carefully shaded inquisition into the darker areas of the human soul. Shot in the southern city of Shiraz, a famous wine region in pre-Islamic Persia and site of many majestic ancient ruins today, this French-Iranian co-production is intelligent and absorbing, but low on dramatic sizzle or visual panache.
With two Oscar wins already under his belt, for A Separation (2011) and A Salesman (2016), even a minor Farhadi feature like this was always likely be the front-runner as Iran’s official contender in the Best International Film category. And so it has proved, scoring the director his fourth Academy Awards submission to date. Distributors Amazon will likely push for more prize categories ahead of the film’s theatrical and streaming launch in January 2022.
Premiered in Cannes, where it won the Grand Prix and generally warm reviews, A Hero finds Farhadi back on familiar, sure-footed home turf after the disappointing misfire of his starry Spanish-language kidnap melodrama Everybody Knows (2018). The hero of the semi-ironic title is Rahim (Amir Jadidi), a strikingly handsome everyman whose puppyish smile and gentle manner mask a flawed, ethically compromised soul. Recalling the anguished protagonists of classic Italian neo-realism, Rahim is a recently divorced father trapped in a tortuous moral dilemma by financial hardship, serving time behind bars for business debts he cannot pay.
Granted a two-day pass to visit his extended family and his secret fiancee Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldoost), Rahim is also working on a wily escape plan. Farkhondeh has stumbled across a lost handbag full of gold coins in the street, and Rahim schemes to sell the loot to help pay his debts to store owner Braham (Mohsen Tanabandeh), whose leniency could help spring him from jail. However, due to falling gold prices and the lingering traces of his troubled conscience, Rahim changes his mind and decides instead to try and return the coins to their rightful owner.
When a mysterious woman emerges from nowhere to reclaim the gold, it seems Rahim has genuinely earned hero status. News of his admirable altruism begins to spread across the media, with TV networks, charities and even his jailers all seeking to capitalise on this uplifting feelgood story. Basking in fame and acclaim, Rahim is temporarily released from prison a second time with promises of paid employment to help settle his affairs. Meanwhile, pressure piles on Braham to show mercy in renegotiating the debt terms.
But nobody gets a simple happy ending in Farhadi films, of course. As Rahim’s story goes viral, social media gossip begins to circulate a more realistic, self-serving version of his good samaritan claims. Jadidi’s meticulously calibrated performance maps these awkward shifts in register, hinting at the hard-headed calculation behind Rahim’s charming, ingratiating persona. Meanwhile, Braham moves from one-dimensional villain to righteously resentful victim. Farhadi wisely added this more balanced backstory while production was shut down during Covid lockdown, rightly denying audiences a lazy short cut to easy empathy.
Challenged by suspicious bureaucrats to prove his fanciful gold coins story or risk going back to prison, Rahim resorts to high-stakes fakery and angry confrontation to try and secure the freedom he can feel slipping away. Desperation pushes him to increasingly extreme measures, but he finally reaches his limit when his shy, stammering young son is drawn into the bitter propaganda battle. Arguably Rahim’s only true acts of heroic self-sacrifice occur during the film’s finale, far away from a judgmental media or fickle public approval. But even these good deeds are partly pragmatic, almost accidental decisions. In Farhadi’s chaotic moral cosmos, unintended consequences often prevail, but nobody is wholly good nor wholly evil. There is a crack in everything.
As ever with Farhadi, fate and folklore are woven into the narrative. But A Hero adds an unusual new angle for Iranian cinema, juxtaposing ancient superstition with the more contemporary karmic forces of online shaming and cancel culture. Some of these culturally specific references may be lost on overseas audiences. In one archly ironic example, Rahim’s sister Malileh (Maryam Shahdaie) is roasting esfand seeds, a traditional method of protecting new-found good fortune against “evil eye” curses, just as her brother’s saintly public image begins to unravel on social media.
The key dramatic interest of A Hero is the gulf between public and private morality, simplistic displays of performative virtue and the more complex real thing. It is tempting to extrapolate a sharply satirical critique of contemporary Iranian society here, but as ever, Farhadi’s angle is more universal and carefully apolitical. His track record as Iran’s Academy Awards poster boy attests to his skills in diplomacy as much as cinema, given that his probing, literate social dramas have never been simplistic pro-regime pieces.
That said, A Hero feels a little too flat and prosaic for its rich, dark themes. While there are sporadic flashes of visual poetry here, the low-voltage naturalism and overstretched runtime drag in places. Farhadi is a master craftsman, but he could use a little more stylistic daring, dramatic punch and nimble editing. For all its heavyweight pedigree, this is a minor work by a major director.
Director, screenwriter: Asghar Farhadi
Cast: Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Sahar Goldust, Fereshteh Sadre Orafaiy, Alireze Jahandideh, Sarina Farhadi, Maryam Shahdaei
Producers: Alexandre Mallet-Guy, Asghar Farhadi
Cinematography: Ali Ghazi, Arash Ramezani
Editing: Hayedeh Safiyari
Production companies: Arte France Cinema (France), Asghar Farhadi Productions (Iran), Memento Films International (France)
In Farsi
127 minutes
