When you enter an Asghar Farhadi film you can expect moral dilemmas galore. His social melodramas have become an integral part of the world cinema scene. Ever since his 2011 breakout “A Separation” (although he was making movies years before that), he’s managed to capture the pulse of his home country without, unlike his obvious contemporary Jafar Panahi, having to be jailed by government for it. A feat in of itself.
In his magnificent new film “A Hero,” another tense, taut and terrific character study, Farhadi tackles the dangers of media manipulation as Rahim Soltani (Amir Jadidi), out on a few days release from prison for an unpaid debt, tries to use the media to set himself free.
Rahim’s girlfriend Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldust) luckily stumbles upon a lost purse full of gold at a bus station and et voila, he sees the money as a way of paying off his debts, and getting out of jail, but only to realize the coins aren’t as valuable as he’d hoped. Rahim then decides to build up a campaign of sympathy, or so we think, plastering pamphlets around Tehran for the lost bag — he wants his reputation restored.
Back home, Rahim lives with his sister and young stuttering son. That’s where a mysterious woman knocks on their door, claiming it’s her gold coins. And thus begins the media PR campaign. Rahim’s creditor reluctantly decides to drop the charges against him, his act seen as heroic and noble .. until the dominos starts to fall apart and ambiguities about his honesty start to emerge.
Turning his film into a morality tale about public opinion, Farhadi takes on the power of media manipulation in ingenious ways. There isn’t really a villain in “A Hero,” although one might make the case for Rahim’s grumpy creditor Bahram, a man in relentless pursuit to take down our ‘hero’ and expose him as a sham to the public. Does our protagonist deserve this fate? We don’t fully know. There is no clear way to be sure if Rahim deserves Bahrain’s wrath. And that is the brilliance of this film. It keeps making you question every character’s motivations, just like life itself.
We live in an age of public spectacle. Farhadi, with his calm camerawork, does seem to be implying that whatever celebrated heroes we make find on social media should be taken with a grain of salt. Reality gets skewed and manipulated for the benefit of various different entities. [B+]
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.