A Hero | Little White Lies

A Hero

06 Jan 2022 / Released: 07 Jan 2022

Two people, a man and a boy, walking together on a street.
Two people, a man and a boy, walking together on a street.
4

Anticipation.

Farhadi is always worth a watch, especially when he’s on home turf.

4

Enjoyment.

For what first seems like a conventional drama, the deep-seated tension is thrilling.

4

In Retrospect.

Amir Jadidi’s haunted-behind-the-eyes performance stays with you, whether or not you want it to.

Asghar Farhadi’s excep­tion­al Iran-cen­tred dra­ma is a soul­ful reflec­tion on the moral­i­ty of crime.

This film fol­lows Rahim Soltani (Amir Jadi­di), a young father incar­cer­at­ed in debtors’ prison for fail­ing to pay back lender Bahram (Mohsen Tan­a­ban­deh). Dur­ing a two-day leave peri­od, Rahim tries to cob­ble togeth­er the sum he owes his ex-busi­ness part­ner in exchange for leav­ing prison.

But when Bahram refus­es his par­tial pay­back offers, Rahim engages in increas­ing­ly elab­o­rate ploys to raise the near-insur­mount­able sum. Soltani knows his free­dom is on the line, as well as the care of his vul­ner­a­ble young son, but can’t help fight­ing for his bat­tered reputation.

Rahim and his secret fiancée Fark­hon­deh (Sahar Goldust) then con­struct an elab­o­rate tale of Rahim’s hero­ism in order to exact some good­will from Bahram. Thanks to social media, Soltani becomes a folk hero. But it doesn’t all go to plan.

In its con­struc­tion, A Hero is lit­tle like the Safdie broth­ers’ Uncut Gems by way of Abbas Kiarosta­mi, the sem­i­nal Iran­ian direc­tor whose calm obser­va­tion­al style has evi­dent­ly influ­enced Asghar Farha­di here. There’s very lit­tle cam­era move­ment: Farha­di allows his char­ac­ters to play out their fears and anx­i­eties in rooms and cor­ri­dors while we sit back, pow­er­less and detached. A more dynam­ic approach might give the impres­sion that Rahim has any con­trol over his fate. in truth he’s a pas­sive observ­er of his own life.

Two people, a man and a boy, walking together on a street.

Kiarostami’s fin­ger­prints are also present in the way A Hero deals with truth and illu­sion. Rahim and Fark­hon­deh weave togeth­er so many des­per­ate false­hoods that they lose any sense of the truth. In anoth­er spe­cif­ic way, Iran­ian cin­e­ma appears to be in a sim­i­lar place to the Amer­i­can cin­e­ma of the 1970s: actors are cast accord­ing not to their chis­elled cheek­bones but by the sheer num­ber of lines on their faces. That’s most true of Jadi­di, a clean-cut lead­ing man who is near-unrecog­nis­able here.

Hav­ing already spent three years in prison, Rahim is at the bot­tom of the social pile. His endeav­our trans­forms him into an unlike­ly war­rior in a cul­ture war between law-and-order mon­ey lenders and the vul­ner­a­ble bor­row­ers whose ambi­tions require the trust of oth­ers. That pre­car­i­ous sta­tus quo evokes the work of Charles Dick­ens, whose father spent numer­ous stints in the debtors’ prison of the Vic­to­ri­an era, and even Char­lie Chap­lin, who gets a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo.

Yet the strat­i­fied social sys­tem of A Hero can’t be con­fused with any sort of polit­i­cal dis­so­nance. Farha­di has always played a care­ful game in order to have his deeply authen­tic films per­mit­ted in his rigid home coun­try. Though this film was pro­duced large­ly with French mon­ey, the direc­tor is still clear­ly inter­est­ed in telling Iran-cen­tred sto­ries. We should be so lucky: there’s no one doing it better.

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