‘A Hero’ Review: Debts No Honest Man Can Pay – The New York Times

“The final temptation is the best treason: to do the correct deed for the flawed motive.” “A Hero,” the brand new movie by the Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi, appears to circle round these strains from T.S. Eliot’s “Homicide within the Cathedral,” spinning Eliot’s statement about morality right into a squall of questions on ethics and motives.

On the heart of the film is what appears to be like like an unambiguous act of decency. A person — the title character, an indication painter named Rahim Soltani (Amir Jadidi) — arranges for the return of 17 gold cash to their rightful proprietor. What could possibly be flawed with that? What might go flawed as a consequence?

Quite a bit, because it occurs. Nothing on this traumatic, intricately plotted fable of recent life is so simple as we or the characters may want. Rahim, who has been imprisoned due to a debt, desires to clear the books and restart his life. We meet him firstly of a busy two-day furlough, as he bounces from one encounter to a different, hoping to safe his freedom by settling along with his creditor, Hossein (Ali Reza Jahandideh), a print-shop proprietor who’s the brother-in-law of Rahim’s former spouse.

The entwining of household ties and enterprise relations is a central truth of Iranian life as Farhadi understands it. When love, honor and loyalty are at challenge, cash is rarely distant. To paraphrase Homer Simpson with regards to alcohol, it’s the reason for and the answer to most of life’s issues.

Rahim’s ex, who stays unseen, is getting ready to remarry, and Rahim hopes to do the identical. Their son, Siavash (Saleh Karimai), who has a extreme speech obstacle, lives with Rahim’s sister Malileh (Maryam Shahdaie) and her husband, Bahram, who’re Rahim’s principal allies. His girlfriend, Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldoust), is the one who discovered the gold cash, and the couple’s preliminary plan is to promote them to repay sufficient of the debt to fulfill Hossein.

Plan B — discovering the rightful proprietor — is Rahim’s concept, and whether or not it’s an impulsive, impatient act of conscience or one thing extra calculated is a supply of a lot complication and suspense. What looks like a Hollywood ending arrives in the course of the film, as Rahim’s selflessness is rewarded with precisely what he has given up.

The return of the cash turns into a information story and a social media sensation, the form of feel-good episode that no one can resist. The jail authorities are blissful to use Rahim’s heroism for their very own functions, as is a charitable basis that presents him with a plaque and the promise of a job. Donations circulation in, and stress grows on Hossein to let bygones be bygones.

Why wouldn’t he? Rahim is tall and good-looking, with an keen smile and an ingratiating method. However Hossein isn’t alone in resisting his attraction. A fellow inmate sneeringly compliments Rahim on his talent at fooling everybody. Farkhondeh’s grumpy brother thinks he’s a loser. A possible employer insists on pulling at unfastened threads within the story of the cash, demanding proof of each element and treating what appear like minor fibs as proof of a bigger fraud.

Are they? The extra time you spend with Rahim, the extra you marvel if the skeptics — who at first appear bureaucratic, coldhearted or vindictive — may need some extent. Do his occasional outbursts bespeak a violent temperament? Does his hangdog demeanor cowl up a necessary dishonesty? Or is he simply, as he claims to be, a very good man who can’t appear to catch a break?

In a way, these questions — the query of whose aspect you ought to be on — are misdirected. Farhadi is much less within the essence of who persons are than within the causes and outcomes of what they do. The winner of two Oscars (for “A Separation” in 2012 and “A Salesman” 5 years later), he makes movies with the self-discipline and perception of a first-rate novelist. “A Hero” is as anxious and swift as a thriller, with the density and observational acuity of a Nineteenth-century three-decker.

Even incidental characters are vivid and complex, and in each family, workplace and storefront you’re conscious of the impinging presence of untold tales. (You’re additionally, not by the way, within the presence of a fully first-rate ensemble of actors.) Late within the movie, a lady reveals up, accompanied by her younger daughter, on the places of work of the inspiration whose status Rahim has burnished after which tarnished. She is pleading with the director for assist in saving her husband from execution, and in a couple of scenes we develop into conscious of what number of different films are implied by and enfolded inside this one. What’s Farkhondeh’s story? What about Hossein’s daughter, who carries the deepest grudge towards Rahim? And what about Rahim himself, as husband and father?

The questions maintain going, and by the point the narrative reaches its (bittersweet, satisfying) conclusion, it’s possible you’ll resolve that the narrative wasn’t actually the purpose. Early within the movie, Rahim visits Bahram at his office, an historic necropolis carved into the aspect of a cliff. It’s coated in scaffolding, which is one thing of a metaphor for the plot of this ingenious and engrossing film — a sequence of ladders and passageways that each cowl and grant entry to mysteries of life and demise.

A Hero
Rated PG-13. Anger and deceit. In Persian, with subtitles. Operating time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters.