Law of the Director: Questioning the Unquestioned in Asghar Farhadi’s Movies The Beautiful City, Fireworks Wednesday and The Salesman

Ma’Soome Sehat,Hossein Jahantigh

doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.9n.4p.111

Abstract

Asghar Farhadi, the Iranian Oscar winning writer and director, employs a bitter reality, i.e. the clash between tradition and modernity, as the main motif of his works up to 2016. His depicted characters always attempt to act rational, a prerequisite of modern time, but something traditional almost by an accident pushes them back, and as a result, tradition comes out as the winner. The key concern in this paper is to examine how Farhadi, apparently, tries to portray the Iranian society by exercising an objective stance to raise his fundamental question. The paper analyzes how he presents the challenge to his audiences’ judgment by letting them choose freely between modernism and tradition. However, the semiotic study of some of his movies shows his viewpoint is not completely objective and preference of one side over the other is apprehended. This paper seeks to prove that the author is inclined toward modernity in the titular three movies: The Beautiful City, Fireworks Wednesday and The Salesman, which the viewers might miss out on their first seeing of the movies.

Highlights

Iranians were exposed to Modernism in the middle of the 19th century through such imperialists as Russia and Britain
The key concern in this paper is to examine how Farhadi, apparently, tries to portray the Iranian society by exercising an objective stance to raise his fundamental question
The eponymous director, Ashghar Farhadi, comes up with his own particular philosophy on the clash between modernity and tradition, that is, he wants to show this reality of society impartially

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Iranians were exposed to Modernism in the middle of the 19th century through such imperialists as Russia and Britain. Afterwards, the gap, and the conflict, between modernity and tradition grew deeper and deeper This reality is reflected in different works of art from different perspectives. Farhadi artistically plays with a simple question: “who is right?” or “who is to blame?” and he involves his audiences in the story by putting their judgment into question. His viewpoint seems objective in all his works as if he wants to show different sides of the clash and let his audience choose at will, he wants them to believe that tradition is hard to escape. At first glance modernity seems privileging, its side effects such as alienation, death of individualism, reification and commodification are reasons enough to make us doubt its priority over tradition

METHODOLOGY

CONCLUSION