Showing On 5, 7, 8 September
Monday 6pm, Wednesday 4pm and Thursday 6pm
Watch The Trailer
Storyline (warning: spoilers)
Asghar Farhadi proves why he’s such a beloved artist with A Hero, one of his best films, which is really saying something. He delivers yet another deeply empathetic and heartbreaking drama that focuses on character while also embedding some interesting commentary about the complexity of heroism. Farhadi is one of the most talented auteurs when it comes to unpacking situations in which there are no easy answers, and black & white are more likely to blend to grey. His films defy easy moral judgments of their characters, keeping viewers engaged in nothing less than the complexity of the human condition. In what is easily one of the best screenplays of the year, He unfolds a saga that feels increasingly like it’s trying to defy its title: there are no heroes in the real world, only people trying to do what they think is best.
Rahim (Amir Jadidi) is a calligrapher who has been in debtor’s prison over a loan gone very wrong. He is forced to live in this medium-security facility while he tries to figure out how to repay his debt. On one two-day leave from the penitentiary, Rahim’s girlfriend (Sarah Goldoust) finds a purse at a bus stop. After learning that the contents of the purse won’t cover his financial liability, Rahim decides to track down the owner of the purse and return it.
Is this act heroic? Or does he realize that the public outpouring of goodwill could prove more valuable than the coins? And what of the man whose life has been ruined by the debt incurred by Rahim? As he watches someone that he loathes become lionized and turned into a hero, his skin crawls. The systems around Rahim, including his jailer and the charity that supported him, start to collapse with some of the craftiest writing of the year.
Is Farhadi commenting on the impossibility of perfect heroism? Or how systems are designed to destroy them? There are also clear cultural undercurrents here about the broken dynamic of debtor’s prisons in the first place. It’s a blazingly smart movie, one of the best of the year.