People are voting emotionally.

It is a performances centric movie

Good concept, poorly executed.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Winner of this year's Best Foreign Language Oscar at the Academy Awards, The Salesman continues on Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's stunning recent collection of dramatic works that includes fellow Oscar winner A Separation and Golden Globe nominee The Past.An intense and intimate drama that veers into a character driven and decision making thriller in its later stages, Farhadi's film focuses on the fractured relationship that begins to build between married couple Emad and Rana Etesami after Rana is violently assaulted in the couples new rental property.Brilliantly played by Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti respectively, Emad and Rana are both believable characters and well-drawn ones, staples of Farhadi's ever increasing strong body of works, and their separate journey's in learning to deal with and overcome this violation of their lives is one you as an audience member will be drawn into like a moth to a flame.Emad who's initially a strong and respectable figure, a beloved teacher and theatre actor (the title of this film relates to Emad and Rana's role in a stage production of The Death of a Salesman) finds himself increasingly captivated by the quest to find the perpetrator of the assault on Rana, that slowly but surely unravels his usual in-command lifestyle, while Rana's mental mindset and ability to cope with the trauma of this event sees her become a shell of her former self, unable even to do mundane run of the mill tasks.Farhadi expertly deals with this situation that arises in the Etesami's life, the film feels almost like a documentary, so real are scenes played out and as Emad's quest takes a potentially dangerous turn as the film enters into its final stretches, The Salesman's tension riddled and fiercely real situation's become some of the year's most wholly captivating, as we're trust headfirst into decisions that will affect these characters lives till the end of their days.Final Say – The Salesman isn't flashy cinema but Farhadi's carefully considered drama has a raw and poignant power that will lay its grip on viewers and won't let go until the credits roll, making The Salesman another fine feature film from one of the world's most consistent and original filmmakers.4 sleeping teachers out of 5

I applaud director Farhadi for making Iran more accessible to outsiders, focusing on modern urban issues, and making Tehran more internationally relatable. But I'm not a fan of his pacing or how he plays out the drama. I had low expectations as "A Separation" lost me due to the unrelenting yelling between its characters. "The Salesman" was more lively and allowed its characters to have more emotions. But two things ultimately distracted me: the first was the uneven pacing. The movie would pick up but then drag, and the worst part being the final act; just as the dialogue, drama, and suspense were at its best, and Farhadi has you feeling empathy for everyone, he does not know when to quit, and gives us almost 20 minutes of people crying.The second one was: I realized that he was just making an Argentine film. If you've seen Argentine cinema, that you'll notice that, aside from the occasional dark comedy, they're mostly slow-paced melodrama about relationships between family members and the communities, where people go from being numb to an ultimate eruption of emotions. Even their thrillers play out this way. Shahab Hosseini looked and acted like Ricardo Darin, down to the body language and linguistic pacing. Thus, I felt like I had seen this movie a dozen times before.It is no surprise to me that Farhadi's next film is set in Argentina and involves Darin.

This film made waves at the Academy Awards (not just for the Academy boycott). I've been meaning to check it out at some point, and finally had the opportunity to watch it on an airplane during a flight. I've heard of A Separation but never watched it. Going in pretty blind into this film, I was very pleased with the end product. I read Death of a Salesman in high school and was able to spot some parallels.The film is about a husband and wife who work in theatre (on a production of Death of a Salesman). One night their apartment starts collapsing so they move into a new apartment. Soon the wife gets attacked in the shower while waiting for her husband. The husband becomes consumed with finding out who attacked his wife and attempts to pursue the culprit even as relationships around him start falling apart.A lot of people didn't find this to be as good as A Separation, or so I've heard. I thought the script for the film was quite sharp. Like Billy Loman in Death of a Salesman , Emad's relationship is on the rocks. He must also try to avoid the humiliation of what occurred within his family and must wrong the right. While the film is a bit of a slow burn on finding out who committed the act, the clues leading up to the reveal and the ride is very fun to be a part of.I found the last 30 minutes or so of the film to be powerful and it also helps to ascend the film to a higher rating. Its gripping and hard to keep your eyes off of what happens next. Its suspenseful but yet innocuous You know there's no immediate danger to the lead but wow its a joy to watch what transpires. I will have to eventually check out A Separation, especially if its more acclaimed than this.8/10

The Salesman" has a lot going for it, and I understand why the Academy voters felt good about honoring it with an Oscar. The drama is tense, and the morality is surely correct. Revenge is a blunter of other, more civilized emotions. I can't buy the whole package, however, because it doesn't fulfill its promise of matching the trauma within a contemporary urban marriage to the framing medium of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman." I would have been content to follow the Iranian couple's drama alone, without the "clever" adjunct of the American classic, but since writer-director Farhadi draws such attention to Miller's play, I found myself constantly distracted by his misunderstanding of certain primary facets of that play.I realize several major critics, including A.O. Scott of the NY Times, have lauded how Farhadi uses "Death of a Salesman" to illuminate his tale of a modern rape and revenge--most of them laying stress on the "sales" aspect of one or more of the movie's characters who present a false facade to the world. Frankly, that's a very generalized reading, one idea plucked from the many themes at work in "The Salesman." To me, the only scene in Miller's play that connects with "The Salesman" is in Willy Loman's hotel room, when his son Biff learns that his dad has a hooker in the bathroom. To his credit, Farhadi shows that exact scene for a time, but this focus, while apt as far as it goes, overlooks the deeper side of Willy, that his entire life is devoted to a false idol, an illusion, the "American dream" of every salesman, of making one's way in the world "on a smile and a shoeshine." To Willy Loman, the only thing that matters on this earth is "to be well liked." Where does this factor into "The Salesman"? None of the characters exemplifies that jovial spirit, verbosity, and fake good humor that characterize the salesman type. I kept wondering why Farhadi kept referencing Miller's play while leaving this out. But then he doesn't seem to have studied the play, or he wouldn't have cast such a youthful "healthy" leading man to play Willy. Nor would any theater director have permitted Shahab Hosseini to play a 1940s American traveling salesman with that beard! (A more believable Willy might be the elderly rapist who appears later in the film, but we never learn much about him, and he's not playing the part for the theater troupe.)Both of the Lomans are miscast. They are nearly 30 years too young, a serious matter for characters with a lifelong devotion to the capitalist creed and a nearly paid-off mortgage. The makeup artists have to work overtime to try (unsuccessfully) to age them, drawing attention to another strange detail. Do Iranian actors not do their own makeup? I'm not speaking of pampered film stars, but of so-called "legit" actors. Western actors take it for granted that, except for highly unusual cosmetic effects, the actor is responsible for his/her own makeup. I wondered if this was a movie director's wrong assumption about stage practice.None of this absolutely ruins what is strong in this film. It is certainly worth our time to witness city life in contemporary Iran, even if it is a glum vision overall. The tautness of the one-on-one encounters is mesmerizing. You can't look away. In the interaction of husband and wife, one can see all the glaring omissions and missteps that doom the couple--and may save viewers many hours of marriage counseling.