A Hero (2021)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Hero (2021) – A. Farhadi

Asghar Farhadi keeps the spirit of the Iranian Third Wave going with another complex drama featuring multiple perspectives on an event and slippery judgments about what is right and what is wrong. Or who is right and who is wrong.  A Hero follows Rahim (Amir Jadidi), serving a 10-year prison term because of a debt he cannot repay, apparently contingent on his creditor’s willingness to keep him in jail (a feature of Iranian law that we no longer have here – although one is reminded of Dickens’ debtors’ prisons). On a two-day furlough, Rahim’s new girlfriend produces 17 gold coins that she has found in a lost handbag; they consider it a miracle and approach a gold dealer with the aim of paying off the debt.  However, Rahim’s conscience won’t let him do this and instead he decides to find the owner of the handbag and return the money. I won’t spoil what happens next but there are cascading repercussions of this prosocial action which raise a number of tricky questions about moral behaviour. For example, is refraining from doing something “bad” equal to choosing to do something “good”? And is a charitable action still worthy if it is done for public acclaim rather than anonymously? Has the ascent of social media changed the way we behave, now that our every action can be documented for public consumption (and judgment)? Farhadi started with a “true story” but characteristically uses it to explore the justifications that people use for their actions (“everyone has their reasons” as Renoir would say). If there is a critique of Iranian society here, it is quite guarded – instead, Farhadi has a much bigger target in mind:  human nature itself. Cinematically, the film looks great and employs grand (and symbolic?) locations such as the Tomb of Xerxes and avant garde techniques such as small jump cuts to advance the action. I am sure it warrants a much closer inspection and deeper analysis than I have been able to provide (even the setting in the city of Shiraz was chosen purposefully for its cultural meanings). This film and indeed all of Farhadi’s oeuvre deserve your attention.