Avis des critiques

“A Hero” runs a bit long... and is at times frustratingly ambiguous, but Farhadi has delivered another insightful slice of life and Amir Jadidi turns in a remarkably intriguing performance as the never quite heroic Rahim.

His new film is a blistering, if gentle, triumph.

Farhadi is less interested in the essence of who people are than in the causes and results of what they do... “A Hero” is as anxious and swift as a thriller, with the density and observational acuity of a 19th-century three-decker.

The movie takes place in Iran, yet it’s really situated in the crack of daylight that separates truth from a lie. It’s a tight squeeze, Farhadi seems to say, and one whose pinch this tragedy of the everyday makes us feel, acutely.

[T]he movie's beauty often comes through the small observational moments — intimate, naturalistic scenes of domesticity and the everyday grind of a working society — that Farhadi polishes like stones, his camera unobtrusive but all-seeing.

Farhadi shoots and cuts his story with his usual admirable dispatch, never erring in his camera placement or staging. That said, his script is hardly as seamless as it aspires to be.

In A Hero, he once again nestles deeper themes within the cracks of his carefully developed dramatic situation, never allowing any agenda to didactically eclipse the relatable conflicts between his characters—including, in this case, a man whose perceived nobility shifts as often as his misfortune, keeping us guessing at his intentions.

Set in Iran and definitively occupied with the country’s strict social mores, A Hero is nevertheless Farhadi’s most universal film yet, concerned less with categorising Rahim as a hero or a charlatan than with what it means to behave ethically and unselfishly in an increasingly visible world, where every act – even the quietest – is laid out for public consumption.

The curse of convolution, alas, demands that Farhadi shift all attention onto narrative mechanics, with deeper themes frequently falling by the wayside. And although he rallies impressively for a moving, redemptive ending, it’s hard not to feel that this is mostly a film-maker operating at the mercy of his own material.

Iran is a complex and bureaucratic country, but it is also the role of social media and so-called ‘fake news’ that lend A Hero a contemporary relevance, even as it feels like an ancient morality tale.

Though we keep waiting for a last-minute plot twist, Farhadi seems steadfast in the belief that whether an act is ethical is irrelevant if it has already entered the court of public opinion. This is perhaps one of Farhadi’s more tiresome intellectual discourses... Yet the film’s last frames, which counterbalance captivity and freedom in equal measure, return to a crooked balance.

Against the rising human stakes of the story, his [Farhadi's] filmmaking remains unexcitable, trading in staid, beige compositions and largely sacrificing music for the constant, uncaring whir of passing traffic.