The first place Mr. Soltani visits on his two-day release from prison is the final resting place of the Persian king Xerxes at Naqsh-e Rostam. He walks through the dust at the foot of the gigantic tombs of the Achaemenid rulers, set into high cliff faces, which are currently being archaeologically examined and restored, mounts one of the scaffolding and climbs to the very top. Here he meets his brother-in-law, who greets him warmly, as do the other workers. He made money, says Mr. Soltani (Amir Jadidi) – but he doesn’t want to reveal exactly how.
Asghar Farhadi’s film “A Hero – The Lost Honor of Lord Soltani”, awarded the Grand Jury Prize in Cannes 2021, tells his story based on this mystery. And as always in the works of the Iranian director, who has already won two Oscars for “Nader und Simin” and “The Salesman”, the truth only gradually emerges – as if, like the rock tomb at the beginning, it first had to be uncovered archaeologically or to be restored.
Everything has gone badly in Mr. Soltani’s life, we learn. He wanted to start a business but was ripped off by his partner. As a result, his guarantor, Mr. Bahram (Mohsen Tanabandeh), a relative of his ex-wife, had to pay. Soltani himself was imprisoned, in the modern tower of indebtedness. By repaying the sum, he could free himself.
Who sticks by him is his fiancé Farkondeh (Sahar Goldoost), whose hand he hasn’t asked for yet, which is why their connection must remain secret. It is also secret that Farkondeh accidentally found a bag with gold coins at a bus stop, which she wants to give to Soltani in order to free him. So the money would be there, but the doubts of others remain. The creditor thinks Soltani is a liar, even his sister fears shame.
Everything could be fine. Were it not for the adamant believer
So Soltani scraps the plan to pay off the debt. He puts up a notice near where the coins were found, and when the owner of the coins gets in touch, he gives them back. Why the sudden change of heart? Pangs of conscience, he explains later. But the truth is more complex. He may have strong morals, but he is also offended and hurt by the insinuations of others.
The ambivalent, tolerant permanent smile that Amir Jadidi conjures up on his character’s face shimmers just as much friendliness and humility as arrogance and pride. Soltani wants to prove to everyone that he’s a good person, as if to take revenge for the suspicions and for ending up in prison.
The prison director is particularly impressed: A prisoner, through his own fault, returned a bag full of gold? The story breaks out, Mr. Soltani is interviewed on television, a charity awards him a certificate and holds a fundraising gala to pay off his debt. But if Soltani’s remorse was a mask for his pride, the selfless hero is now definitively the product of a mise-en-scène.
On the advice of the prison administration, Soltani pretended on television that it was not his fiancée who found the bag but himself. God showed him the way of honesty, he says, while his young son moves people to tears with his speech impediment. Still, these scenes aren’t just cynical and revealing, they’re also full of warmth and humanity. They show that honor and human goodness are fictions that become real because people are dying to believe in them. Just as Mr. Soltani, in his pride, is firmly convinced that he is a good person.
And so everything could be fine if it weren’t for the adamant creditor, Mr. Bahram. He is begged on all sides to take the money collected and waive the rest of the debt, considering Soltani’s honorable conduct. But he resists. Soltani only returned a bag, he argues, that doesn’t belong to him. Shouldn’t all the countless others who don’t steal and obey the law also be made heroes?
From this point things change. Because, according to this logic, the very moment honor is distinguished as something special, it disappears, revealing itself all the more to be the fiction it has been all along. Now the real nightmare can begin. The charity got Soltani a job with the city government so he could pay off his remaining debt.
When the hero has to prove his honesty, a Kafkaesque nightmare begins
But the official Soltani faces could also have come from a Kafka story or a Hitchcock film. He asks if he can prove his story, which is in the newspapers, if there are any witnesses. Suggestions have surfaced on social media that he made it all up. Soltani tries, but the woman who got her gold back is gone. And in the increasing logic of suspicion Soltani loses more and more ground under his feet – as do the viewers.
Because when the truth in Farhadi only slowly unfolds, it becomes more and more intangible. Crucial events of the past also remained hidden in the director’s earlier works: a suicide attempt in “Le passé – The Past”, an attack on an actress in “The Salesman”. Nothing would be further from his cinema than flashbacks, which would clarify the “true” history of the bag with the gold in “A Hero”. The fact that Farhadi thus assigns his viewers a position where they never know too much, without claiming this knowledge as an author himself, is one of the most beautiful qualities of his cinema, and one of the rarest qualities in cinema today.
That leaves the monumental rock tomb of Xerxes and the question of why the film begins there of all places. As if Mr. Soltani were returning to a place where everyone greets him, even recognizes him, and where he recognizes himself, where he can associate himself with a past heroic greatness. Xerxes means “ruling over heroes”.
This monumentality contrasts with the day-to-day business of Mr. Soltani, who is a calligrapher and house painter by trade. In prison he papers, paints and paints over walls. “You’re covering everything up anyway,” a fellow inmate, jealous of his sudden celebrity, tells him, meaning the truth.
But the whitewashing has not only a moral, but also a historical aspect. Finally, the proud Lord Soltani decorates the walls of the prison just as the artists of Xerxes did his burial chamber thousands of years ago. As if the prison were Soltani’s heroic tomb, on the walls of which he will leave his mark.
“The man has to move ages when whitewashing,” is how Walter Benjamin once described the peculiarity of Franz Kafka’s literature. The secret of Asghar Farhadi’s enormous and yet almost inconspicuous film art lies between the heroic and the everyday, the monumentality of world ages and the painting of walls.
ghahreman, Iran, France, 2021. – Directed and written by Ashgar Farhadi. Camera: Ali Ghazi. With Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Sahar Goldoost. New Visions film distribution, 127 minutes. Theatrical release: March 31, 2022.