“A Hero” is the celebrated Iranian film playing at the M.V. Film Center. Winner of the Cannes Grand Prize and nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar, “A Hero” is written and directed by Asghar Farhadi. Farhadi earned a Best Screenwriting Oscar nomination for the film, as well as for “A Separation” (2011), which also won an Oscar, along with his 2016 film “The Salesman.”
“A Hero” stars Amir Jadidi as the debtor Rahim Soltani. Mohsen Tanabandeh plays his creditor and relative Bahram; and Sahar Goldust, Rahim’s fiancée Farkhondeh. What happens to Rahim after he is said to return a lost handbag filled with gold coins is the film’s story. Rahim’s honesty marks him for a complicated and heartbreaking round of troubles.
A sign painter and calligrapher in the Iranian city of Shiraz, Rahim is furloughed for two days from debtor’s prison when the viewer meets him. He has been confined there because he’s unable to repay a business loan to save him from bankruptcy. He hopes to persuade Bahram to forgive his debt if he repays him partially and works to pay the rest. But an angry Bahram isn’t interested in forgiving Rahim’s debt so he can get out of prison. He’s resistant to letting Rahim off the hook, since he sold his wife’s jewelry and used his daughter’s dowry to provide the money he lent Rahim.
Meanwhile, Farkhondeh finds a lost handbag containing 17 valuable gold coins. They decide Rahim should use the coins to pay his debt, but he changes his mind and decides instead to do the honorable thing and let Farkhondeh return the money to its rightful owner. Rahim takes credit for the return.
Rahim becomes celebrated for his altruism, and a prison charity collects money to help him get out of prison. The newspaper involved in the story asks Rahim to find the woman to whom he returned the purse. This is not so easy, since this woman is afraid her unemployed husband will find out about the gold coins and waste them.
The tale continues with each character complicating the story, until it comes out that Rahim didn’t find the handbag or return it. Why has he fibbed?
The charity withholds the money raised for Rahim, particularly since another distraught woman, whose husband will be hanged without it, implores the charity to give her the money. Rahim confronts the hostile Bahram and gets into a fight with him, and since Bahram’s daughter has taken a video of the fight, the danger develops that it will go viral unless Rahim pays back his debt.
When rumors circulate that Rahim’s claim of returning the lost handbag is bogus, Rahim tries to redeem himself by finding the woman who lost her purse and taking her to the newspaper to explain. Persuaded, the newspaper videos Rahim’s son, but because his son stutters, Rahim demands the video of his son be deleted. As if that isn’t enough, Rahim gets into another fight. So it goes for poor Rahim.
Rahim’s honesty about what happened causes him untold misery, as the people he meets bring their own complications to the issue of the lost handbag. “A Hero” describes what happens to a basically innocent man in prison for a debt he can’t repay.
Information and tickets for “A Hero” are available at mvfilmsociety.com. For information about films playing at Edgartown Cinemas, visit entertainmentcinemas.com/locations/edgartown/.