1986 Winner, The Assault

The Assault

Director:  Fons Rademakers

Distributed by:  Cannon Films

Released:  February 1986

Country:  The Netherlands

Blame is an important concept to the human animal.  Contrary to the musical musings of Mr. Howard Jones, someone is to blame most of the time.  When we can’t find our car keys, the first thought isn’t usually, “Why am I such a bonehead?  Can’t I put them in the same place every time?”  Much more likely, we’ll accuse, “Who stole my car keys?”  Conversely, sometimes we blame ourselves unfairly for things beyond our control, like saying your team lost because you wore the wrong style of Underoos on Game Day, or blaming yourself for your mama’s back issues because you stepped on a crack on a sidewalk somewhere.  And hell, maybe somebody DID steal the car keys.

The Assault, a Dutch film from 1986, is a story about who to blame when a young boy’s family is murdered.  It’s 1945 Netherlands, and the war is winding down.  Most of Europe is free from Nazi occupation, but ten-year-old Anton’s part of the world is suffering what would come to be known as "the Hunger Winter," abject poverty in the occupied Netherlands.  One night, after Anton, his parents, and his brother Peter share a bowl of soup for dinner, they hear some gunfire outside.  To their dismay, they see a known Nazi collaborator named Fake (fah-keh, I think) Ploeg lying dead in the street, shot while riding his bicycle. Normally, you would think this wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but when we see the neighbors moving dead Fake in front of Anton’s house, you realize:  when the Nazis find him, they are going to blame someone.  Anton is too young to do anything, but Peter tries to convince everyone it would be better to move the Nazi carcass to some other unlucky sap’s yard.  But before he can do it, the Gestapo arrives.  Next thing you know Anton is taken away to jail, and if the Nazis take a ten-year-old to jail, you can guess the rest of the family isn’t going to fare much better.

Underoos are fun to wear! Something super-new in underwear!

So, who is to blame?  The neighbors, whose moving the body led to Anton's family’s being accused?  Peter, who should have acted more quickly, or with more compassion?  Perhaps Anton's father, who hemmed and hawed, unable to make a decision?  Maybe whoever shot good old Fake Ploeg?  Radical thought:  The Nazis?

The film follows Anton throughout his life in post-war Europe, dealing with his troubles and trying to figure out the meaning of it all.  There are a few twists along the way, like his encounter years later with an old boyhood chum, who happens to be Fake’s son.  There is also a strange correlation between a woman he meets in prison the night of his family's arrest and the woman he would later marry--implausibly, they look remarkably alike.  I found this confusing, since the two women were played by the same actress.  I could find no significance to this detail.  The story also flashes forward a few times from 1945, and ends in the early 80’s when the people who had to deal with Nazis are now marching in the streets to ban the bomb.  The Netherlands have changed quite a bit from the Hungry Winter.

To this point, this is the first film I couldn’t find online or on DVD, and could only get my hands on a videotape from the library.  I had to blow the dust off my VCR and remove my copy of Jeff Stein’s 1979 rockumentary The Kids Are Alright, which had been sitting in the machine a few years after my attempt to indoctrinate my middle son on The Who a while back.  This also was the first Best Foreign Film that I could only find dubbed in English, rather than having English subtitles.  While I found the film to be enjoyable, it was distracting at times to hear the voice actors over stating their lines.  But I can't blame the actors for it, or the library system for not having the film on DVD.  If I have to blame someone, why not the Nazis?

The Title:  De aanslag, in Dutch

The Culture:  When I think Amsterdam in World War II, I think Anne Frank.  This film gave me a somewhat more general view of what it must have been like just waiting for the war to end but still having to deal with the fact it hadn't yet.

Agenda Danger:  I found some of the Ban the Bomb stuff at the end a bit silly, but I don’t think a message was intended.

Best Picture that year:   Platoon.  Oliver Stone is to blame for that one.

Rating:  A bit long, and good luck finding a copy, but I’d watch it again. 

2017 Winner, The Salesman

The Salesman

Director:  Asghar Farhadi

Distributed by:  Filmiran/Memento Films Distribution

Released:  May 2016

Country:  Iran

BERNARD: But sometimes, Willy, it’s better for a man just to walk away.

WILLY: Walk away?

BERNARD: That’s right.

WILLY: But if you can’t walk away?

BERNARD (after a slight pause): I guess that’s when it’s tough.  Good-by, Willy.

--from Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller

In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s tragic 1949 play, Willy Loman loves his sons, probably more than himself, but doesn’t know when to let their failures be their failures, and not his.  The Salesman, 2016’s Best Foreign Film winner, has its own Willy Loman character, a teacher and actor named Emad.  Like Willy, Emad will have a difficult time understanding that he can only control so much, and that as much as he may love his family, it is not always his place to protect them from their own difficulties.

Emad and Rana

Emad and his wife, Rana, live in an apartment building that is literally falling apart.  And when I say literally, I mean literally—one night they are forced to evacuate because it seems like the foundation has shifted and the whole structure may come down on them.  The couple have a friend named Babak who helps to set them up in a place where the former tenant had unexpectedly bailed, literally leaving everything behind her.  And when I say literally, I mean figuratively, because you can’t leave everything behind.  But this woman, it seems, left more than her material things in the apartment she abandoned, as Emad and Rana will soon learn.

Emad is a teacher of boys in a high school in Iran.  The kids think the world of him, like Robin Williams’ students do in Dead Poets Society.  They jokingly call him a “salesman,” because his other job is as an actor in a local theater, where his is starring as Willy Loman, with his wife as Willy’s wife Linda.  Emad and Rana clearly adore each other, and cheerfully are setting up themselves in their new place. 

Their relationship will get tested, though, when one day Rana, alone in the apartment, responds to the apartment bell by buzzing in her husband, leaving the door slightly ajar and going in for a shower.  Only it turns out it isn’t her husband at all, and the next thing you know, Emad is walking into the apartment to find blood on the shower floor and his wife nowhere to be seen.  He learns from neighbors that she was taken to the hospital, assaulted by the person Rana had let in.  Rana will eventually be okay, at least physically.

Hey Babak, maybe you coulda told us a hooker lived there!

This is where Emad has difficulty.  Rana doesn’t want to report the incident, and Emad does.  He feels like she should either report it so the police and handle it, or else drop it altogether.  This strains their relationship.  Emad does some investigating, and it becomes apparent that the former occupant was a prostitute.  Learning this also strains Emad’s friendship with Babak, whom he feels maybe could have mentioned that the previous tenant was a hooker.  Emad will struggle with this situation with agony:  He loves his wife and feels like he failed to protect her.  But like the guy he is portraying in Death of a Salesman, he must understand that the past is the past, and that his family has their own choices, and potentially mistakes, to make.

This is the second Best Foreign Film for Iran, both directed by Asghar Farhadi and starring Shahab Hosseini, who gives a wonderfully understated performance as Emad.  As in 2011’s A Separation, Farhadi allows the main turning point in the film to be muted, allowing the consequences to be the focus of the drama.  In that film, Hosseini’s character gently pushes a pregnant woman out of his apartment, and we only later see how life-altering this event will be.  In The Salesman, the assault happens off-camera, but the tension builds gradually afterward, as Emad deals with how his wife feels and his own need for vengeance.  Taraneh Alidoosti is excellent as Rana, more Biff than Linda in this story, having had to deal with a painful experience and needing to handle it on her own terms. 

What if you can't walk away?  I guess that's when it's tough

Farhadi has a knack for telling a simple story with simple characters, while raising complicated and thought-provoking questions.  In The Salesman, one of those complicated questions posed is when is it time to walk away?  Because if you can't, that is when it gets tough.

The Title: فروشنده‎ (in Persian), or Forušande.  Emad is the not a salesman by any meaning of the word, except that he plays Willy Loman in his neighborhood theater.  He is not the loser that Loman is, but like Loman, he acts irrationally, thinking he is helping his family.  The title of Miller’s play is itself a major spoiler—Emad’s fate is not in question, but his relationship with his wife is.

The culture:  As with A Separation, what struck me most with this film was its looking people on the other side of the world, seemingly so different from us as Americans, and putting them in situations that we can identify with.  Emad is a good man, and he is lucky to have such a partner as Rana, but his temper and his inability to check himself may lead to him losing her.

Agenda danger:  Famously, the director and actors boycotted the Academy Awards as a result of President Trump’s order temporarily blocking entry in the U.S. of Iranian citizens, as well as citizens of six other countries.  But this film has no political agenda or message.  It’s most controversial message is in pointing out the difficulty in communication between men and women, and in looking at when it is appropriate to forgive.

Best Picture that year:  La La Land.  Spotlight.

Rating:  Most early winners of the prize, from the 1940’s on, with the exception of some Japanese films, tended to be Italian, French, or otherwise European.  The Salesman, the second Iranian winner of the prize, is characteristic of American appreciation of film throughout the world (strangely though, India has never won the award).  What makes The Salesman so interesting is how American it is, right down to the Miller play that lends it its title.  Like what I consider to be the best Best Foreign Film winners, it provides a window into life in a place Americans may not be familiar with, and does so in a way relatable to folks who may have never lived more than a few miles from their birthplace.  Films like The Salesman are the reason more Americans should be willing to read subtitles when they go to the movies.