An Analysis of Intertextual References in Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman

Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman makes numerous references to many works of art and literature, which function as both hidden and obvious signals and affect the viewers’ understanding of the film. This article intends to investigate some of these references and parallels between Farhadi’s film and other works of art, thus allowing for a more precise understanding of the movie’s themes and an appreciation of the characters’ actions and decisions. Among these works, other than Death of a Salesman, we can note W. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, I. Bergman’s Shame, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, B. Alavi’s Gile Mard [The Man from Gilan], Gh. Sa’edi’s G􀆗v [The Cow], H. Matisse’s paintings, and else. Our objective is to show how the hidden and obvious intertextual relations of the film could affect our readings of it and its central themes and thus our experience of it. In the context of these intertextual relations and references in The Salesman, the central theme of the film can be defined as follows: the contrast between modernity and traditions, and the perplexity of the protagonist confined between contradictory systems and networks of value. The character is involved in a situation where he is determined to act modern, but his environment constantly pushes him back toward traditions, leading to his metamorphosis. This perplexity is amplified, on the one hand, by repetition of the archetype of “the decline of the father” and the absence of any other form of support and guidance and, on the other, by the resonation of a traumatic past and its destructive effects on the future.