This image provided by Amazon Studios shows Amir Jadidi in a scene from “A Hero.”
This image provided by Amazon Studios shows Saleh Karimai, left, and Amir Jadidi in a scene from “A Hero.”
This image provided by Amazon Studios shows Sahar Goldust in a scene from “A Hero.”
This image provided by Amazon Studios shows Mohsen Tanabandeh, from left, Saleh Karimai and Amir Jadidi in a scene from “A Hero.”
This image provided by Amazon Studios shows Sahar Goldoust, left, and Amir Jadidi in a scene from “A Hero.”
In Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s films, reasonably straightforward set-ups — a divorce, a missing woman, a newly lent apartment — unspool such complex, cascading developments that it comes as no surprise that a found handbag stuffed with gold coins leads to countless fluctuations of fortune and anguish in his latest, “A Hero.”
In movies, we tend to reserve the term “magician” for more spectacle-driven filmmakers who spin visual-effects illusions. But Farhadi’s mastery is at least equally spellbinding, even while being rooted in realistic domestic dramas, with Tehran traffic usually buzzing all around. His films (including the Oscar-winners “A Separation” and “A Salesman,” the early masterwork “About Elly” and the French drama “The Past”) are schematically drawn, full of twists and turns so seamless as to be invisible. Elaborate mechanics are deftly hidden in engrossing, minutely observed stories. Before you know it, a melodrama of modern life has been woven so tightly with psychological suspense that you can hardly breathe.
“A Hero,” in which Farhadi returns to his native Iran after a trip to Spain for 2018’s “Everybody Knows,” is one of the most labyrinthine moral tales you’re likely to encounter. Rahim (Amir Jadidi) is imprisoned for a debt he couldn’t pay. We first meet him while he eagerly takes a two-day leave, meeting with his girlfriend Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldust), who clutches her lucky discovery, one that may free her love and allow them to marry. The discovered gold, though, doesn’t add up to quite enough to satisfy his creditor, a miserly printshop owner named Hossein (Ali Reza Jahandideh). Rahim makes the decision to instead report the lost bag and return it to its owner.
