REVIEW: ‘Fireworks Wednesday’ chronicles marital argument from outsider’s eyes
Director Asghar Farhadi, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind A Separation, crafts a stirring drama centered on a married couple’s suspicions and lies in Fireworks Wednesday, which is currently playing the Film Forum in Manhattan, N.Y. The director is once again able to gather powerful performances from a stellar cast, and he does this without spinning a plot laced with theatrics. Instead, Fireworks Wednesday, like A Separation, is about the little, yet profound, despairs that take place within a relationship in modern-day Iran.
Fireworks Wednesday, from 2006, is easily one of the best films from the past decade.
Taraneh Alidootsi plays Roohi, an outsider to the marriage. She has been invited over as a maid to clean up the apartment of Morteza (Hamid Farokhnezhad) and Mozhde (Hediyeh Tehrani), a married couple with a young son. Roohi has arrived on an inauspicious day. Morteza and Mozhde are fighting over suspicions that Morteza has been unfaithful with a neighbor, Simin (Pantea Bahram).
Farhadi, who co-wrote the script with Mani Haghighi, has the viewer watch the drama unfold from Roohi’s eyes, and this is the best perspective to experience the events. She’s curious, a natural outsider and someone who is trying to learn a thing or two before her own nuptials. Watching Morteza and Mozhde fight — sometimes physically — offers an uncomfortable window into married life and the difficulty of living under the guise of suspicion.
The performances from Alidootsi, Farokhnezhad and Tehrani anchor the film. Alidootsi is wide eyed and yearning for respect and understanding. Her employers play her against favorites and ask too much of her time and patience.
Tehrani, perhaps the best of the main actors, plays a strong person, someone who cannot get away from the allegations she has made against her husband. Her role asks for the most emotion and despair. Farokhnezhad plays a character who is simultaneously charming, doting and secretive. He seems like a good father, but then he violently erupts at his wife. He seems to patch up problems and then allows more issues to surface.
Bahram offers a fitting portrait of the neighbor who is accused of carrying on the affair with this married man. She befriends Roohi and seemingly is uninvolved, but Mozhde has her doubts.
Most of the action takes place in the apartment, the hallways and surrounding area on “Fireworks Wednesday” or “Red Wednesday,” the Persian new year. The movie doesn’t pack as emotional a wallop as A Separation, mostly because the drama never leaves these four characters. But there is so much to enjoy, learn from and be engaged with that the 100 minutes pass by with ease.
Farhadi is an important voice on the stage of international cinema, and Fireworks Wednesday, an earlier film than A Separation, proves his artistry. He finds the hurt and pain in ordinary life, and his close, almost microscopic dissections of family life reveal so much about modern-day relationships in Iran and around the world.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
- Fireworks Wednesday
- In Farsi with English subtitles
- 2006
- Directed by Asghar Farhadi
- Written by Farhadi and Mani Haghighi
- Starring Taraneh Alidootsi, Hamid Farokhnezhad, Hediyeh Tehrani and Pantea Bahram
- Running time: 100 minutes
- Rating:
