Dancing in the Dust

Dancing in the Dust tells the story of a young naive man named Nazar who is forced by his parents to divorce his wife because her mother is a prostitute. Although the divorce happens amicably, Nazar is still in love with her & wants to make some money so that he can pay back the loan he took for the marriage & a little to his wife. When even working double shifts is unable to prepare the money in time, Nazar flees the city in order to avoid arrest & ends up in a desert with a strange, mysterious man who catches snakes for a living. Knowing that catching snakes is a profitable business, Nazar tries to team with the old man who keeps avoiding him until Nazar's life is somehow endangered.

The whole film can be divided into two parts & isn't as interconnected as one would expect it to and the theme here is love & how far someone is willing to sacrifice for it. Asghar Farhadi's feature film debut may not be as amazing as I was expecting it to be (I watched his better films first, starting with A Separation & working my way backwards) but the seeds of what he would so ingeniously portray in his future films were planted beautifully in this one. The filmmaking style, the theme of moral complexities of human beings, the conflict of right vs right & a grounded portrayal of Iranian life feels more experimental in this film than necessary and overall, the end result is somewhat disappointing if you've seen the rest of his films. Nevertheless, Dancing in the Dust makes up for a fine, if not good enough, drama that could've been much more than what it turned out to be.