Fireworks Wednesday

Chaharshanbe-soori (2006) was shown in the U.S. with the title "Fireworks Wednesday. It was written and directed by Asghar Farhadi.

This movie really has two plots. One plot line involves a young working class woman who who will be married in a week. She starts work at the apartment of a wealthy family. Just a few minutes into the plot we realize that this is a dysfunctional family. The husband has flown into a rage and smashed a window with his fist. (He has a bandage in his hand throughout the movie.) The wife suspects that her husband is having an affair. She enlists the young maid to spy for her.

The relationship between the wife and the husband is the second plot line. Is the husband truly having an affair, or is this a neurotic obsession on the part of the wife?

(There's a third subplot about a man who parks his car just outside the gates of the apartment. He appears friendly enough, but I could never figure out what he was doing there. Probably everyone who saw the movie in Iran understood perfectly well what was happening. I couldn't get it. Even so, two solid plots are plenty for one movie.)

The reason the movie is called "Fireworks Wednesday" is because it's the Persian New Year, and everyone is shooting off fireworks. Fireworks are everywhere. I've never been to a movie--including war movies--with so many explosions in it. After a while, your brain partly shuts out the sound, but it's always there.

This is a powerful, dramatic, well-acted film. Although it's a drama, there are many funny moments. For example, the young outside worker and the older woman who works as concierge bond immediately. They'll never be in the upper class, but that doesn't mean they can't laugh at the weird rich people for whom they work.

The two female leads in the movie are extraordinarily talented. Hedye Tehrani plays the wife & Taraneh Alidoosti plays the domestic worker.

We saw this movie at home on the small screen, and it worked very well. It has a very high IMDb rating of 7.8, so I'm not alone in my admiration of it.

If you like unusual, interesting foreign films, with great direction and great acting, find this movie and enjoy it!

A really engaging early film from Farhadi. Many of the themes he's become known for of course make an appearance here, namely those of family, mistrust, home, neighbours, honour, divorce, children trapped between fighting parents, modernity v tradition, rich and liberal v modest and conservative. Unlike the Salesman (2016) though and the Past (2013) there is a fair bit of humour here though mainly coming from our sweet natured cheerful protagonist and her unworldly ways. As a young working-class girl with an idealistic view of her coming marriage to her finance she finds herself in for a shock when she meets the highly strung neurotic rich lady she's to clean for. Her dysfunctional marriage becomes the centre of the plot, though we explore this world through our protagonist innocent eyes. Is the lady paranoid in her fears about her husband or is she right to worry? Fireworks and firecrackers are present throughout unnervingly snapping and exploding throughout the long tense day.

The real strength of the director is unpacking information slowly to keep the audience hocked, withholding things to keep us intrigued, every single shot in this film somehow holds your attention, he takes the mundane and packs it full of detail. The cinematography also gives it a cool, subdued look with a slightly sickly colour, very pasty but perfect for its tone. The score isn't that noticeable which is how I think a drama film like this should be. The acting is so strong you quickly forget it's happening. Another superb strength is how the characters are feel like real fleshed out people struggling with their personal troubles, their actions all feel real and never contrived, nobody is perfect as they say. I could watch this again and again. The Iranian language and culture also give it an exotic foreign touch.

Highly recommended.

Another gem of a portrait, Fireworks Wednesday is a effective & impressive domestic drama which remains to be Asghar Farhadi's underrated masterpiece. Featuring a gripping plot that gets better as the story progresses, tightly structured screenplay, captivating performances from its cast & tight editing, Asghar Farhadi creates an amazing picture. Covering themes of lies, deception, marriage & infidelity from the eyes of an engaged young woman, while also keeping its narration perfectly stable by finding a fine balance between its suspense, mystery & drama, Fireworks Wednesday is a faith-shattering cinema that's powerful and thoroughly recommended.

It's the last Wednesday of the Iranian new year and in the old Persian tradition kids and adults alike take to fireworks in the streets. Meanwhile in a block of apartments all forms of human emotions are on display. Mojdeh suspects that her husband is having an affair with the hairdresser in the flat next door. She feels cheated and isolated and on the eve of their departure to another country, she is having a total breakdown. A young girl who, on the eve of her marriage, has come to earn some money by house cleaning in Mojde's flat, becomes a pawn in a game of love and hate, truth and deception between all the involved parties.

Chaharshanbe-soori is destined to be known as another turning point in the history of Iranian cinema. Seldom have such adult themes been treated with such depth and by acting of a quality rarely seen in Iranian movies. All the main actors here are simply magnificent. Hedyeh Tehrani has never been better. Direction, script, camera work and editing are all world class. Chaharshanbe-soori nabbed four "Iranian Oscar" awards for best director, actress, editing and audience award; as well winning the best film prize at Chicago International Film festival and Tribeca Film Festival. It's one of those movies that crawls under your skin and stays in the memory long after the movie is over.

A wide-eyed bride-to-be gets a temp job as a housemaid, and finds herself in the middle of an explosive situation, and not just from the fireworks celebration of the New Year. Yet another fantastic movie from Iran, brimming with intense yet somehow understated family drama... something like Cassavetes, perhaps. The performances are all really good, especially Hedye Tehrani as the jealous wife (to continue the Cassavetes comparison, she's got kind of a Gena Rowlands thing going on). Although the commentary on gender roles will have more meaning to an Iranian audience, there is a universality to the situation and the interactions. These could easily be American characters, in an American city. Using the noise of the fireworks to punctuate the drama, however, is a little too obvious.