The only reason I can come up for “The Salesman” winning the best foreign film Oscar was the Academy members voting for it because the director, ASghar Farhadi refused to come to the USA in protest of Trump’s immigration executive order!

The two leads, Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti, play actors appearing in a stage show of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” and are shown at the theatre performing in front of audiences. Why? I don’t know, except maybe to give the film a title, as it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the film or what takes place. Yes I can give a farfetched explanation regarding the famous line from the play, “Attention must be paid” but that is farfetched!

The film opens with the couple having to move because their building may collapse and sets up for the assault that takes place and brings in a character, Babak Karimi, an actor who works with the husband and wife in the play who may or may not be the assaulter. Also the assault may or may not have included rape.

There were a total of 5 seconds that aroused my interest in the film; the first being where, because of Iranian culture where the movie takes place, a character in the play is suppose to be in a revealing negligee the actress is fully dressed and the second is when someone is slapped unexpectedly.

“The Salesman” runs a little over 2 hours and you can find better things to do with those 2+ hours.

Movie Trailer “The Salesman”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-61yYjKHHc

In 1989 there was a very popular play and movie called “Shirley Valentine” which could be summarized as a middle-aged housewife, wondering what happened to her life. When a friend wins a vacation, Shirley begins to see the world, and herself, in a different light.

In “Year By The Sea” Karen Allen plays Joan who is facing two crisis in her life with the first experiencing a mother whose children have left the nest and the second being her husband telling her that his firm is closing the office in the area they and he made the decision they would transfer to Wichita without talking to her first.

Joan, a writer, makes her own decision to take off to Cape Cod for a year to write a new book and find out who she really is besides being a mother, wife and writer.

We take that journey with her and a splendid cast made up of Allen, Celia Imrie, S. Epahta Merkerson, Yannick Bisson, Michael Cristofer among others.

“Year By The Sea” is a pleasant film, easy to watch, but it is the many glorious shots of the sea and the surrounding area that are really the star of the movie.

Movie Trailer “ Year By The Sea”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAlD3YxZCGw