A Hero: An ending homage that befits a masterful film
Spoilers ahead for A Hero (2021) and The Searchers (1956) among others…
“The most detestable habit in all modern cinema is the homage. I don’t want to see another goddamn homage in anybody’s movie, there are enough of them which are unconscious.”
So said Orson Welles speaking at a Paris film school in 1982.
But what is the line between unconscious and deliberate? Who decides?
The Searchers, John Ford’s best Western, features one of the most iconic film endings of all time: our ‘hero’ (a racist, violent war veteran called Ethan) has finally rescued Lucy from Native Americans after a 10-year search but as the family all gather in the house at last Ethan doesn’t — he can’t, he doesn’t belong in family life — and instead he heads back out into the wilderness, Ford surrounding him with the doorframe he can’t enter.
As Martin Scorsese wrote:
“You’re left with a mystery. In this case, the mystery of a man who spends 10 years of his life searching for someone, realizes his goal, brings her back and then walks away. Only an artist as great as John Ford would dare to end a film on such a note. In its final moment, The Searchers suddenly becomes a ghost story. Ethan’s sense of purpose has been fulfilled, and like the man whose eyes he’s shot out, he’s destined to wander forever between the winds.”
The ending of The Searchers has since been referenced in films from The Godfather, to Avengers: Age of Ultron, to Inglorious Basterds. Most of these are almost certainly deliberate (if this is the first time you’ve had it pointed out, be prepared to see it everywhere).
Author Cormac McCarthy once said: “The ugly fact is books are made out of books, the novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.” And that ‘ugly fact’ is, for all of Orson’s bluster and proselytising, true of films too. Perhaps more so now than ever.
Such is the status of The Searchers in the great film pantheon that almost any framing of a doorway can be interpreted as a reference or an homage.
A new Iranian film has joined the not-so-exclusive club: Asghar Farhadi’s brilliant A Hero.
Our ‘hero’, Rahim, is in prison due to an outstanding debt when his secret girlfriend finds a handbag full of gold coins. He returns it to its rightful owner and is soon catapulted to publicity by his good deed but things quickly turn sour and questions are raised about not just his deed, but also his past.
Firstly, it is impossible to talk about A Hero without lavishly praising leading man Amir Jadidi, who treads a perfect tightrope of desperation and, possibly, deceit (his performance is the antithesis of the overblown Howard Ratner by Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems, a character a world away but in similar circumstances).
Rahim’s smile is always strained and there’s a disbelieving rage scarcely hidden beneath the surface when someone doubts his story or, worse in Iranian society, slanders his name.
You want to trust him and to believe him but director Farhadi leaves just enough questions lingering over his past and the discovery of the bag to make you wonder just what exactly is going on — and is Rahim deceiving us too.
“I didn’t lie,” he tells his sister Malileh (Maryam Shahdaei), as his good fortune turns bad. “But you didn’t tell the truth,” she replies.
A Hero, currently streaming on Amazon Prime, is a triumph and a possible Oscar winner later this month.
Much like Parasite the film transcends its country of origin to reflect pervasive issues across the 21st century (in this case, the power of a social media backlash and the struggles of the working class).
Farhadi manages the former despite barely showing a screen. There are no inset shots of mobile phones or computer monitors, instead Rahim simply reactd as best he can to a whirlwind happening almost entirely off screen.
He is spinning various stories to various people (prison officials, charity workers, his own family), desperate to be believed as his story warps and changes to serve different masters (Rahim’s lack of agency despite his desperation is a recurring theme and makes him an interesting counterpoint to the aforementioned Howard in Uncut Gems).
The film ends with Rahim heading back to prison, having effectively resigned himself to his own untrustworthiness and still unable to pay back his debt. The social media mob has won.
He sits just inside the prison building as a fellow inmate is released, the doorway to the outside world tantalisingly close but still so far away, a doorway to a world he is not allowed to be a part of. Yet.
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