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Fireworks Wednesday Movie Review

Fireworks Wednesday is a 2006 Iranian drama film directed by Asghar Farhadi and starring Hedieh Tehrani and Taraneh Alidoosti. It is a very good movie.

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“Your wife would’ve preferred seeing you

with a whore than with another woman“

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On the last Wednesday before the spring solstice ushers in the Persian New Year, people set off fireworks following an ancient Zoroastrian tradition. Rouhi, spending her first day at a new job, finds herself in the midst of a different kind of fireworks – a domestic dispute between her new boss and his wife. Of all the movies released before ‘About Elly’ that ushered in the great period of amazing Farhadi films, this one is the best by far and it signaled great things to come for the director.

There is one issue that I’ve had with the movie and that is its overly soapy approach at times, especially in regards to all the intrigue between the characters, which does seem realistic to a degree, but it was overdone in certain sections. The movie also takes its time to get there owing to a rather slow beginning.

With that being said, the film flows well in the second half and the main theme of the complicated nature of male-female relationships was superbly explored. All of the different dynamics were immensely realistic, extremely so for a movie.

But the true star is the dialogue. Farhadi always excelled at dialogue and he did co-write the script of this vehicle. The way people talk in Fireworks Wednesday is truly incredible. This is how real people in real life talk. You can rarely see this type of realism in an American or even European movie, which is something that Iranian cinema does best.

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There are some moments here that are so emotionally charged and so complex and raw that they emulated real life arguments that all of us experience at many points in our lives, making the movie highly relatable. The performances are also uniformly excellent with the standouts being Tehrani and Alidoosti. The ending did not fully stick the landing, but for the most part the screenplay was phenomenal here while the cinematography effortlessly captured each argument and the character’s inner turmoil.