Everybody Knows Analysis

Everybody Knows

Written & Directed by: Asghar Farhadi

Starring: Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz

Premiered at Cannes Film Festival 2018.

Asghar Farhadi has a unique voice, his films are suspense dramas set in middle class families - where because of a mishap, the family is in a situation where they rediscover their relationships and dynamics. In this film, it's the kidnap of their teenage daughter and how they manage to arrange ransom for their kidnappers. It seems so simple on a logline level, but with every added detail in this - it keeps getting more complex, in terms of plot, theme and character. We get to know that the child happened when the mother cheated with her ex, and we know a lot more things. Asghar Farhadi's films are more stimulating to the brain that to the heart, but they hit you hard because sometimes they question your belief system. It's not just the complexity of the situation, it's how the drama unfolds at each revelation - that is what tells us about the world and the characters and keeps us hooked - that's the reason his films are extremely riveting.

As always, this film too doesn't have any background score throughout - it is all sound design and even without any music to uplift tensions, the scenes have high tension just because of the writing and the performances. The editor Hayadeh Safiyari - Asghar Farhadi's regular collaborator - respects our attention span and she doesn't cut with conventional transitions - she mostly uses the constrast in the soundscape to cut and it's so brave editing. The cinematography is by Jose Luis Alcaina, who is a frequent collaborator with Pedro Almodovar - who uses strong colors to bring in contrast between scenes - but in this film it's purely an Asghar Farhadi's world - handheld and dynamic. This film ends the mystery without any twists, which indicates that it's all about the drama that unfolds in the setting of a missing child and not about the mystery itself.