But the texture of daily frustration, so rough and real in Farhadi's film, feels more abstract in Pitts's cautious hands; the rooms and the landscapes are framed with poise, although I can't decide whether he is depicting a genuinely hemmed-in soul or honoring a debt to Jean-Pierre Melville.
If American teenagers long to be free and to find themselves, Vietnamese are taught filial obligation, forever honoring and fulfilling a debt incurred in their name.
honors student, to settle a debt.
His determination to keep hammering at the problem was rooted in what he considers an honor debt he owes to veterans.
Many of the best-known martial arts video games owe "Guillotine" a debt of honor, too, if not a legal debt from what is known in the West as copyright infringement.
"Memory is a debt of honor owed by war's survivors to war's casualties," said Ben Chitty, who served two Navy tours in Vietnam.
In the court case that follows, Fereshteh's father contracts a debt of honor to the man he persuades her to marry.
Nonetheless, a debt of honor must be upheld, and they set off into the Scottish hinterlands beyond Hadrian's Wall, where Marcus's father had commanded a legion that vanished, along with its eagle.
He feels a debt of honor, and although no one ever says it, the B-picture motto -- "somebody's got to pay" -- reverberates through what passes for a plot.
There are more satisfying examples, like "Babette's Feast" and "Big Night," which, though stuffed with delectable detail, are about something more than eating; the heroine of the first movie, for instance, is primarily repaying a debt of honor, not just entombing quails in pastry.
The goal, in other words, is to carve out exceptions, at least for the moment, for people who have the most obvious routes to challenge the order in court and for some whose plight is particularly conspicuous, such as translators who worked for the U.S. in Iraq, to whom many in the military (and beyond) feel a debt of honor.
