......a top level cast, director, and writer.
Imagine a
movie so real and immediate that it seems to be unfolding right in front of you.
This is A Separation, Iran's entry for this year's Best Foreign Language
Film at the Academy Awards. This story of the endless complexities of marriage
and family explains the wide appeal of this film. Universal institution,
universal problems. Imagine further a film with no villains, just decent people
reacting within the parameters of their culture to whatever life throws at them.
A series of events unfolds, each one leading inevitably to the next, with the
next always bringing a new set of complications.
The first
extraordinary scene sets the stage for a chain of circumstance that soon
envelops two families. Simin (Leila Hatami) and her husband Nader (Peyman Moadi)
have come before a judge because Simin wants to leave Iran with her husband and
daughter for a better life. Nader refuses because he won't leave his father who
has Alzheimer's. Right then, Simin, in a burst of anger, begs her husband to
leave with her. "Your father doesn't even know you," she says, and he replies,
"Yes, but I know he is my father." And so we learn that we are in the presence
of a top level cast, director, and writer.
Simin then
sues for divorce so she can leave with her daughter. When the judge denies her
motion, Simin moves back to her parents' home. Daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi)
chooses to stay with her father. The cascade of problems that ensues endangers
all the values so important to the family.
Nader hires
Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to take care of his father while he is at work. When she
leaves the house on an errand that violates the tenets of care giving, the
domestic routine is destroyed by circumstance. Nader is a decent man overwhelmed
by a sick father and his own work. No one is wrong; everyone is decent and kind,
but they are all thrown off their normal pace and into the vagaries of blame and
anger by the events that began with Simin's departure. Temeh, the daughter,
demands to know the truth behind the trouble, but there is no exact truth
because these are, after all, human beings.
All through
its length, director Asghar Farhadi poses questions that he never answers. Would
the daughter, Termeh, have had a better life if the family had emigrated? Was
Razieh validated in holding the secret that unraveled two families? Did Razieh
hold her damaging secret because of her husband's violent temper?
We look to
blame someone - always the easiest way - but we can't because these are all good
people under siege by circumstance and choices. As each cherished value comes
under attack, the emotions of one person or another spiral upward in an
emotional eruption. Credit this group of extremely fine actors with sending us
away still trying to fit together the jig saw puzzle of the human condition.
That's a gift.
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