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Alors que Asghar Farhadi fait actuellement l’actualité cinématographique pour la sortie de son nouveau film, Le passé, l’heure est enfin venue pour moi de découvrir son oeuvre précédente, Une séparation, qui avait remporté l’Ours d’or à Berlin.

L’histoire est celle d’un couple qui se sépare. Nader engage alors une aide-soignante dont il ignore qu’elle est enceinte et que son mari est en pleine dépression depuis qu’il a été viré de son job. Cela se passe plutôt bien jusqu’à ce que Nader découvre un jour son père ligoté, au pied de son lit, et seul. Lorsque la femme rentre, une dispute éclate et Nader pousse l’aide-soignante. Le soir-même, il apprend qu’elle a été hospitalisée pour une fausse-couche.

S’engage alors une attaque juridique de la part de la jeune femme auquel Nader va se défendre. Avec ce postulat, Farhadi évoque la société iranienne, bien loin de certains clichés ou images que l’on a d’autres cinéastes. Certes, la représentation n’est pas toujours glorieuse, mais elle a le mérite de ne pas être manichéenne. Ici, on a une famille bourgeoise, dont la religion ne semble pas avoir beaucoup de place, mais en pleine fracture et de l’autre une famille pauvre, démunie où l’Islam possède une importante part dans la vie de tous les jours. Il suffit de voir par exemple, les appels de la femme pour savoir si l’argent qu’elle pourrait obtenir est impur ou non, ou si changer le vieillard n’est pas interdit.

C’est donc la confrontation de ces deux sociétés qui est proposée par Farhadi. Mais le plus intéressant dans son film demeure le jeu de mensonges et de vérités qui apparait au fur et à mesure de l’oeuvre et surtout qui garde une crédibilité par rapport aux personnages.

Les acteurs sont certainement le point le plus positif de cette oeuvre. Ils sont tous remarquables avec une mention un peu plus spéciale pour moi pour le mari démuni. Il y a aussi quelques scènes touchantes entre Nader et son père. Le fils étant désoeuvré face à la maladie de son aîné.

Le gros problème réside pour moi dans le côté assez austère qui se dégage de l’oeuvre. De la sorte, même si je trouve le casting excellent, j’ai du mal à ressentir de l’émotion pour les personnages. Il manque aussi un cinéaste apportant de bien plus grands plans. Hormis celui du début et le final, vraiment très réussis, ça manque d’un certain savoir-faire. Peut-être une vision un peu trop réaliste du cinéma. Et quand ça manque d’émotion, j’accroche un peu moins.

Par contre, Farhadi est excellent dans son refus de manichéisme. Un cinéaste de toute façon à suivre.

Some people dislike films which are too serious. Of course, seriousness is everyday reality and this picture is a masterclass demonstration of true life tribulation which made me think & place myself in it’s scenario. Too many writers focus on falsified lifestyles, distorted characters, far-fetched scenarios and unreachable settings which regular folk just cannot possibly relate to.

I’ve never felt more empathy towards individual characters in a screenplay collectively – despite them all being almost totally at odds with each other. It seemed that every scene of this film was intricately crafted by direction to make the screenplay feel natural as opposed to sheer improvisation (if any of it is improvised; it’s the best I’ve seen). The realism of the story and performances grab hold of your attention tightly from the very start right through to the end keeping you at the edge.

There are no fillers or futile scenes bulking out the feature length 2 hours. Every line strictly pertains to an emotion-soaked, bad dream situation which could arguably happen to anyone. It continually surprised me along the way with extra revelations about the facts of the situation. The pace and intensity at which these facts are unveiled, made me feel as if someone was breaking news to me personally since the drama did such a good job at vesting my interest in everyone’s angle.

The film title didn’t presumably promote any anticipation of wild enjoyment to me so I slept on it for months. However, upon eventually firing it up, I discovered immediately that I painfully misjudged it as just some better-than-average rom-com leading to a break-up, wow… it is not that at all and is much much deeper than a mere separation on many levels; although that is the nucleus of the plot.

English Title: A Separation
Original Title: Jodaeiye Nader az Simin
Year: 2011
Country: Iran
Language: Persian
Genre: Drama
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Writer: Asghar Farhadi
Cast:
Peyman Moadi
Leila Hatami
Sareh Bayat
Shahab Hosseini
Sarina Farhadi
Merila Zare’i
Ali-Asghar Shahbazi
Kimia Hosseini
Babak Karimi
Shirin Yazdanbakhsh
Sahabanu Zolghadr
Armine Zeytounchian
Rating: 9/10

This film marks my first time steps into Iranian territory since TURTLES CAN FLY (2004, 8/10), this victory of Academy Awards’ BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR is a brilliant masterpiece, which thoroughly dissects a present-day moral tale in Tehran homing in a contentious accidental miscarriage revolving about two different families (the middle-class one and the underprivileged one), director Asghar Farhadi masterfully exploits the hand-held camera at its best-posed intimacy to conquer an immensely diligent script, which is sheer creme de la creme and ardently scales the heights of the most intimidating but convincing storytelling which is the best a film could bring about to its audience as an art media.

Sparking from a quotidian calamity, the film is confidently yet subtly probing its chain reactions about familial dysfunction, religion misemployment, moral integrity, marital coordination, parental education, nursing for senior citizens, etc. And the hidden truth has been incubating soundly and the sympathy is ample towards both sides and for myself the most appalling epiphany is the religious curse on the underclass mass, which ruthlessly turning the tables while the well-off citizen (for instance, the tutor) could blatantly testify an uncertain assertion under the oath of Quran, even shamelessly deny her cunning attempt to glean information by inducing a 4-year-older. Furthermore strikingly yet expectedly, the most severe collateral damage has been put upon the two children, the most innocent onlookers of the dispute, the final staring between the two girls are hauntingly disturbing, there palpable wounds which will never heal planting inside both two’s memories.

Mostly enclosed settings (inside the bourgeois couple’s apartment, their cars, the maid’s low-end shack, his husband’s cobbler’s house, the classrooms, police office and hospital) and an almost score-free deployment (which I hardly noticed until the ending), the vortex of seeking for the justice is tormenting everyone who are directed or indirected embroiled in. As an inward-delving essay, it is compelling from A to Z and leaves an unanswered question which literally does not need one since its irrelevant at all after the separation evolves into a bona-fide divorce.

All the major characters are potently organised and three of its four (Moadi, Bayat and Hosseini) all finish inside my top 10 performances of the year (sorry Hatami, rounding just outside the top tier), also the youngsters are tremendously great under their more compassion-arousing suits. The film presently is my silver medalist and Farhadi champions the BEST DIRECTOR stature in year 2011. So everything considered, the film has a sure fire to survive through the test of time of vindicating its niche in the masterpiece rank, which is my very sanguine appraisal.

ps: who’s taken the money?

I hesitated in posting this review onto Mubi because I hold the unpopular opinion of it. Forgive me.

This review @ my blog

A Separation
Jodaeiye Nader az Simin
2011
Independently produced by Farhadi

STARRING Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat, Sarina Farhadi
WRITTEN BY Asghar Farhadi
PRODUCED BY Asghar Farhadi
DIRECTED BY Asghar Farhadi

SHOT BY Mahmood Kalari
EDITED BY Hayedeh Safiyari
MUSIC BY Sattar Oraki
DISTRIBUTED BY Memento Films

Screened 2011-12-02

In the wake of the Green Revolution, Simin has had enough: it is time to leave Iran. She is denied a divorce from her husband, who seems willing to talk but refuses to leave his ailing live-in father, and is reluctant to take their daughter Termeh, who keeps her nose to the academic grindstone while avoiding the large questions floating between adults above her. Simin moves out and Nader must hold his family together during this period of indefinite uncertainty. Nader’s immediate necessity is securing a caregiver for his father, which appears to be awfully difficult in Tehran, and as soon as he finally does this an arbitrary misunderstanding leaves him throwing the lower class housekeeper out, accused of theft. And the rest of the film is spent handling this unfortunate encounter and its repercussions, which widen and gain momentum like ripples that become waves: Nader’s bureaucratic pissing match with the housekeeper’s histrionic husband, the pitiful tale of the desperate and foolish housekeeper herself, the existing marital tensions now brought to a boil between Nader and Simin, the precipitous physical condition of Nader’s father, the welfare of the daughter, public shame, and baffling legal distraction. Can Nader hold it together? Not really. In the end we remember that everybody is trying their hardest, we cannot turn on one another, but the system we’ve constructed often does not serve the interests of the individual. Alas Nader, alas Simin. Then there’s the housekeeper and her husband, representing the desperate Iranian lower class, who cannot help but hurt others when a single lapse one’s in self-preservation can lead to ruin. What’s alarming is the ease at which Nader’s seemingly stable middle class life is compromised by brief contact with Iran’s lower class.

What can I say about this film? I can say that every critic in the world seems to like it more than I did (though I liked it just fine), leaving me with a counter-reaction. The film did not emotionally affect me in a pronounced way – is this because of a ‘lost in translation’ disconnect? A lack of contextual knowledge? Or because the film itself left me wanting? (I do believe it’s the third option) Some research provided me with context and then my appreciation grew, though I will not forget the viewing experience; Farhadi simply left me wanting, enhanced by the topical nature of the story. This makes it sound as if I’m being specifically critical of Farhadi – whose career I do not know, though I did groan at missing 2009’s About Elly when I had the chance. I took from the story: “In Iran right now, people need one another more than ever, and are being driven apart.” Any messages about frustrating civic bureaucracy are relevant, sure, but film of the year? Story exceeds craft here and the story is heavily topical, so the more you are connected to Iran, the better. Perhaps I can say that the realism in Farhadi’s film doesn’t feel as visceral as such seen in the Romanian New Wave, the Dardenne brothers, Andrea Arnold, etc. The visual schema isn’t exactly riveting. The screenplay is functional. And much of the performance involves argument and one person shouting over another. So, really, I can only assume the praise exists because the film’s message is just that important. Perhaps it is.

Oh, and, um… A Separation is the first Iranian film to win the Golden Bear at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival. Now don’t my comments seem silly?

written by David Ashley

A Separation is one of the more expertly written, convincingly acted, and emotionally observant films in recent years. It is simultaneously both a taut high-wire act of suspenseful divergence and a free, open forum on human motivation. Asghar Farhadi, now the most important and promising filmmaker coming out of Iran as well as one of the most celebrated on the international circuit, is not interested in giving a Western audience a short-hand explanation of Iranian culture or politics in order to better understand the day-to-day plight of his rich, deftly orchestrated characters. Instead, Farhadi is interested in making us understand them from an evaluative, judiciary position using our own moral compass. The need for hard judgment, comprehensibly not a common requisite of modern cinema’s obsession with moral ambiguity, is forced into play by Farhadi’s film.

This approach may initially seem counter-intuitive, for how does one come to empathize with people of a foreign culture when made to interrogate their reasons and scrutinize their actions within a crisis that does, in fact, contain elements specific to their culture? If the ability to empathize through judgment is what’s in question here, A Separation answers with a definitive “yes”. This is a film presenting multiple individual realities and problems (stemming from the mundane, but ultimately proving momentous) that entrusts us to instinctively decipher them and apprehend the film’s wide range of emotions construed by numerous clashing viewpoints. The experience is engaging, perplexing, and by the end, fully surprising in terms of the humanity it reveals within Farhadi’s approach and our ability to empathize.

Right from the start of the film, Farhadi situates our perspective complicit with a family court judge as he hears the case for divorce between Nader (Peyman Moadi), a husband devoted to caring for his elderly father suffering from Alzheimer’s, and Simin (Leila Hatami), his wife devoted to her plans for their adolescent daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, the director’s own daughter) to leave the country with her towards a better life outside of Iran’s rigid policies. Each of them presents an impassioned yet sound case for why they must do what they must do, but the tense impasse that will inform and incite the film arises from Nader’s refusal to grant the separation his wife would need in order to travel abroad with their daughter. Simin refuses to leave without her, and in protest of the judge’s refusal to decide for them, she moves out of their home and in with her mother. To Simin’s surprise, Termeh, a quiet and sharp girl devoted to her education, refuses to go with her mother and strategically stays behind with her father, necessitating Simin to interact more regularly with Nader if she wants to spend time with her child.

Now feeling the full burden between care taking for his father, parenting alone, and his job, Nader hires Razieh (Sareh Bayat), a nanny who Simin knows through a friend, to care for his father and his home. Razieh, however, has her mind on her own matters that include her young daughter she must take to work, her unemployed, short-tempered husband who is unaware of her new job, and their new baby on the way. Tending to Nader’s father quickly proves to be too much as she begins to have complications with her pregnancy and the job requirements start to contradict her strict Islamic practices in regards to men. One afternoon, she exercises crucially poor judgment that adversely affects Nader’s father and justifiably sends Nader into an outrage, causing him to make his own crucial, violent mistake that may or may not have caused Razieh to eventually miscarry her baby. Suddenly embroiled in Razieh’s and her husband’s accusations at the same court his wife sought her divorce, Nader is now faced with murder charges and prison time that would render the care his father needs impossible. As their case progresses and further details surrounding the incident only complicate the validity of Razieh’s case and Nader’s part in her loss, Simin and Termeh begin to question Nader’s firm denial of the accusations, but nonetheless give whole-hearted attempts to help arrive at a resolution outside of the court system.

Within such an ethical conundrum of cause, effect, and shared liability as this, the greatest attribute of A Separation is how miraculously egalitarian it manages to be. It never vilifies a single act or decision, but warrants each and every one of them with the utmost respect. The suspense created by this film comes from our inability to find sole fault or to place blame on any one individual for what ensues, evenly distributing the guilt while making their actions entirely understandable. Everyone indeed has their reasons that, when considered individually, hold up and register as what most anyone would do given the personal situation of each character, even in the instances when Nader and Razieh decidedly bend the truth or don’t disclose it at all. When their reasons contend with the equally relatable reasons of others, all necessitate our reevaluation, a process that makes us aware that this film is an exercise in ethical debate in which every new piece of information changes our feelings about previous details.

Farhadi is intent upon demonstrating the relativity of truth and virtue, and the disquieting gray of moral ambiguity is the emotion he wishes to emphasize in the audience. His film is not so interested in arriving at the truth, but in presenting the facts for us to assess and draw our own conclusions, all the more thought-provoking in light of how skilled Farhadi nudges our alignment towards all sides. He solidifies our empathy by making sure to show Nader’s family as well as the family of his hired help are both operating under the same pressure despite their own social tensions and class disparities. Through the biting yet reasonable accusations of Razieh’s debt-fraught husband that Nader does not see them as people but only animals, the film does make it a theocratic class issue. But the distance from which we’ve been instructed to examine them shows their real issues are more ubiquitous than they can currently grasp. New York Times critic A.O. Scott recognizes both the cultural specificity and universality of these shared “petty, cumulative frustrations of modern city life… Simin and Nader must contend with work, their daughter’s schooling, Tehran traffic, and an officious and sometimes chaotic government bureaucracy.”

By the final quarter of the film, A Separation imperceptibly shifts back to the marital conflict it opened upon, reminding us the threat of change to Nader and Simin’s family was the central conflict all along. All Nader’s trials would not have produced results without the investigative efforts of Simin, who more than momentarily sets aside her own qualms to help her husband for the sake of preserving the failing remnants of their household. It’s as if Farhadi wanted this couple to endure one more tribulation that would determine whether or not their marriage could be sustained, their abilities to work in a crisis both admirable while indicative of their incompatibility. Much like the audience, their daughter Termeh has up to this point remained a studious observer, the final note sounding it is her life that will be most affected by her parents’ separation.

In the film’s closing hearing, the Iranian courts have left the decision of whether or not she will remain with her father or travel abroad with her mother entirely up to her. A Separation so beautifully crystallizes all of its poignant musings on the complex relativity in doing the right thing into this single moment. Termeh must choose the least detrimental way to preserve her family while ensuring her future. A defined outcome to it all was never Farhadi’s goal with A Separation, but the revelations afforded by continually debating morality are. “More than anything else, I think today’s world needs more questions than answers,” Farhadi says. “I’m not hiding the answers away from my viewers, I simply don’t know them. If you give an answer to your viewer, your film will simply finish in the movie theatre. But when you pose questions, your film actually begins after people watch it.”

One of the best films of 2011, Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” is an important film everyone should try to see. The film juggles many threads of thought, and choices that may or may not be morally sound. Farhadi wisely leaves audiences to sift through the moral ambiguity.

Nader (Peyman Moadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) are at a crossroads. They are married, but separated, with an 11-year-old daughter named Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) who is very bright. When the film opens, she is living with Nader, her father. Simin has gone to live with her parents at their house because Nader refuses to join her in moving out of Iran via a travel visa that expires in 40 days, which explains Simin’s urgency to leave sooner rather than later.

Simin wants to move her family to another country in order to provide a better life for Termeh. Nader feels he cannot leave Iran because of his elderly father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi) who has advanced Alzheimer’s. Simin does not understand Nader’s judgment that his father should come before their daughter’s well being, so she files for divorce.

Already a case of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, writer-director Farhadi weaves yet another complication into the story. Nader cannot manage to take care of his father on his own, so he hires a lower-class caretaker, a pregnant woman named Razieh (Sareh Bayat). She quickly becomes overwhelmed with the task of taking care of Nader’s father, and makes a crucial mistake, leading to further crisis in the lives of Simi and Nader.

There is so much to admire about “A Separation,” in which Farhadi provides audiences with a sincere and unflinching portrayal of real Iranian people trying to live their lives one day at a time.

These characters face stark human challenges that people everywhere face everyday: Financial stress, divorce, death and love. In an age when xenophobia still lurks around many corners, this film strips down these crass fears and reveals the humanity that remains. Farhadi’s script is a blessing, and he directs with perfect urgency and subtle grace.

Moadi and Hatami are riveting as a couple in a broken marriage. At every turn, they make decisions, trying to do the right thing, or at least what seems like the right thing at the time. We don’t always see eye to eye with them, but that makes “A Separation” all the more thrilling and sincere.

Farhadi rightfully took home the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film a few weeks ago, and most likely will win the Oscar at the upcoming Academy Awards. Now is a proud time for Iranian cinema.

Le film de Asghar Farhadi est d’une incroyable puissance narrative. En nous projetant dans ce quasi huit-clos entre 2 familles de l’Iran d’aujourd’hui, la réalisatrice parvient, via des personnages simples et forts, à toucher des problématiques complexes, tout en demeurant sur le fil tendu d’une histoire simple, amplie du quotidien. Qui ment ? Qui manipule ? Où est la vérité ? Un film magnifique sur la complexité humaine, sur ce qui s’avoue et se ment, ce qui se dit et se tait. Plus qu’une plongée nerveuse et physique dans l’Iran d’aujourd’hui, dans un drame familial admirablement construit, à la fois politique, philosophique et intimiste, où les tabous d’une société se bouleversent à mesure que l’histoire avance, avec une puissance narrative qui vous prend aux tripes.

This is one of the greatest films of the past few years, hands down. It’s a landmark film and a great accomplishment in contemporary Iranian cinema, tackling multiple issues with ease and bravura. Each character generates a fair amount of empathy thus turning the whole film into moral mayhem. It remains ambiguous even past the very last frame. The screenplay is the best I have seen this year thus far. The whole film is expertly crafted by writer, director, producer Asghar Farhadi. “A Separation” is a testament to restrained filmmaking. With a budget of only $300,000, Farhadi has created a masterpiece that runs circles around any film with a budget of anything higher. It deals with the reality of secrets and lies, not a romanticized version of them like most films do. It’s a real knockout and it’s such a shame foreign films don’t get traction in the Best Picture race at the Oscars because this would be a shoe-in. (A+)

Unlike the title, I was completely enthralled in this modern masterpiece. The pitch perfect story progression is deserving of the 5* rating in and of itself. The film opens and closes with a complacent and interpersonal gravity that echoes throughout the whole film. Each scene plays out with authenticity. The complex story never feels like it doesn’t have purpose and direction. It thrills at every turn until a thought out and satisfying ending. Each character had a purpose and a personality which shown through the performances in a hauntingly real way. You get immersed in this world, the characters, and the culture. You forget you’re watching a fictional movie. In fact, this film is a perfect example of the engaging art form cinema can become when done right. It transports us away from our every day life to walk with these characters for a couple hours. That’s what this film achieved and it’s a great work of art.

So what was so compelling about the story? It was real. I’m not saying it wasn’t a fictional story, but it was real on a deeper level. It was real to humanity and real to the events which define us as humans. It gives a personal look at this families very familiar challenges while setting them against a back drop of a fantastical plot to give it energy and intrigue. It blends the non-plausable and the realistic in a way only fiction can. Creating an environment we love to spend time in and at the same time reminds us that we are not living in a perfect world. It’s a perfect example of the power of story making which transcends cultural boundaries.

I was lucky enough to meet the director, and the modesty he possessed translates into the film while portraying this culture which has so many misconceptions surrounding it.

For lack of better words, A SEPARATION is mainly about a clustercuss of events that occur after a mother of a middle class Iranian leaves her family to live with her mother. With several sentences about the film in the festival’s program and a review from a rodent blogger, I expected a movie that would look into the sociopolitical problems of divorce in Iran. Instead, for the majority of the film, the characters aren’t divorced but merely separated, only bound to each other for the worry of their daughter admidst the chaos of previously said events. Much of the first half of the film is devoted to building the several different characters within the cast. This is the absolute strongest quality of the narrative: there’s no flat out caricatures in the cast. There’s no one dimensional role. As written, the characters are fully three dimensional: you’ll find yourself constantly switching sides, almost swearing allegiances to one family than the next minute you can’t help but feel bad for the other side.

I don’t want to give away the circumstances that start what could end up being as neverending feud because there’s just so much build up to that point. This is slightly off topic, but something you definitely must not do. Do NOT watch the trailer for this film. It gives away a MAJOR plot point.

Anyway back to the review – when I realized exactly what the writer was doing, I got a certain image in my mind clearly. The image is this: all of the film’s characters were holding a bowl of water. All of the bowls had an equal amount of water in their bowl. They’re blind folded and they’re walking in all kinds of directions. One is bound to hit the other and they eventually do. In comparison to other films, the several layered characters is absolutely refreshing.

Like this year’s THE TREE OF LIFE where the secret core of the film was a boy trying to forgive a father, the secret core of A SEPARATION is about a girl trying to decide between which parent she needs to be with. It’s not an easy question. During the film, though, it begins to show that Temereh isn’t just choosing between father and mother. She’s choosing between Iran and another country as well.There’s no stronger evidence than the ending, which I’m sure will be widely divisive.

There’s a lot to appreciate about this film. It touches on so many socio-political questions that I don’t want to spoil here. The fact that they got away with so much under the thumb of the Iranian government is astonishing. It has a feminist perspective in it by observing the circumstances (my new favorite word) that women in Iran are in. These circumstances lead to several of the film’s major dilemmas. In fact, the argument could be made that the entire film is put into motion because of the restrictions that women are put under. Nader, the husband, knows that he has the power. Temereh, the daughter, has accepted this, but Simin (the mother) hasn’t. Again, it’s a wonder this passed by the tyrannical advisory board.

I have few complaints. My main problem is that there’s a question that’s completely ignored for the majority of the film. The question involves the nanny’s whereabouts during a certain incident. This question lingers for such a long time that you wonder if the characters are dumb for not figuring out given the consequences if they don’t figure their situation out (I’m being vague on purpose and because the spoiler cover is gone). This frustrated me, but it’s really a minor complaint. All of this talk and I haven’t mentioned the performances? Well, they were uniformly great. The standout was the nanny for me, played by Sereh Bayat. It’s such a complex, but deeply sympathetic performance. All in all, I feel like this is one of the few films that feels like it was originally made for the Iran only, but also works universally as well. Every time I think about it, I love it more.

-William Evans,
moviemanwill@gmail.com
whatsupwill.wordpress.com