A Separation turns real-life conflict into a sociocultural masterpiece. It unfolds with bursts of familial tension and ends up an overview of a society whose conflicting ideals express themselves in dramatic disagreements. All before the watchful eyes of an often disinterested court. Setting out to dissect an Iran where there are often no good choices, the Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Film offers a Rashomon-like study of a domestic and legal dispute from several differing viewpoints, all as perfectly plausible as they are passionate.
Director Asghar Farhadi provides the viewer no easy angle or viewpoint, but rather allows our rooting interest to ricochet between Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Moadi) as they argue whether or not to leave the country for better opportunities elsewhere for their 11-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, the director’s daughter). When a more religiously traditional housekeeper and her husband enter into a battle with Nader and Simin over an incident that occurs while the housekeeper, Razieh, is caring for Nader’s Alzheimer’s-stricken father; our focus is allowed to shift fourfold. Class and religious differences between the more devout and much poorer Razieh and Hodjat intensify the conflict between the two couples while each marriage withstands and breaks down under the stress. We think we know who’s right one minute, then it changes, only to change yet again.
Underneath the proceedings is a growing understanding that laws are pretty much useless in settling human emotional problems. The judge who the couples keep facing is a relatively sympathetic character who himself is in over his head in such a strict system. Like the rest of the film’s characters, he has a dignity and a rationale that make it impossible to simplify his motivations. Instead, a complexity emerges that is quite stunning. And while there is expectedly no unifying conclusion, A Separation threads itself into an overtly apolitical tapestry that makes you feel you’ve just been a fly on the wall to the most intimate details of a nation’s very personal challenges. When Razieh (an amazing Sareh Bayat) calls a religious leader to check whether or not she’s allowed to change the soiled clothes of the man under her care, one can only look on with compassion. That she needs to hide her housekeeping activity from a husband who would not approve of her working in a single man’s home, is equally stirring. It is more important to Nadir that he have Termeh’s blessing before a game-changing decision than that he decide out of a more personal moral belief. Simin wants to get out of the country before it’s too late for Termeh but she wants her family intact. At film’s end, Termeh’s dilemma personifies not only the future but Iran’s starkly tumultuous present.
What sets A Separation apart, finally, is reflected in its garnering the rarest of rare Oscar nominations: one for Best Screenplay, a nomination which is hardly ever awarded to a foreign film. Full of surprises equally rare in a domestic drama, A Separation is no ordinary domestic drama: its characters’ plights cry out “universal” in every frame.
9.5 Intense Disputes Out of 10
