Details
Leads: Payman Mohamed Maadi, Leila Hatami, Sarina Farhadi, Sareh Bayat
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Genre: Drama
Language: Farsi
Run-Time: 123 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Short Description:
Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, A Separation focuses on an Iranian middle-class married couple who are faced with a difficult decision: to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating father who has Alzheimers. The film was highly acclaimed at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Globes.
SYNOPSIS:
Wanting to leave Iran with her husband Nader and daughter Termeh, Simin makes all the necessary arrangements. However, her husband Nader refuses to leave behind his father who suffers from Alzheimers. Determined to leave, Simin sues for divorce, and when her request is rejected, she moves in with her parents. Her daughter Termeh chooses to stay with her father with the hope that one day her mother will change her mind.
Review
By Claudia Puig
Sophisticated and universal yet deeply intimate, A Separation is an exquisitely conceived family drama that has the coiled power of a top-notch thriller.
From the first scene, we're instantly hooked by this window into contemporary Iran.
The scene is deceptively simple. An upper-middle-class couple seek to divorce, but bureaucratic powers set up roadblocks. Simin (Leila Hatami) wants to leave Tehran and go abroad with their 11-year-old daughter, Termeh (Sarina Farhadi), and her husband, Nader (Peyman Moadi), so that their daughter will have better educational opportunities. But Nader wants to stay to care for his elderly father, who has Alzheimer's. Simin argues that his father barely knows Nader is his son. "But I know he's my father," Nader responds.
It's a painfully real domestic dispute, and the positions of both parties are understandable.
The couple separate. The adolescent Termeh, a diligent student, remains at home with her father in the hopes that her mother will be compelled to return. No one is happy about the split, least of all the sad-eyed, bespectacled Termeh.
Nader hires Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to take care of his mostly bedridden father (Ali Asghar-Shahbazi) while he is at work. A devout Muslim, Razieh early on faces a moral and religious quandary in her duties tending to the man. Her volatile husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), complicates things further.
Disasters build upon each other, and Razieh and Nader have a misunderstanding that results in a murder charge. They become further embroiled in the labyrinthine Iranian judicial system, and religious, cultural and class chasms loom large.
The brilliantly calibrated plot grows ever more complex with ethical dilemmas, emotional upheaval and issues of responsibility woven in artfully, never simply for the sake of trumped-up tension.
In Farsi, with English subtitles, this beautifully photographed, superbly acted film, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, is naturally suspenseful in the way of the most universally engaging and deeply humanistic stories.
The viewer's sympathies are always engaged, though it's impossible to take sides, despite an early inclination to do so. Just as we think we're identifying with one character, another will reveal new dimensions and our concerns shift.
All the parties involved must navigate perilous terrain. But Farhadi keeps the emotional story believable, never straying into melodrama. Realistically messy, unexpectedly devastating and as tense as any Hitchcock thriller, A Separation ensures that no one emerges unscathed. Nor will audiences watch this profoundly resonant film without being captivated and possibly haunted for days afterward.
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