A Separation

Director: Asghar Farhadi
Writer: Asghar farhadi
Starring: Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaddi
Release Date: January 20, 2012
Length: 2 hours 3 minutes

    Set in contemporary Iran, A Separation opens with a couple, Simin and Nader arguing in front of an unobserved court judge about their divorce. Simin wants to leave the country for her and their eleven-year-old daughter to grow up in better conditions while Nader cannot leave because of his sick father. While in the process of their messy divorce, Nader gets into an even more hectic battle with his father’s caregiver he hired, the deeply religious and poor Razieh. When his money goes missing from his room and Razieh ties the ill father up while she is out, Nader fires Razieh and demands she leaves. When Razieh persistently refuses to leave, Nader ends up pushing her out of the apartment, something she later claims caused her miscarriage.  As the case starts to involve more people like Razieh’s husband, Nader’s wife, daughter and father, the film raises and explores many questions and not just who did what, why did they do it and who was it done to?

    Writer/director/producer Asghar Farhadi opens up our Western eyes to the great existing issues in Iran, while relating to universal ones as well. There is a battle between secularity versus religion, father and child, wife and husband, wealthy and poor. As the film proceeds, the deeper questions are reached, but are far from being answered. The story stands as a deep, emotional mystery that never takes a breath of fresh air. On the thriller aspect, you are always panicked about the state of the investigation, whether Nader will be wronged, or if he even is innocent in the first place. The case continues to progress with more witnesses, and different arguments being brought up to benefit one case over another. However, as the vastly different couples continue to quarrel, we are brought back to the political and cultural differences that separate them already. With Nader in questioning, and the addition of the divorce that has yet to take place, you are poignantly drawn in to love this family. Your connection to each of them and the relationships between them, pulls at your heartstrings at the thought of them being separated.

    In essence, this film knocks you over in every single direction. You are emotionally drained, debating the pressing problems, while longing for the disruptive case to come to a close and to know who wins. Farhadi’s profound and timely script is extraordinarily brought to life by the Iranian actors you see on screen. Peyman Moaddi as Nader provides the deepest connection to his clearly distraught character. Nader clearly loves his wife and daughter very much and does not want to be separated from either of them whether it is through divorce or imprisonment, but he also loves his mentally ill father as well. Moaddi drives that emotional relationship between the audience and the film as his vulnerable distressed character carries the film.

    Leila Hatami as Simin is fantastic, showing us how much more important it is to her to have the divorce so she can have a better life and give a better life to her daughter. The level of magnitude of the women’s issue is effectively brought out through Hatami’s character and Hatami’s performance. Filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s daughter, Sarina Farhadi is heart wrenching as Termeh and serves as the unofficial narrator to the film, as we see the story from her peacekeeping and perplexed point of view. Farhadi’s gripping and simply breathtaking A Separation is not only the best foreign film of the year, but one of the best films of the year, period.