This year’s Iranian selection for the Best Foreign Language film Oscar, A Separation has built a sizable and thunderous buzz within the critical community for several months now and rightfully so. What could’ve been a standard domestic melodrama about a failed marriage becomes something far more complex and intriguing thanks to one of the best screenplays of the year and some stellar lead performances.
As director Asghar Farhadi’s film opens, Nader (Peyman Moadi) and his wife Simin (Leila Hatami) are going through the arduous process of getting a divorce in Iran, with both parties stating their case to a largely unheard judge. The animosity that has built between the two is palpable and partially because of Nader’s insistence on caring his Alzheimer’s ridden father from home. Simin fails in her bid to secure the divorce and goes to live with her mother, while their child Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) stays with her father.
Without Simin to watch over his father and his daughter in school, Nader hires an easily distracted caretaker (Sareh Bayat) with aprideful, hot head of a husband (Shahab Hosseini). When the caretaker proves to be less than honest, two failing marriages are brought together in a court case involving two tragic accidents, theft, and a potential murder charge being brought against Nader.
Described by the writer-director as “a detective story without any detectives,” A Separation unfolds like a literary classic, doling out information in small, subtle bursts that build towards dramatic revelations. When the film shifts focus from a housebound domestic drama to almost entirely taking place in a courthouse that Western audience aren’t used to seeing depicted on screen, the real pleasures of the film begin to set in. Farhadi’s knack for realistic dialog and gifted sense of pacing allows the audience to become transfixed by the drama at the heart of the story.
The performances from the principal cast members are all equal to the material, especially Moadi, who has to play as simultaneously outraged, confused, and heartbroken in almost every scene, and Sarina Farhadi, who has to play the child caught in the middle of an increasingly worsening situation. The real revelation here is Hatami, who could be in line for a Best Actress nomination (if enough Academy members see the film). She plays Simin as a woman firm in her convictions that she wants to leave her husband, but realizing that she’s the only real support he has in a potentially bogus trial.
For the most part, the film doesn’t try very hard to cater to western audiences in terms of creating a fictional world. It does cater to them, by giving them an easy to understand and universally believable story full of poignant moments and thrilling conflicts. It falls apart slightly at the end with what could be construed as being a “cop out” ending, but following the ambiguous contentions the first two hours of the film wrested with, it’s hard to imagine a more appropriate ending. It equally leaves the audience wanting more because of how good it is, but eventually makes them realize that they, like the characters, have been through more than enough already.
Rating: 
Not Rated
Cast: Leila Hatami, Peyman Moadi
Directed by: Asghar Farhadi
Top image: A scene from A Separation. Courtesy Mongrel Media.
