Review of A Separation (2011) by Kenneth L — 06 Mar 2012

This is a really excellent movie; it is extremely absorbing and tells a thoroughly believable, human story about a set of bad circumstances that get really out of hand. It's not quite the best-movie-of-the-year mindblowing revelation that a lot of other critics seem to think it is, but it is certainly very good.

The movie begins with a married couple trying to get a divorce in contemporary Iran. The wife (Leila Hatami) wants to leave the country and take their 11-year-old daughter with her. The husband (Peyman Moadi) doesn't really resent the wife's wanting to move, but can't leave because he has to take care of his father, who has Alzheimer's. He hires a lower-class woman to watch over the father during the day after his wife leaves the house, and an eventual altercation leads to a tangled legal mess.

The movie works because you can understand where each character is coming from in the dispute, so you're able to sympathize with all of them. The actors are all quite convincing in their roles, probably partly because we've never seen any of them before. Peyman Moadi, who looks kind of like a Middle Eastern Michael Sheen, gets the most screentime as Nader, the husband who finds himself in the middle of all these vexing problems. Moadi plays him as essentially a decent guy who's a little high-handed with others, but who deals with his problems with a good amount of dignity. Leila Hatami is very good as Simin, the wife whose desire to leave leads to all sorts of problems she couldn't possibly have foreseen. Sareh Bayat is utterly convincing as Razieh, the woman hired to help take care of Nader's grandfather. The entire cast is so natural that it's almost hard to imagine they're really actors - you almost assume they're all actually like the people they play.

Asghar Farhadi, who wrote and directed the film, has done a really excellent job, particularly with the writing. The way the screenplay works is very intelligent - one thing leads to another in a natural, unforced way, and the collective circumstances make it essentially impossible to really blame either side. Farhadi's direction isn't flashy, but gets the job done. The movie does withhold a crucial bit of evidence or two for quite a while, which is somewhat annoying, and there's one very big question that never gets answered to my satisfaction. Still, though, this is indeed quite a strong movie, but it lacks the emotional impact that would be necessary for me to see it as one of the absolute best of the year.