A Separation (2011)

This film won the best foreign language film for the Golden Globes. It blows just about everything this season out of the water. Don't, don't miss it. For all the hate-filled rhetoric spewed about Iran, this film should show the world, like so many other Iranian films, what brilliant artistry exists in this nation, what sensitive beautiful people Iranians are. Iranian actors have been honed and trained since the 1970's when the modern era of Iranian film began. The principal actors: Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat, and Sarina Farhadi (the director's own daughter) are superb. From the first moments of the film you believe them and the truth of their existence. The stark intimacy of the film is stunning. The complicated plot is gripping and holds one's attention to the very end. It will also be fresh and novel for non-Iranian audiences. It is true in every instance to Iranian society and cultural life. Watch it and learn why American politicians have been misleading Americans about Iranian life.

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Wow! I didn't have any expectation and that's what probably helped but A SEPARATION is a great drama. Foreign language film or not, this is just an excellent, excellent drama. You can't get a more Oscar worthy material than this. To me what makes A SEPARATION unique is that writer/director Asghar Farhadi takes conflict, secrets, relationships and other elements that we're familiar with and mixes them with the culture, religion and gender elements from that specific region. This film, to a certain extent, lets you in on how the justice system works in a place where some of us may be ignorant about. And it's really not about our way is better than theirs or vice versa, it's just how different some things are doneÂ…

And this is not just about a divorce or a separation of two individuals The film starts out that way and it ends on that note as well but what happens in between is more of a spin-off story or it stems from when the lead characters Nader and Simin stop being on the same page. A SEPARATION is a very dialogue-driven, a very character driven story, all the actors in this film are marvelous. When the tension is high, they're extremely convincing, I couldn't take my eyes off any of them, especially lead actress Leila Hatami who holds a certain photogenic beauty.

On one spectrum, you have Nader and Simin with their daughter, on the other end of the spectrum you have Hodjat and Razieh with their little adorable daughter. Because Simin takes time off from her marriage with the intent to divorce her husband, Nader has to hire Razieh to take care of his father who suffers from Alzheimer's. An incident occurs that escalates into a courtroom drama but there is actually another incident or a card that Asghar Farhadi hides until it's time to show it further on in the story and the way everything progresses and eventually unravels keeps you intrigued. A big part of what draws me in is the film's depiction of Iranian law and traditions when it comes to divorces and allegations. What may be considered murder, how important it is for an individual to see someone swear on a Koran, how a judge deals with opposing alibis. I don't know how accurate it is but it's nothing short of interesting. It would certainly cause debate and discussion among the audiences as to the fairness of it all. And the story goes through those problems and makes a full round circle back to the separation of Simin from Nader. A highly engrossing film.

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And it comes from Iran. The first thing you read on the screen is "In the name of God". Well, anyway it's the best story, the best cutting, the best actors you've seen for long. And few films are that stomach-turning, although there's hardly any physical violence.

A wife wants to go abroad. Her husband can't because he wants to take of his senile father. The wife moves and the husband hires a woman to look after his father.

And then the screw turns, although most of the story takes place in everyday Iranian life. The center of it all is perhaps the daughter, who is nearly teared apart. But it takes time until you realize that. Anyway, I can almost guarantee you sit the film through, until the final post-texts has passed.

So amazingly clever.

A Separation fmovies. I'm an Iranian, but I've never been interested in Iranian cinema. I only watch Iranian films when they win awards or receive international recognition. I'm a fan of Kiarostami and Majidi, but I can't really say that I like all of their films. I watched Farhady's previous film (About Elly) about a year ago, and the first thing which struck me was how culturally detached the movie was in its depiction of an event. At the time, I believed this to have been the cause of this director's success. Watching Nader and Simin, however, proved that I was terribly mistaken.

Asghar Farhady's obsession with the concept of judgment is once again the driving force behind his latest feature. The life-like depiction of the Iranian courtroom (which is in no way impartial) places the audience in the Judge's seat from the very beginning. The extremely believable acting and insanely complex script compel the viewer to make up his/her mind just like when reading a court case. As for the screenplay, I'm almost certain the events in this film actually happened in real life, because in no way could one fabricate such a chaotically complex series of events, so beautifully woven into a coherent whole.

Despite being very Iranian in its narrative style and its depiction of Iranian culture (the sanctity of Family, faith, commitment towards parents and married life), I believe that this film could easily appeal to the Western audiences just like a film by Inaritu or Haneke (although I'm pretty sure it won't be nominated for an Oscar for political reasons).

After seeing About Elly, I thought Farhady's success was just a one-time fling, but coming out of the theater, having watched Nader and Simin, I was proud to have another Iranian director added to my international list of favorites.

Asghar Farhadi's new film after the ingenious 'About Elly' is running for the Golden Bear at this year's Berlin Film Festival and, with half of the competition done and the rest of the program not looking too promising, appears to be an almost inevitable winner. Although maybe it won't for that very reason: Jahar Panahi's repeat inability to attend his jury duties because of Iran's government refusal to issue him a travel permit, a retrospective of his works including the 2006 Silver Bear-winning 'Offside', a variety of other Iranian productions and renewed demonstrations in Iran proper put the spotlight firmly on that country's elaborate, yet constrained film industry. All that buzz may outshine the film's artistic value, and prompt the jury to go for a less favored competitor. I should hope not, for Farhadi manages once again to embed lots of social criticism into a straight-laced, realistic narrative.

As in 'About Elly', the story begins rather unassumingly and takes an abrupt turn into a spiral of increasingly dramatic events: Nader and Simin are a couple about to break up over the question of moving abroad, for which they have obtained a permit after waiting for 18 months. Nader, however, has his father to take care of, who is suffering from Alzheimer's. Sirin still wants to leave, but not without her daughter (yes, pun intended) Termeh, a somewhat shy, bespectacled 11-year-old who cannot accept her parents' break-up. She therefore decides to stay with her father, which prompts Simin not to leave the country, but move to her mother. Nader is thereby forced to hire someone to take care of his dad, and a colleague of Sirin recommends the pregnant Razieh. Being deeply religious, she should not work in a single man's household, but her husband has been out of a job for a long time and is threatened with jail by his creditors. Her pregnancy and the necessity to attend to her daughter additionally stress her out. When Nader comes home one day to find his father left alone and tied to his bed, a struggle with the returning Razieh ensues, with catastrophic consequences for everyone around...

This is a much more complicated set-up than in 'About Elly', but it allows Farhadi to put a lot of additional information into his film as may be obvious to those who are just trying to follow the story (I hesitate to give examples because the film is as of yet to be released in Iran, which means an open-source comment such as this one needs to be carefully phrased). Much of the action takes place in courtrooms, where judges try to negotiate between the parties without any lawyers present. There's a lot of familiarity, and also a lot of menace, which succeeds to create the same climate of anxiety, accusation and deceit as in 'About Elly'. The realism of the narrative is embedded into a carefully planned scenography which makes almost every shot linger in the memory. And as in 'About Elly' the decisive moment, the one that solves the mystery is omitted in the picture, only to be explained verbally at the very end.

What makes me feel even more for this film is the fact that it might be the last film of its kind from Iran for some time. Ali Samadi Ahadi, the German-Iranian director of the comedy 'Salami Aleikum' and the upcoming documentary on the July 2009 protests 'The Green Wave', wrote that the film industry has come to a virtual standstill. 'Nader and Simin' was in development at the time of the protests; si

It seems that a court room drama could be the best place for Frahadi to recreate his very own world and confront us with a short and somehow faraway situations and incidents in life. We think these kinds of happenings and conflicts would not take place in our lives but with his realistic world and characters they seem so close and possible to anyone. Asghar Farhadi loves to put his audience in place of judge, as his other pictures like About Eli or Fireworks Wednesday and here with no fear he takes us straight to a court room. But the thing is that the judge does not provide any help for us to make a clear judgment and surprisingly makes the situation even more complicated. Yes Farhadi doesn't want us to make a judgment, He makes us watch and observe and leave the theater with a big fork in front of us.It Seems that any single decision creates another world full of forks and not taken ways.

when nobody is clearly guilty and the line between black and white is so dim. And again here we are in Frhadi's powerful hands surprised to the end of the movie. You can't leave your chair even for one second because the story never lets you to lose even a single moment. And like a tennis ball we're always being shot from this side to the other. And finally we are the daughter shocked and disable to make a decision. May be we haven't seen or we don't want to see this side of life, where nothing is clear, when small lies and unimportant undone things and unsaid words gang up against us and turn to a big disaster. Frahadi has found his own world and his own language and his own version of life. Something we'd never seen before. We appreciate that. He can easily bombard us with information and surprise us with tiny details that seem nothing but like a snowball rolling down a slope they can form a big drama.