A Separation

What is with these Iranian films which question the modern aesthetics of film making? They seem to question us unintentionally, but as a movie lover, it’s hard to ignore them. Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Separation’ which won the ‘Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film’ amidst ‘The Artist’ which was rewarded for being silent and ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ was victim of bad luck.

The film starts with passport and visa documents getting scanned and later a still shot of two couple who are in the front of a judge arguing about divorce. Later we are presented with an old man who needs help, a daughter who is in the middle of her parents who have applied for divorce and a simplistically simple plot.

The screenplay of the film is brutally honest and it dips the viewer into the plot with ease with series of conversations, accusations and emotional reasoning. The reference of religion, the trauma of the families, the shaking thought of absolute morality and the provocations of love are so neatly executed that it’s hard to get distracted even for a second. Goodness is sometimes asked to pay its price for just to pass the test of innersole, the conscious opportunism is juxtaposed with the burden of morality, and trying to create passionate symphony of emotions is beyond brilliance.

Both Nader and Simin are modern upper middle class couple who show love and care for their daughter. Simin is a mother who wants to give her daughter a better livelihood and education by leaving the country and Nader is a father who helps his daughter in her exams, homework and we also see Nadir asking his daughter to fill the petrol at the petrol station. All the characters in the film are basically good, we see the caretaker referring to religion, we see people referring God, we should also notice that the characters sometimes want to swear on the holy book to prove that they have done nothing wrong and sometimes they shy away from swearing on the holy book because they have doubt in their mind that they may have been wrong – Among all these, the fluid recitation of fractured life by the director is exquisite.

Alfred Hitchock said that ‘Psycho’ is a director’s film, because of its uncompromising narration and I place ‘A Separation’ in the same league. It’s hard to imagine what could have been sacrificed during the editing of the film. Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Separation’ is a subtle hitchcockian thriller, the film does not have a protagonist, it doesn’t have killers and it even doesn’t have a Mc Guffin, all we have are some good people and a story to tell which affects their lives. Like his previous film ‘About Elly’, Asghar Farhadi carries the curiosity till the end with impeccable narration.

‘A Separation’ is simple and it’s the alacrity of the film which is most disturbing part, because it throws darts on our convictions and invokes questions which we always try to elude. The film challenges the viewers with its dialectics, it asks hard questions but it’s not in the quest to seek answers but it reflects the agony of life in many forms of different individuals. We are constantly shown that the pawn in the unfortunate consequences is the innocence of children and it’s this fragile subject is amazingly handled by the director.

Looking it purely on film making terms of the contemporary cinema, ‘A Separation’ has many questions and the one which I found is ‘Are we homogenizing the aesthetics of film making?’