A Separation (Asghar Farhadi- 2011)

Written, Produced and Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Cinematography- Mahmoud Kalari
Editing- Hayedeh Safyari
Music- Sattar Oraki
Cast- Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat and Sarina Farhadi
Country/Language- Iran/Persian

A Separation opens with a married couple, Nader (Peyman Mooadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami), at court, applying for divorce. Simin wants to go abroad to make a better living, but Nader is unwilling since he has to tend to his father, who is afflicted with Alzheimer’s, hence Simin wants a divorce. The judge finds Simin's grounds baseless and refuses to grant them a divorce. They have, however, decided to live separately and their 11 year old daughter, Termeh (Sarina Farhadi), will stay with her father.

So that his father will be taken care of while he is out to work, Nader arranges for a home nurse, Razieh (Sareh Bayat). But two days after she has been hired, Nader arrives home one evening to find his father tied to a bed and the nurse missing. Her arrival five minutes later sparks off an argument and Nader spurns her out. The next day he hears that she has had a miscarriage. More troublesome than anything else, even a potential prison term, for Nader, is handling Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) the nurse’s ill-tempered husband. As it turns out, A Separation is about a lot more than the divorce of the estranged couple.

As one can expect, there is enough potential for dramatic suspense in the plot. But Farhadi takes it a step further. The film falls in line with most Iranian masterpieces by staying clear of a protagonist or antagonist. Like Jean Renoir as Octave in his masterpiece The Rules of the Game says “Everyone has his reasons”, every character in the film, right from Termeh, to Hodjat, have reasons for being the way they are.

The very first scene, where Nader and Simin sit facing the camera and voice their concerns to the offscreen judge prefigures the fact that the film leaves a lot to the judgement of the audience. When I use the word "suspense" to describe this film, I don’t mean suspense as what is normally seen in the cheap thrillers churned out by Hollywood. As with most Iranian movies, dramatic suspense in A Separation has to do with the psychological tensions prevailing in its characters. Farhadi also goes a step forward, weaving in issues that are taboo in Iranian society.

One of them is the class divide, which is portrayed overtly when Nader and Hodjat face each other. The other somewhat subtle but more controversial issue is the way religious dogma interferes with basic humanity (Razieh, for instance, wants to help the ailing father remove his trousers that he has just wet, but is worried she may commit a sin if she does so).

A Separation contains some of the cleverest bits of editing I have seen recently. Elaborating on it is impossible, since it contains spoilers. The cleverness of the cut lies in the fact that the audience is made aware of its abruptness in such a way, it can be recalled even towards the end of the film.

The camerawork in the film is very documentary-like, in its use of handheld camera movements, naturalistic lighting and real locations. This naturalism extends to the acting, so much that you forget you are watching a film. While the camerawork is typical of Iranian movies, the acting is in contrast to that in other films, where the performances are rather subdued.

If Simin’s rather baseless grounds for applying for a divorce lead you into considering her as the antagonist, the focus is bound to change once Nader finds his ailing father tied to the bed. And if Razieh's hot-headed and continually abusive husband makes a strong case for the antagonist, one realises that he too is a victim of his own circumstances. In the end, there are no heroes or villains, only flawed human beings trapped in absurd twists of fate.