A Seperation Movie Review
Conclusive proof that life can suck in any language.
After failing miserably at my guessing how much a movie is going to suck when it came to the Artist, I decided I had better see some of the other Oscar winners and was fortunate enough to find A Separation playing at the Grand Lake Cinema down the street. I feel vindicated, as my early assessment of this movie-that it would be really good and really depressing-were pretty much on the money.
The film is Iranian, and shot in a much more day to day style than pretty much anything else I have seen from Arabic countries. As a look into life in Iran, combining elements of what we would consider normal with severe religious and cultural differences, it was brilliant and fascinating. You see a family dealing with divorce and an ailing Alzheimer relative much as a Western family would have to, but while dealing with the Islamic court and serious religious considerations. Very well done, and well worth your time in viewing. The thing I liked the best was the sympathy and empathy that I and I believe the entire audience felt for the characters, in spite of the fact that Iran is currently being vilified on a daily basis by popular media. It was wonderful to see human faces put on a culture that most Americans would not even want to learn anything about.
That being said, the movie was as depressing as humanly possible. The concession stand could have done a bang up business selling cyanide pills. The filmmaker Asghar Farhadi (Trial on the Street, Tambourine, About Elly) successfully gets the audience to become fully invested in all the characters in spite of the massive cultural divide and consequently we all felt a great deal of sadness and empathy for the tragic events unrolling on the screen. No one is happy through most of this. BIG SPOILER ALERT: skip to the next paragraph if spoilers bug you, but if you are the type of person who enjoys a film that wraps things up and has a nice conclusion for good or ill, prepare to be bitterly disappointed.
The story is of an Iranian couple going through divorce. The wife Simin (Leila Hatami-Leila, the Deserted Station, Salad-e-fasi) wants to leave the country with their eleven year old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi-no other credits, but daughter of the director). The husband Nader (Peyman Moadi-Coma, Atash, Cafe Satareh) needs to stay home to take care of his Alzheimer afflicted father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi -no other credits). They seperate, and she moves in with her parents while he stays home with his father and daughter. He hires a woman Razieh (Sareh Bayat-no other credits) to take care of him while he works. She comes over with her young daughter (Kimia Hosseini-no credits. By the way, this little girl is possible the cutest kid ever) to take care of the old man. She suffers a crisis when he soils himself and she has to change his pants for him. She has to call a religious hotline to see if it would be a sin to help him with it. Dealing with the old man is much harder than she first anticipated, especially when it is revealed that she is pregnant. She struggles to maintain him and do the local chores, and when Nader comes home to find his father tied to the bed and the woman missing he pushes her out the door, possibly inducing her miscarriage.
At that point we end up in Islamic court, which is considerably different than American court. There are no lawyers or juries, just an elder judge who basically argues with both sides until he gets a picture of what he thinks happened. They also let the two parties sit in a crowded hallway giving each other the stink eye all day long. The woman’s husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini-Final Whistle, About Elly, Zero Degree Turn) is a passionate and hotheaded man who has been unemployed for months. He spends a lot of time basically stalking Nader and his family while pursuing his case in court. Things go from bad to worse, and the case gets continuously more complicated and ugly as time goes on.
The stars. An amazing look into a culture that we as Americans know very little about. Three stars. Extremely well acted and portrayed. All the characters showed passion and in spite of the fact that it was all subtitled I felt I got to know all of them as much as my Western perception would allow, and I came to care about all of them. Two stars. For the technology and production limitations the movie was very well shot. One star. Story was good, and had a few really cool twists once you got your head around the fact that you were not watching an American court movie. One star. Overall an extremely well done movie, deserving of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Two stars. Total: nine stars.
The black holes. The ending made me want to scream in frustration. When you see the movie you will understand. One black hole. That’s it.
A grand total of eight stars, and you know a foreign film has to be good for me to not black hole them for the sin of making me read throughout an entire movie (I hate subtitles). If you have any interest in other cultures at all, or would like to see Iranians portrayed as something other than lunatic terrorists, then definitely see this film. If you can get to a theater cool, but if not I don’t think you will miss much if you see it at home. None of the camera work was groundbreaking.
Thanks for reading. I plan to see the Hunger Games (due to licencing restrictions I can’t get any Hunger Games t-shirts on my site, but whenever I get hungry I start thinking about bacon and thought this shirt from the cheap t shirt category might be apropos) at midnight on Thursday/Friday, so look for that review Friday morning. I don’t think I can (or want to) see anything else before that. I’m kind of in a mood to do some dating advice again, so I might throw something out there tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu, or email suggestions or questions to [email protected]. Feel free to post comments here. Unless you cuss I am happy to allow them even if you disagree with me (or Jason, as he found out a couple days ago). Thanks again. Talk to you soon.
Dave
