There are few Academy Awards as fraught as the award for Best Foreign Film. At heart, the award itself is absurdly patronizing - American films get nearly two dozen categories, films from everywhere else get, usually, one. It's been rare for foreign film nominees to get recognized in the other categories, the cross nominees for Best Picture can be counted on one hand. Worse, the award tends to reward the film that comes off as most "exotic" - that is, the film that offers a window into the "most foreign" world possible, the one least familiar to Americans.
On the other hand... that very sense of "foreign" - that a film shows us a world, a culture, an experience away from our own is often what makes a film great. And very often, however exotic the locale, or different some of the cultural markers may be, the actual story, or the emotions rendered, are in fact universal. Wherever you go... the ability of film to touch us powerfully relies, often, on the sense of identification, regardless of language.
The Iranian film A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin) brings all of these tensions to mind. It may very well win the Oscar this year (it's also nominated for screenplay), and it is every bit an example of "exotic" and "foreign" - that's how closed off the Iranian culture and experience are to most Americans, I'd guess - but at the same time, the film's core messages are universal, and deeply felt.
A Separation begins with the divorce trial of Nader and Simin, a courtroom experience unlike almost anything American, yet the tensions and accusations the couple hurl at each other are entirely familiar and all too common. She wants a divorce; he doesn't. They both want custody of their daughter, Termeh. In the end, no divorce is granted, forcing "a separation", as Simin moves in with her parents until matters can be resolved.
Simin wants to leave Iran, primarily so their daughter can get a broader cultural experience (i.e., a culture where women are less hemmed in), but Nader can't; his father has Alzheimer's and Nader is his primary caregiver. And when Simin leaves, the balancing act of caring for his father and holding down his job becomes more complicated. Nader hires a woman named Razieh to care for his father during the day. It is a difficult assignment for Razieh, partly because she is not experienced in dealing with dementia, partly because she is pregnant and struggling economically. Unable to afford daycare, Razieh brings her daughter along. And while Razieh feels so overwhelmed that she tries to turn the job over to her husband, he is unable to show up, leaving Razieh to continue the assignment.
Eventually, the two families - Nader, Simin and Termeh; and Razieh and her husband - wind up in criminal court over a series of terrible events, where Razieh has to abandon Nader's father for several hours to make a doctor's appointment, only to lose her baby after Nader roughly dismisses her. And in the end, nothing can fix the hardest hurt of all: that Termeh cannot have her parents together as she truly wants.
As much as A Separation is about the unraveling of one marriage, it is really about much more: the sense of separations - between women and men, between parents and children, between classes and religious beliefs - is omnipresent. The film is full of adults who face impossible choices in dreadful situations, and the point is, there are no good answers, no right way to go versus a wrong one. God, the film seems to say, is not punishing us; it's just not that easy.
Writer and Director Asghar Farhadi has put together an incredibly effective, wrenching series of events, and grounds the film in an especially realistic style that never feels false or forced. The performers, especially the luminous Leila Hatami as Simin and Sarina Farhadi as Termeh, are all strong and effective in their roles. Peyman Maadi as Nader holds the crucial central role, and while we never lose sight of Nader's fundamental decency, the mix of his desperation and sadness drive so much of what unfolds.
A Separation is an ambitious, provocative film; for most Americans it will probably also be revelatory, both in the ways that Iranian society is so different from ours, and the ways in which so many hard choices and sad events are so universal. It's easy to say that religious fundamentalism complicates many of the choices these characters face; but what the film sees is, in many ways, an Iran that's trying to balance religious imperatives with modern existence. That's not, really, that far from the way many of us live our lives. And the choices we set up for ourselves, in the end, are the ones that really aren't easy. A Separation is thought provoking, a real conversation starter... and not to blame for the fact that, even after watching, the answers don't get any easier - there are just more questions.
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