"Stressful, but masterful"

Title: Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (A Separation)

Year: 2011

Genre: Drama, Mistery

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Writer: Asghar Farhadi

Runtime: 123min

Cast: Peyman Moadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat, Shahab Hosseini, Sarina Farhadi, Merila Zare'i, Ali-Asghar Shahbazi, Babak Karimi

Produc.: Asghar Farhadi

Budget: $800 thousand dollars approx

In A Separation, after several years of marriage, Simin (Leila Hatami) wants to leave Iran with her husband and daughter, to start a new lifestyle. Moreover, Nader (Peyman Moadi) refuses to leave the country where he also lives with his father, an elderly man with Alzheimer's and who needs intensive care. Although they attend together to a courtroom, seeking a divorce, this is not granted, the reason why Simin decides to go to live with her parents. Complicated with his work, Nader is forced to hire a maid to look after his old man whle he is not in the house. It is then that one evening, when Nader returns from his working day, he finds that the old man has been tied to the bed and there are no traces of his employee. When the woman returns, will be that things get worse.
            Asghar Farhadi has managed with this film to make it clear that he's a genius, for building a drama,  whose excelent scripting, together with some very convincing performances and a difficult but well done work of handheld camera, succeeded in getting one completely into the dilemma and the stress of two couples.
            The story created by Farhadi for Nader and Simin is a continuous nightmare, that we already see from the opening scene, and that does not finish untill it ends the last one. The first thing that shows to us is a medium frontal shot of them, where Nader and Simin, located in separate chairs, discuss and argue with a judge about the possibility of divorcing, considering the situation that confronts them and the discrepancies that has them upset with each other. On the one hand we have Simin, who wants to leave the country right now, and on the other hand her husband, who does not want to go anywhere, and even less, with his ailing father. When the meeting with the judge finishes, they will still remain the same.
            Simin temporarily leaves with her parents, while things are not solved, forcing Nader to hire a woman to take care of his own, and is in this way that he meets Razieh (Sareh Bayat). Settled this matter, everything seemes to go fine, except that, to an oversight in her chores, the old man disappears, being Razieh fortunate enough as to find him a couple of blocks from the apartment, where he was looking in a kiosk, for the newspaper.
            Razieh then reports to Nader that some personal issues prevent her from attending to work, but that he can count on her husband, and that is how Nader and Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) meet. Later on, Razieh is finally the one who ends up going back to doing her jobs.
            Shortly afterwards, one day Nader gets home to see his father was handcuffed to the bed and lying on the floor, and that in turn she is not present. Fortunately, the matter is just a scare, both to him and his daughter, who gets to mourn. Immediately, as soon as Nader sees his employee again (of whom now he has reasons to distrust) and under the circumstances, it also overlaps the matter of a missing money, leading him to verbally attack Razieh, and unfortunately, also going further. At the insistence of Razieh to deny the offense, Nader is taken to the extreme of pushing her through the front door, getting her to hit on the stairs, in a bad way.
            With this, Farhadi has opened us the door to a conflict that, although it but was already intense, we could equally say that it was just in diapers.
            Back in her apartment, Simin says to Nader that Razieh has accused him of beating her and now she´s in a hospital. They both go to visit her, coming upon instead with an angry husband, who claims that his wife was pregnant, and who along with Nader, then they will battle againts each other, bare-nuckled. Thus, the director has shown us the "enough" moment of the situation, at which point it is essential that justice intervenes.
            From now on, all the plot development will elapse on the basis of a stressful brawl, where one as a viewer does not have much of an idea, at first, of who is it that is right, who is to be sentenced to imprisonment or fine, or why, and where everything is very confusing. These are two families of rather unfavorable economical conditions. In the case of Razieh and Hodjat, which are those who are worse, and if Hodjat was incarcerated, he wouldn´t have a chance to go out and earn the daily bread.

Farhadi gives his characters some moments of rest, which leaves room to both, their reflection as our own, but to only go back again to the fighting, yelling, the insults and the distress. Farhadi skillfully handles when pushing to the bounderies the fighting capacilty of his characters, to be the owners of the truth, and before a judge (Babak Karimi), who regardless of their financial situations, has no option but to be completely impartial about it. He, for example, tries to use the honest and objective testimony of Nader and Simin´s daughter, as a proof for the case.

At one point, it is not even clear how things have actually occurred, with versions that seem to be changing, minute by minute. To make matters worse, it also happens that Razieh reveals that at the time when the old man escaped her, as she went looking for him she had been hit by a vehicle. So this raises questions. Did she lost her pregnancy for being run over, or was it because of Nader´s fault? Was it so violent and savage the aggression committed by Nader, or is that Razieh is lying? Did Nader knew or didn´t, about the pregnancy? As if this were not enough, we are also aware that Razieh, being a religious woman could not afford to lie in court to get away, or else she would end up fearing to be punished by the God she fervently believes in. But overall, it is possible that she needed to lie to save herself and her husband, from larger family misfortunes.

With this film, Farhadi reminds us that the most attractive arguments may be perfectly right around the corner, and that there is no need to go any further than that. Besides being, on the one hand, a very tough and complex issue that could occur to anyone, and therefore relatively easy to feel identified with its characters. Also, while the film is set in an Asian country, may well have been located in Montevideo, if one so wished it to.

My rating: 10/10

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