A Separation
Jodái-e Náder az Simin
Asghar Farhadi (2011)
It is at the same time a kind of whodunit (you need to be observant and remember what you saw) and a complex drama of psychology and motivation. In a skilful balancing act, the writer-director Asghar Farhadi holds in tension the questions of what has actually happened, and – regardless of that – which of the characters you think is more or less justified in their actions and claims. You wonder whether Farhadi will be able to sustain this tension and how things will be resolved: he does sustain it, although I think he miscalculates in the final sequence. (It’s a pity this comes so late because there’s no way to recover from it – and Farhadi makes matters worse by allowing the anti-climactic last scene to play on through the closing credits.) But the journey has been deeply involving. Along with the extraordinary documentary Senna, A Separation is the best film of 2011 so far, with moments of greatness.
The question of who’s in the right, which runs strongly and persistently through A Separation, is there from the start. Nader and Simin, a husband and wife in their late thirties, face the camera and put their cases to the unseen judge of an Iranian ‘family court’. They’re a middle-class couple – he works in a bank, she’s a teacher – living in Tehran with their eleven year old daughter Termeh. Simin wants to leave Iran for a less repressive society; Nader feels compelled to stay for the sake of his elderly father, who lives with the family and who has Alzheimer’s. Simin wants to end their fourteen year marriage but the court rules that their circumstances don’t warrant a divorce. So they separate[1]: Simin goes back to live with her mother. Nader hires to look after his father during the day a woman called Razieh, who’s religiously devout and badly in need of money: her husband Hodjat suffers from depression, is out of work and deeply in debt. The burkha-wearing Razieh, who brings her young daughter Somayeh with her to Nader’s apartment, is pregnant; and the question of whether Nader knows that becomes a crucial one. One day Razieh leaves Nader’s father alone; his son returns to find his father unconscious, having fallen out of the bed to which Razieh had inexpertly tied him. When she returns, they argue and Nader eventually pushes her out of the door of his apartment. What exactly happens as a result is a matter of dispute but Razieh stumbles in the stairwell of the apartment building and has a miscarriage later that day. If this was a result of Nader’s push and if Nader knew Razieh was pregnant he will be charged with murder.
Nader is driving Termeh to school one day not long after the separation has begun. They stop at a garage for petrol and the father sends his daughter to pay for it; she doesn’t get the right change and Nader sends her back. She’s embarrassed but he insists, even though the delay means they’re holding up cars behind them in the garage queue. Nader has no qualms keeping the other drivers waiting. Termeh eventually brings back the right money and Nader gives it to her as a reward. This short scene is gripping in itself and a brilliant illustration in microcosm of Nader’s persistent and (as he sees it) principled intransigence. Yet he lies when he claims he didn’t know that Razieh was pregnant and the serious, conscientious Termeh finds it increasingly impossible to deny the realisation that he’s lying. The most tragic element in A Separation is the daughter’s loss of belief in the father – a father whom she adores and who is motivated to a great extent by love for his daughter and a desire to protect and keep hold of her. Nader asks Termeh to tell him if she wants him to admit to the crime he’s accused of and to ‘look me in the eyes’ when she gives her answer. She summons the courage to do that but, realising the terrible demand he’s made on her, her father looks down guiltily. In a piercing exchange between them a little later, a weeping Termeh says to Nader, ‘You said it was nothing serious’. ‘It got serious’, he replies.
It seems that Razieh lies too when she claims she lost her baby as a result of Nader’s aggression. She was already worried something was amiss with the pregnancy – that’s why she went to see a doctor and left Nader’s father tied to the bed. Because their personal predicaments are so difficult and we sympathise with them and with their reasons for concealing the truth, the lies enlarge the characters – make them more compelling. (A Separation calls to mind La règle du jeu – everyone has their reasons.) Nader thinks it outrageous that he should be branded a criminal for what Razieh claims he’s done: besides, how can he get himself locked up in jail when he’s responsible for Termeh and for his father? The day before she left the father in the apartment, Razieh – unbeknown to Nader – was horrified to be told by Somayeh that the old man wasn’t in his room. Razieh went out into the street looking for him and found him on the other side of a busy road. Although we don’t see this either, it transpires that, in trying to retrieve him, Razieh got hit by a car. That, it seems (but we can’t be sure), is where the miscarriage began.
The person who has most at stake in being forced to address these ethical complications is Termeh: the final drama of the film involves her having to decide, and tell the family court, whether she wants to live with her father or her mother. It’s right that we should feel challenged to weigh things up and take sides. (I did: I wanted Termeh to stay with Nader.) Yet in refusing to tell us what Termeh decides I think Farhadi confuses the two aspects of his story – human drama and moral conundrum – to which he’s given such traction in the previous two hours. Nader and Simin sit in the corridor, outside the closed door of the office where a judge is asking Termeh to announce the decision she’s repeatedly assured him (in her parents’ presence – before they’re asked to leave the room) that she’s made. They wonder what she’s saying to the judge and about what they’ve done to determine what she’s saying. We’re left in suspense with them. Farhadi is in effect saying to the audience ‘What would you do in her position?’ The question isn’t misconceived but it implies that we’ve watched A Separation purely as a questions-of-ethics exercise: it overlooks the fact that we’ve come to care about the people in the story and that we want to know what happens to them.
For a Western audience, it’s fascinating to see the dramatic description of ‘normal’ life in Iran that A Separation gives us. Of course the plot is determined in crucial respects by religious and gender expectations but I found it chastening being made to realise that I assume the repressive aspects of the culture to be so dominant that people in it don’t have marital problems or parents with Alzheimer’s. At the same time, the film presents moral dilemmas particular to this society – as when Razieh phones anxiously to ask a religious helpline if it would be a sin for her to change the old man’s pants which he’s soiled. The insight the film gives us into the Iranian criminal justice system is absorbing. The whole cast is excellent and Peyman Moaadi as Nader is outstanding. He’s completely convincing as a man who’s usually able to keep things inside and, as a result, keep things going. As well as the highly charged scenes with Termeh – played by the director’s daughter Sarina with a beautiful emotional transparency – Moaadi has two breathtaking moments with Ali-Asghar Shahbazi, who has an extraordinary blend of despair and dignity as the elderly father. In the first of these, they’re in the bathroom of the apartment and Nader is cleaning his father up: he leans over to sponge the old man’s back and suddenly, without our noticing the transition, he’s embracing his father and weeping. In retaliation for the allegations she’s brought against him, Nader accuses Razieh of physically abusing his father, whom he has to take for a medical examination to prove his case. The doctor asks Nader to undress the old man and they go into a cubicle. The son starts to unbutton his father’s shirt and the father inclines himself slightly towards his son. This tiny movement makes Nader realise his father’s had enough. The doctor asks what’s happening and Nader says he thinks he’ll take his father home now.
Each character has her or his own tempo and Farhadi’s orchestration of them is wonderful. Sareh Bayat’s accumulating distress as Razieh is very affecting; and she is marvellously partnered by Shahab Hosseini as Hodjat, her wretchedly choleric husband. As Simin, the lovely, fine-featured Leila Hatami has a self-assured but brittle quality that seems right for a woman thwarted in her ambitions to leave the country that she sees as hopelessly benighted. Kimia Hosseini is Somayeh; Shirin Yazdanbakhsh is Simin’s mother; Merila Zarei is Termeh’s schoolteacher; Babak Karimi is one of the several judges in the story. A Separation is finely photographed by Mahmoud Kalari and expertly edited by Hayedeh Safiyari. Given the constraints on artistic self-expression in Iran, it seems a miracle this film got made at all; it’s too good to be true that it’s so true and so good.
1 August 2011
[1] The film’s full title in Persian – used on the poster for its release in English-speaking countries but not on cinema listings – is Nader and Simin: A Separation.