Good vs. Good and God Against All

Hatami and Maadi have differences in A Separation.

* * * 1/2  A Separation. Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi. In Farsi. 

I’ve been seeing a lot of Anthony Bourdain on TV lately, which has naturally inspired analogies between food and film criticism. No surprise that much of what you get at the multiplex is like the stuff they serve at the snack counter: sugary or fatty confections that offer up little more than a superficial head-rush. Indeed, watching movies like Transformers: Dark of the Moon, like eating Ring Dings, will not only yield zero nutritional benefit, but kill you slowly and make you cruel to small animals.  Yet some of the fare served up at the “art house” isn’t much better—The Descendants, for instance, is like a nouvelle cuisine experience that is heavy on premise and eye-appeal but light on the plate. On my way home from that film, I was still hungry for some drama, and ended up eating some Ring Dings anyway.

            Say what you will about Iranian movies, but they are always full meals. Regardless of their actual running times, films by the likes of Abbas Kiarostami (A Taste of Cherry), Dariush Mehrjui (Leila) or Mohammad Rasoulof (The White Meadows) tend to be long, deliberate affairs, with each finely wrought course brought out in its own time and not a second faster. Like many a heavy meal, they can leave you sleepy. But there’s no questioning their authenticity, their full, sustaining themes, or the pungency of their ingredients.

            The latest Persian entrée (and winner of the 2011 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film) is Asghar Farhadi’s searing family drama A Separation. It opens with estranged couple Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Maadi) directing their appeals straight into the camera, which stands in for an unseen (and none too sympathetic) judge.  Simin has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study abroad, and wants Nader and their daughter Termeh (Sarina Fadhadi) to go with her. Nader has no particular objection to this, but can’t abandon his father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi), who suffers from Alzheimer’s and is completely dependent on him for his care.  At what seems like the end of a long, fruitless argument, Simin demands—quite unreasonably—“What’s worse, leaving an old man or abandoning your daughter?” To which Nader asks (equally unreasonably) “What kind of wife asks that of a man?” In despair, Simin demands a divorce, which still qualifies as a drastic measure in the Islamic republic. And to her sorrow, Nader has no particular objection to splitting up either. It’s the judge who refuses to end their marriage, calling their impasse “a little problem.” The rest of Farhadi’s script seems designed to show just how wrong he is.

            In the fashion of classical tragedy, the couple’s discord is the seminal transgression that sends ripples of disaster through everyone they know. Simin leaves to stay with her parents, forcing Nader to entrust his father to a marginally competent bumpkin (Sareh Bayat). She, in turn, is afraid her hot-headed husband (Shahab Hosseini) will find out she’s secretly taken a job caring for a physically incontinent male. The arrangement ends in a disaster that unfolds with the soul-scorching slowness of a car crash with you, dear viewer, at the center.

            Farhadi shows striking discipline with his camera, shooting hand-held in a way that reflects and abets the growing tension. Nor are there any weaknesses among the performances: Maadi is constantly compelling as Nader, a man too close to the end of his rope to worry much about little things like integrity or how badly he appears in his daughter’s eyes. The lovely Hatami, already a veteran player at forty, plays her role with the steely resolve of a Persian Irene Papas. But the film’s soul is invested with young Sarina Farhadi, portraying the only child of the warring couple (and, in fact, the director’s own daughter). Keeping up her studies and her loyalties to both parents, she’s hanging on by her fingernails here, and we feel the rending of her heart with every tear.

            This is powerful stuff, and if there’s any objecting to it, it’s by mere implication. Like tragedies from Antigone to Medea to Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, this one is rooted in a woman’s insistence on justice. This is not Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan—in Iran, women’s legal rights are far more likely to be recognized—but there can be no doubt where even a moderately conservative mind would place the blame here. In a dispute between a husband who wants only to care for his dying father and a wife who yearns for personal fulfillment abroad, the verdict would likely be the same in Tacoma as in Tehran: for the sake of her husband and daughter, she should put her dreams on hold. It’s an implication that won’t sit well in some circles. 

            In Farhadi’s defense, it is perhaps our own progressivist naivete that insists that all liberal developments—such as respecting women’s right to pursue happiness outside the home—are “win wins” for everybody. By the dignity in which he invests Hatami’s character in A Separation, Farhadi seems to be no reactionary in matters of gender. But there’s also a coldness there, a pitilessness that is its own kind of violence. In an interview, Farhadi has observed “In a classic tragedy, there is a war between good and evil, but in modern tragedies, the war is between good and good… you don’t know which character you want to win, which one you want to lose, and you’re probably not going to feel good about either.”
           In suggesting there are really no “win wins” in human affairs, Farhadi may indeed be a reactionary. Or just too honest for everyone’s comfort.

© 2012 Nicholas Nicastro