Notes on A Separation

The Iranian film A Separation was one of the most widely acclaimed movies of the past year, but I went into it knowing very little other than that it was about a married couple on the verge of divorce because the wife wants a better life (outside Iran) for their young daughter while the husband needs to look after his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father. Based on this synopsis, I expected to see a nuanced story about people trying to balance their responsibilities, feelings and circumstances. And indeed, Asghar Farhadi’s film is all of this.

But it is also (and this I wasn’t expecting) something very much like a thriller, complete with tale-altering twists; a psychological detective story where revelations aren’t just frisson-generators but flow all too naturally from the characters’ personalities and situations. Emerging from the screening at the Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon, I found myself in a variant of the discussions one has after watching a film from the mystery genre, such as Kahaani or The Usual Suspects. ”Remember that line where she says...?” “What did that glance really mean?” “That exchange was so unobtrusive, one barely registered it at the time.” “I need to see THAT scene again.”

Two levels of suspense – inseparable from each other – exist in A Separation, and they both circle around the film’s central incident: a brief scuffle between the husband, Nader, and the lower-class woman, Razieh, whom he has employed to look after his father while he is away at work. There is, first, the mode of the conventional “whodunit” (or “what happened”) and though it feels glib to discuss a slice-of-life drama in such terms, the film itself makes nods to such suspense – as in a scene where Nader retraces the incident (which has got him into legal trouble) for the police.

But the other form of suspense – one that persists through the film – is at the level of character, where the concealment of seemingly minor information gives us a different perspective on a person's behaviour. Layers are gradually peeled away and we see the full potential (for goodness, anger, deception, understanding) of all the protagonists: Nader and (to a lesser extent) his wife Simin; their intelligent daughter Termeh; Razieh and her hot-headed husband Houjat.

Here's just one example of this understated suspense and the emotional complexity in this film’s best scenes. (Minor spoiler alert) Razieh has accused Nader of causing her miscarriage, which is a very serious matter because the foetus was over four months old and therefore technically a human being as per the local law. Much hinges on whether he knew she was pregnant when he gave her a slight push to get her out of his house.

At one point Nader confesses to his daughter that he had known Razieh was pregnant, but it had slipped his mind at that specific moment. (“But you know how the law is – they expect everything to be in black or white. According to them, either I knew or I didn’t know.”) This is borne out cinematically: the early scene where Nader (and by extension the viewer) overhears a conversation mentioning the pregnancy is shot in such a way that the information is presented almost subliminally, with other things simultaneously occupying his (and our) attention – it isn’t stressed at all. At the time of the altercation, therefore, the viewer is in the same position as Nader: so focused on the high emotion of the moment (he has just discovered that Razieh left his father alone at home, almost causing his death) that he isn’t thinking about Razieh’s condition. In other words, he knew and he didn’t know; it’s a difficult idea to express in a film, but this one manages it.

****

After watching A Separation I read two or three reviews by Western critics, and thought it interesting that they discussed it mainly in terms of the broad cultural differences between Iran and the West (therefore clubbing all the characters in this film together) while glossing over the schism between the two sets of lifestyles depicted within the story: the relatively well-off, cosmopolitan life of Nader’s family as opposed to the penury of Razieh and Houjat. But this is another important kind of separation, one that is based on privilege and education – it’s a separation between those who can (just about) afford to employ domestic staff and those who are forced to take up such positions to make ends meet (even if it means that a woman from a tradition-bound family must hide the fact that she is working). It’s a separation between people who are still rigidly devout (to the extent of staking their souls on the Holy Book) and those who have moved away from (or adopted a more relaxed attitude to) religion. And this separation has a distinct bearing on the plot arc, the actions of these people and their attitudes to one another.

The tension of the class divide is manifest in offhand little exchanges. “You think all we do is beat our wives all day” Houjat shouts at Nader in the judge’s chambers; in another context, he exclaims “These people don’t even believe in God”, to which Nader retorts sarcastically, “Yes, God is only for you people.” At one point the conservative Razieh has to take religious advice about whether she is allowed to change the old man’s trousers when he has soiled himself. And Nader tells the judge that he couldn’t make out Razieh was pregnant because “she is wearing a chador all the time”. Over the course of the story, these separations become so overwhelming that the characters can barely see or hear each other; cultural differences, secrets and misunderstandings accumulate to create a snowball effect; much is revealed about individual character and, by extension, about the workings of a society.

I thought the growing complexity of the film’s structure (wherein we come to empathise with different people in turn) was reflected in the difference between its opening and closing shots, both of which are lengthy takes. The opening shot is relatively straightforward, with the camera adopting the perspective of the judge who listens to Nader and Simin make their case for a divorce. As viewers we are put in his position, asked to listen to these two people (whom we barely know at this stage) and form opinions about them. But in the long closing shot, which takes place as the end-credits roll and Nader and Simin wait outside the judge’s room (with other people, all of whom no doubt have their own dramatic stories, moving about in the corridor near them), the camera’s eye has become “objective”. We are no longer expected to judge (and by this point, the immense difficulty of forming judgements has been made obvious). We simply watch and wait for further developments.