If you had to boil down A Separation to a simple, one sentence description, I guess you would call it a movie from Iran about the last days of a dying marriage. But it’s so much more than that, and at the same time still a very small, domestic story. The separation in the title refers not only to the impending dissolution of the marriage, but also to the walls that inevitably spring up between people because of our inability to perfectly communicate what we’re feeling, and our inability to completely understand the positions of others.
The inciting incident of much of this film doesn’t actually involve the man (Peyman Moadi) and his wife (Leila Hatami), but the man and his housekeeper (Sareh Bayat). She’s pregnant, and a misunderstanding between her and the husband regarding questions of missing money and why the man’s Alzheimer suffering father has been tied to a bed and left alone lead to a shove that may or may not have caused her miscarriage. Throughout the film we’re not quite sure of the truth behind the money, the grandfather, the shove, or the miscarriage; yet we’re left to pick the situation apart for ourselves and take sides. The disagreements on the matter that will inevitably spring up between audience members are much of the fun of this movie. But that’s pretty much where the fun stops.
This is mostly a difficult, gut wrenching drama that’s a rather taxing experience to get through. Questions of duty, morality, and religious law loom over everything. Every character seems to be genuinely trying to be the best they can, and still we’re left to sit and sweat as horrible things happen and good people suffer miserable circumstances. You often get the feeling that if someone with perspective, someone who saw the whole picture could just swoop in and clear all of this up, then everyone could go back to being happy. But in real life that isn’t possible, and this movie is nothing if not authentically presented. If you’re the type of person who can’t take too much awkwardness and misery in your cinema, then probably you should avoid trying to digest this story. But, for everyone else, the level of the filmmaking here is so impressive that A Separation simply can’t be missed.
