A Separation: Sacrificing the Future

A Separation won this year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film, the first film from Iran to ever do so; in a time when Iran is in the news because of nuclear threats it's making to its neighbors, why would the Academy award a country with such a prestigious honor? It's not. The Academy is awarding the film maker for going against the government and its policies, and director Asghar Farhadi does that with the traditional tool of art: symbols.

A Separation is really a play on our perceptions. When words are used to limit quantity, in this case, "a," we look for only one separation, the separation of Simin (Leila Hatami) from her husband Nader (Peyman Moadi) when in fact, the film is full of "separations," the most important being, the separation of the future from the past. Because there are so many separations within the structure of the film, that permits the small lies, the fissures, the problems to creep in which propel the story and, ultimately, let it get out of control.

The opening scene of the film: in court, before a judge we never see, Simin pleads her case for wanting a divorce from her husband, Nader. They had planned on leaving the country and "making a better life" for themselves and their only daughter, Termah (the director's daughter who plays the part expertly) but the illness of the grandfather means that Nader wants to stay in the country and take care of him. Nader is willing to let Simin go, but she won't without Termeh and Termeh has decided to stay with her father, knowing her mother won't leave if she doesn't go with her. Simin goes to stay at her parents' house so Nader hires Razieh (Sareh Bayat) who is pregnant and has a little girl, to come during the day and look after his father. Termeh and Nader both blame Simin for what has happened, because if she hadn't left them, they wouldn't have had to hire Razieh. It's not a political singularity, there is often a "brain drain" when people leave their home country to find a better life, and the void left behind by those who have left can cause terrible situations in the home.

When Razieh, the hired housekeeper, crosses the street to get Grandfather, she gets hit by a car; even though we don't see this happening, we know that the future (the miscarried baby) has been sacrificed to preserve the past (Grandfather). Additionally what is important, is the lie told about how the child was lost: Razieh claims Nader hit her and that caused her miscarriage, because she keeps the car hitting her a secret until the very end. What does the vehicle hitting her symbolize?

Nader and his father who has Alzheimer's. Simin, during their divorce trial, tells the judge that Grandfather doesn't even know Nader is his son, and Nader replies, "But I know he is my father," and that is a admirable position, but that's how history works: history does not know the future that it will beget, it only knows itself, but we know the past from which we came. The Grandfather's condition is quite sad, as he barely speaks and wets himself, hardly being capable of doing anything. But this is one of the dichotomies the film establishes: clean and dirty, speaking and silence, truth and lies, being married or being divorced, honor and dishonor.

Iran, while a republic and based on a constitution, also holds the government responsible for assuring that all its citizens have jobs and that their essential needs are provided for. Razieh's husband, Hodjat, does not know she took the job at Nader's (and tradition in the country says she should have told him about it but she didn't). Hodjat had been employed with a cobbler for ten years and then they fired him and told him to "just try and get justice" and he couldn't, so he was going to go and take care of Grandfather (Razieh didn't tell him she had been doing it, only that it was a job opening) but the day Hodjat was supposed to show up to start, Hodjat's creditors showed up and took him off to prison. We could say that the Iranian government's inability to live up to its promise of making sure the people have jobs is the vehicle causing Razieh's miscarriage because she wouldn't have been on the street if she wasn't working and she was working because her husband didn't have a job.

 

Razieh's husband, Hodjat.

We can also say that, if things were better in Iran, Simin wouldn't have wanted to leave so desperately, and she would have stayed in her  home and taken care of Grandfather, instead of trying to leave and pass on the responsibility to someone else. During the opening scenes of the film, the divorce trial, the judge wants to know why Simin wants to leave the country but doesn't seem at all surprised that Simin wants to look for "a better life" (which was the title of another Oscar nominated film this year). An interesting note about Iran: it's considered to be one of the 10 best places in the world for tourists, primarily because of all its history, but it's ranked 89th in the world because of public image and regional conflicts making it unsafe for tourists.

Razieh and her little girl Somayeh. Part of the conflict in the film is whether or not Nader knew she was pregnant. He claims that because she was wearing the chador all the time, he could not have known she was 4-5 months pregnant.

In conclusion, we can say A Separation is about he Iranian government separating itself  from the promises it makes to its citizens in the Iranian Constitution; the government's inability to provide for its people as it has said it would is like the dementia of Grandfather, because when Grandfather should be in the house, he's out on the street instead; when the Iranian government should be in house, taking care of its problems, it's outside its borders, worrying itself about its neighbors instead, and this is why the Academy awarded A Separation the Oscar. It's a very intense film so if you have the chance to view it, you might not like it, but it will be a great education in storytelling and dramatic build-up.

Nader and his only child, Termeh, it's not just the wall that divides them, but the truth. A controversy of the film is Simin gets her divorce in the end, but Termeh has to decide which of her parents she will stay with: stay with her father or go abroad with her mother. The judge asks Nader and Simin to step outside so Termeh can tell him her decision, and they do so, sitting separately outside, and the film ends, not letting us know what Termeh's decision was. The point is, it doesn't matter which parent she goes with; she will always be separated from the other, from a part of her identity. That is the dilemma of Iran today: like Termeh, it can try and make a better life for itself, being separated from the past, or it can hold onto its past and risk foregoing a better life.