‘A Separation’ earns award for Best Foreign Language Film

The film first aired on Feb. 1 in Iran’s 30th annual Fajr Film Festival. Although it received no awards in that festival, it went on to win the Golden Bear in Cannes and, most recently, the Oscar for best foreign language film at the 84th annual Academy Awards. “A Separation” became the first Iranian film to win an Oscar, and the second to be nominated for an Academy Award, after Majid Majidi’s “Children of Heaven.”

The film begins with Simin and Nader, a couple married for 14 years, who have been planning on leaving Iran since they were married. They have a daughter, Termeh, who is almost 11 years old, and they have only 40 days to leave Iran before their visa expires. The couple sits in front of a judge as the movie opens, where Simin is asking for a divorce, because her husband will not leave the country with her.

Nader tells the judge that he will not leave his father at a time when he suffers from severe Alzheimer’s and is in need of home care. This becomes a choice between caring for his father and keeping his wife and the mother of his child.

The film is made at a time when Iran’s divorce rates are soaring. According to The New York Times, the Iranian government reported a divorce for every 3.76 marriages in 2010, and the numbers have risen since. In a family-centered culture where divorce is highly undesired, “A Separation” uncovers a dividing world.

As Simin packs and leaves for her mother’s house, Nader is hiring a nurse to care for his father during the day. He hires Razieh, a religious and hardworking woman, who takes the job in an attempt to raise money to pay off her husband’s debts. She is four months pregnant and finds the housework exhausting.

Conflict arises when Nader comes home one day with his daughter to find that his father had been tied down while sleeping and left alone.
The film does a great job of transferring the distress to the viewer. The subtle and unobtrusive nature of the filming places the viewer inside the film: the distress, deception, worry and frustration— the very things Simin tries to escape by going abroad.

But the film is not about deception or social corruption in Iran. In the end, Termeh’s innocence and Razieh’s honest refusal of blood money strike a balance with the conflict and deception that drives the story.

Nor is the film a documentary of a day in an Iranian family’s life. The film is about separation and the ripple effect of divorce. It shows the devastation of a world when the smallest unit of society— a family— separates. This is perfectly demonstrated through Simin and Nader’s daughter. She is fittingly named “Termeh,” after a painstakingly-woven cloth, a luxurious Persian handicraft. Termeh serves as a synecdoche of the society’s youth at large, and the agony youth undergo when the society is divided.

Time after time, Termeh is forced to make difficult decisions. She is forced to choose one parent to stay with, knowing she may never see the other, and she constantly carries memories of yelling, conflict and betrayal.

As is typical of director Asghar Farhadi, the torment and anxiety ends in a sudden cliffhanger. The viewer is left to settle for small resolutions as justice is finally put to rest, leaving two families in ruins. But Farhadi’s cliffhangers allow the viewer to substitute hopeful and happy endings, as opposed to the film dictating it.

Thus, the film becomes a flowing part of the viewer’s life, instead of a couple of hours spent at the cinema.