"Delbaran" - Abolfazl Jalili (2001)

Almost from the outset of Delbaran (2001), an Iranian film written, produced, directed, and edited by Abolfazl Jalili, it is evident that the film’s mise en scene will dominate the film narrative.  That is, the film’s visual style and pacing will be more significant to the viewer’s experience than any specific events shown on screen, which depict an Afghani boy’s experiences as an illegal refugee in Iran.

Much of the film  consists of relatively long lasting (mostly 7 to 15 seconds), static camera shots from fixed positions and without much action in the frame.  Some of these compositions are extreme long shots of a vehicle traveling down a road or the Afghani boy, Kaim, running across a wide landscape.  These shots are sometimes intercut with extreme closeups of various objects of artefacts in the scene.  I will return to discuss some more aspects of this mise en scene and how it works on the viewer later on.

The events in the film take place around the tiny Iranian village of Delbaran near the Afghanistan border, where an elderly resident, Khan, runs a truck stop.  Kaim is a fourteen-year-old refugee from the ongoing war in Afghanistan (recall that in the 1996-2001 period Afghanistan was embroiled in a civil war between the Taliban forces and the Afghani United Front) who has found shelter on the Iranian side by doing odd jobs for Khan.  Since Kaim is from the Afghan city of Herat, he speaks a Persian dialect that is well understood in eastern Iran. 

What goes on in the everyday activities of Delbaran seem mundane and tedious.  These events accumulate with no particular order or focus, but the viewer slowly gets a picture of the local situation.  Commercial freight trucks passing by Delbaran sometimes have flat tires or breakdowns, and on these occasions Khan, with the help of Karim’s services as a messenger boy, organizes assistance and general repair jobs.  Gradually the viewer picks up other pieces of information.  Khan apparently increases his chances for tire repair service by sprinkling the highway with hand-made nails to induce blowouts.  But another, more lucrative operation of  Khan’s is his involvement in smuggling Afghan refugees across the border.  Once inside Iran  these Afghani illegal aliens appear to be doing some kind of low-paid work in the area, which is another part of Khan’s operations.  An Iranian government official who is suspicious of this illegal human traffic in Afghanis makes periodic visits to Delbaran, but Khan shrugs him off and manages to keep his own clandestine smuggling business pretty well concealed.

As for the drivers passing through, sometimes they smoke opium with Khan, sometimes they play cards, or sometimes they just relax and listen to Western pop music.  These are activities that are not exactly sanctioned by the government authorities, but they are part of the routine world of these ordinary people in the villages remote from the centers of authority.

The viewer also gradually learns a few things about the taciturn Kaim, on whom circumstances have forced a level of maturity well in advance of his fourteen years.  His mother has died in a bombing attack, and his father is in the army fighting against the Taliban.  Although he has a younger sister staying with relatives back in Afghanistan, Kaim has no wish to return to that war-torn country.  He is struggling to survive by doing whatever he can to say in Iran.  In his interactions with others, the boy tries to show his toughness, but he is generally even tempered and hard working.

There hardly seems to be any narrative progression at all, but there are a couple of activities that seem more noteworthy than usual. 

• The government official is ambushed on the road near Delbaran and  robbed and left tied up with his own handcuffs.  Kaim usually keeps out of sight of the suspicious official, since his illegal status makes him exactly the king of quarry that the official is always looking to arrest.  But on this occasion the boy unthinkingly provides the kind of  assistance he provides everyone at the inn, and after some effort he manages to pick the handcuff lock and free the official.
•  The government official, however, soon discovers that Kaim is an Afghani illegal alien, and he repays the boy’s earlier assistance by arresting him.  But in Iran just about everything is negotiable, and so Khan’s old wife rushes to the constabulary and insistently nags the official until she is able to secure Kaim’s release.  
• There are also some repeated shots of heavy earth-moving and grading equipment vehicles engaged in some road-building.  There doesn’t seem to be any motivation for these shots, but the viewer eventually learns that the government for some reason has been in the process of building a highway bypass that will cause the road to Delbaran to be closed.  At the end of the film the bypass is finally opened, and this means the end of the Delbaran inn business and the end of Khan.  Kaim’s fate at the end of the film is left unresolved, but he goes back to work sprinkling the custom-made nails on the road again.

What one comes away with at the end of Delbaran is not really a story, but more of a mood piece about the hard life in that quarter, especially for the poor Afghanis whose lives are racked in violent turmoil.  A person like Kaim is just trying to be of use to people so that he can have a life.  This brings me back to the film’s visual style. 

As I mentioned the film shows long, static, fixed-camera shots of the tedium in the small settlement and inn.  These are interspersed with long-shot camera pans of people traveling across the landscape or of Kaim running to attend to his latest errand.  Despite the slow pace of life in the area, Kaim is always running at top speed just to attend to his chores.  Noone else in the vicinity moves at anything other than a snail’s pace.  There is almost no dialogue in the film.  All of these things emphasize Kaim’s isolation and powerlessness in the vast landscape in which he finds himself. 

Moreover, there are few medium shots or two-shots, so that the jumps back and forth from long shots to tight closeups of objects entails no visual continuity.  There is never a cut on action, or a point-of-view shot.  The camera shots that might be thought to be establishing shots are from non-focalizable camera positions – there is no logic of motivation associated with the perspective of most of the shots in the film.

All this adds up to being a maddening challenge to the viewer.  The viewer must try to piece together some sort of narrative thread from the scattered, unmotivated visual fragments that Jalili gives them.  On the other hand, I am willing to concede that this visual presentation does not appear to be simply the result of carelessness.  The visuals are carefully arranged and framed.  The sound editing is very crisp and significantly fills the gaps left my the absence of dialogue.  Taken together, these effects are reminiscent of the films of French filmmaker Robert Bresson, who also emphasized deliberate visuals and accentuated sound in order to establish a unique mood and sense of presence.   But I didn’t come away from this film with the sense of wonder that Bresson’s films elicit.  The narrative drift was just too disorganized in Delbaran to make it a compelling experience for the viewer.  Perhaps there were cultural nuances that I missed, but for me Delbaran was an interesting attempt that missed the mark.

"The Deserted Station" - Alireza Raisian (2002)

Like a number of other contemporary Iranian works, The Deserted Station (Istgah-Matrouk, 2002), a film directed by Alireza Raisian, presents mundane events and circumstances that manage to evoke larger themes concerning the lives of the characters.  Reminiscent of earlier Italian films such as those by Michelangelo Antonioni, these Iranian films often involve an educated, urbanized protagonist for whom an encounter with ordinary people in the countryside elicits philosophical introspection about life's purposes.

In the case of The Deserted Station, the story concerns a young married couple driving across eastern Iran on their way to making a devotional visit to the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad.  The film proceeds at a leisurely pace to acclimate the viewer to the slow pace and sense of isolation of the Iranian desert. In fact for the film's first six minutes, one only sees images of the desert road and the driver, who is always shown in a tight camera frame so that one can’t be sure if he there is anyone else in the car. Eventually one is able to see that there is a passenger, the driver's wife, who though never named, turns out to be the story's real protagonist. 

As they drive through the barren landscape of Semnan province during the early morning hours, the driver Mahmood, who is a professional photographer, wanders off the main road in pursuit of picturesque images to capture with his camera.  When a deer surprisingly bolts in front of their car on the road, Mahmood’s wild swerve to avoid hitting it causes a mechanical break down.  Suddenly in this desolate landscape they are in need of a repairman.  It turns out that the only evidence of nearby human habitation is a tiny mud-brick community inhabited almost exclusively by women and children.  The men of the area, we are told, have all gone off to find work in other locations, and there is now just one remaining able-bodied male: a solitary local herder, Feizollah, who somehow manages to embody most of the traditional male-supplied services that are needed in the village.  Not only is Feizollah the local handyman, he is also the only literate person, which means that if the fatherless children in the community are to get any education, he must be their teacher.

Feizollah tells Mahmood that he can repair their car, but the two of them will need to travel by motorcycle to the regional service town in order to buy a spare part.  This will take most of the day, so that in the meantime, Mahmood’s wife will have to look after the school children while the two men are gone.  We will eventually see that here are about twenty children of various ages in Feizollah’s school, about 80% of whom are boys – girls in this village apparently tend to get married off to other villages at a very early age.  Mahmood’s wife is hesitant she can take over the class so easily, but Mahmood assures her that she can do it and reminds her that she has taught classes before.

The key element underlying this narrative, which is something that takes some time to make itself fully evident, is that Mahmood’s wife is pregnant and that her two previous pregnancies ended as stillbirths.  She is consequently tormented by the traditional view that she cannot be a complete woman until she has become a mother, and her trip to Mashhad is evidently being undertaken in order to carry out religious rituals and to pray for the birth of a healthy baby.  So her encounters with the village children, who are largely parentless, naturally invoke her motherly instincts, what role she can play, and her concerns about what fate may have in store for these children.

The rest of the film meanders along in its own desultory fashion showing various classroom scenes with the children, which are intercut with scenes of Mahmood and Feizollah discussing aspects of the lifestyle of the region while riding together on the motorcycle across the desert.  This motorcycle conversation is very reminiscent of a similar scene in Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), which is not so surprising since The Deserted Station is based on a Kiarostami story, and he is also credited, along with Kambuzia Partovi (Café Transit, aka Border Café, 2005), for the script of The Deserted Station.  Another cinematic homage may have been associated with that of the elderly illiterate railroad switchman, who was the only other male besides Feizollah in the village.  The man’s stubborn repetitions a minimalist set of actions and phrases evoked the similar behaviour of the switchman of an earlier well-known (and over-praised) Iranian film, Still Life (Tabiate Bijan, 1974).

Gradually a philosophical metaphor begins to take shape.  This little village of parentless children becomes a microcosm for the great mass of humanity who seek to know what is “out there” and important.  The village teacher Feizollah is a practical man and at his own expense has devoted himself to teaching these children about the outside world.  He is understood to be knowledgeable concerning many things, and for a day at least, Mahmood’s wife has become his surrogate.  For these children, Feizollah, and now Mahmood's wife, are almost celestial beings who can provide guidance for their following.  But what should that guidance be?  In fact Mahmood’s wife knows quite a bit about the outside world that she could tell these children, but she begins to see that the some of the truly important aspects of life are right in front of us – right here and right now.  There is a scene where she is following Feizollah’s lesson plan and instructing the children about Christopher Columbus’s discovery of a new continent, facts which the children try to memorize.  But we have to ask ourselves, what can these children really understand about another continent when they know very little about even the next town?  Aren't there more essential things for them learn?

There are further metaphors evoked when the children run to a railroad siding where some abandoned passenger cars are rusting away – the "deserted station". They use the train cars for a purpose other than for transport – they begin playing a game of hide and seek. Seeing this, Mahmood’s wife becomes pensive as she wonders perhaps where the "train of life" is taking all of them.  One of the older boys wants to run away from the village in order to learn where those trains he sees, which always pass by their village without stopping, are going.  Mahmood’s wife understands his longing to know about ultimate destinations, and yet she also knows that this is something that perhaps can never be really known.  Thus she is torn: she wants to help these children, but how?  She can only comfort them and try to imbue in them more down-to-earth truths, such as that they should support each other and not tease anyone among them who is afraid.
                               
There are some other rather oblique socio-cultural references in the film that were not entirely clear to me, but that may suggest social commentary:

• The appearance of the deer in the desert road was a highly unlikely and somewhat miraculous event for that region of Iran.  The matter-of-fact Feizollah seemed to have thought that such an appearance must have been illusion.  Did this have symbolic connotations?   
• While on their motorcycle ride, Feizollah discusses his unsuccessful attempt to be elected to the Iranian parliament.  There may be some social commentary about the Iranian political process embedded in their remarks.
• Also during their motorcycle trip, Mahmood remarks that on several occasions that day he has seen women being carted away on trucks by soldiers.  Feizollah seems oblivious to these sightings.  I am not sure what this discussion might mean other than to remind us that women in the Iranian countryside live very circumscribed lives.

Rather than resolve these issues at the end, The Deserted Station concludes by metaphorically presenting this state of hesitation and doubt.  This ending seems quite artificial, but it is smoothed over by the sensitive dramatic portrayal on the part of Leila Hatami (Leila, 1998; Low Heights, 2002; A Separation”, 2011) as Mahmood’s wife, who generally sustains an appropriate contemplative mood throughout the film. In addition the music by Peyman Yazdian (The Wind Will Carry Us, 1999; The Wind Carpet, 2003; Crimson Gold, 2003; Friday's Soldiers, 2003; Fireworks Wednesday, 2006) is, as usual, effective in support of the film's reflective atmosphere.

"Boutique" - Hamid Nematollah (2003)

Certainly love is the principal driver of artistic expression, and the film medium’s capability of immersing the viewer in the rich, particularized experiences of its subjects onscreen makes it ideally suited to telling stories of love.  Nevertheless, really good love stories in film are often hard to come by, presumably because each person’s love experience is personal and unique – watching someone else's romantic experiences may not relate much to one's own amorous dreams.  Indeed the lover’s dream world often follows no evident logic at all, so how is it possible to tell it's story? Nevertheless, sometimes a film can mysteriously conjure up that subjective dream world for the viewer to see and feel as his or her own.  Boutique (Butik, 2003), the debut outing of Iranian writer-director Hamid Nematollah, tells the story of Jahangir and Eti, two star-crossed young people living in the big city.  Actually, it’s Jahan’s story – the focalization is entirely on Jahangir, and everything is seen from his perspective.  But Jahan's story is mostly about Eti.

Jahan lives in a downtown apartment with three other equally impoverished bachelors all trying to make a go of it in modern Iran.  At least Jahan has a job, working as a clerk at a clothing outlet boutique in a shopping mall.  “Doc” is a long-ago dropout from medical studies who is apparently going to try his hand at street vending.  Reza is out of work and living off family support.  And Behzad is a fragile young man whose depression is being treated by regular sessions of electroshock (electroconvulsive) therapy.  (It’s amazing to me that electroshock therapy is still administered to thousands of people all around the world, even though so little is known about its neurological effects.) 

Very early on in the film, Jahan recognizes a young woman walking on the sidewalk and approaches her.  Apparently this pretty teenager, Eti, had earlier visited Jahan’s boutique and had made a deposit for a pair of slacks, but she had neglected to come and complete the transaction.  This is the first of what will be many encounters, almost all of which will be on the city streets.  Young people everywhere have the problem of finding places where they can be relatively alone.  In Iran this is particularly difficult, but sometimes there is the “safety in numbers” shelter that comes with the hustle and bustle of the crowded city streets.

Of course, there are other things that inhibit Jahan and Eti in their encounters.  One is the problem of their relative impoverishment.  Jahan is poor and basically has nothing – he and his flatmates sleep on the floor in sleeping bags in their unfurnished apartment.  Eti also has nothing: it is later revealed that she is a teenage runaway who has no source of income and is staying with “some friends”, who can’t even afford their own living quarters.  Jahan is warned by one of his more established friends, Davoud, that he shouldn’t spend time with a girl off the street like Eti.  And naturally, Eti is suspicious of any man who might be suspected of wanting to take advantage of her.  So Eti continually vacillates between first infectious flirtatiousness and then, as if she has to remind herself not to be too friendly to men that she doesn't know very well, sulking withdrawals and accusations that Jahan is being presumptuous.

It’s also not surprising that Eti’s effervescent and enthusiastic confidence is mixed with utter naivete – something we would naturally expect in an exuberant and unworldly young girl.  She tells Jahan that she wants to go abroad.  When Jahan asks her how she will live, she assures him that she will get a job as an entertainer, because she is pretty and has a good singing voice.  She tells him that she is now trying to raise 400,000 tomans to give to a “good” man whom she knows and who will take her to a foreign country.  Jahan doesn’t say much to that, but he knows that 400,000 tomans (about US$ 400) is an absurdly low amount of money for such planned travel.  Eti is clearly being taken for a ride by some sort of con man.

Jahan tries to help Eti, but he and his mates are all trying to make their way in a world that is driven by money, privilege, and corruption.  There is an enormous separation between rich and poor, between the corrupt elite and those struggling to find a job.  Jahan’s boutique is owned by Mr. Shapoori, a heroin-addicted autocrat who treats his employees like puppets.  In fact the heroin and opium drug culture is a major element of Jahan’s environment, with some of his friends heavily addicted and involved in the trade.  The money that they do manage to acquire comes from that segment of society.  In fact this cynical depiction of the influence of drugs in society made me somewhat surprised that the film was allowed to be shown in Iran.

Nevertheless, Jahan manages to give Eti the pair of slacks that she covets and manages to get her a little extra money, too.  To do this, he has to borrow money from the boutique’s till, and this costs him his job – that is, until he shows sufficient subservience to Shapoori so that he can get the job back.  Jahan also manages to find some money, through the benevolence of his friend, Davoud, to attend to Eti’s urgent need for some dental surgery.

All the while, Jahan and Eti are getting to know each other better.  As they go about town to attend to their various errands, Eti maintains a constant, vivacious chatter, telling Jahan about all about her passions.  Jahan smiles but retains his cool and upright cordiality. 

Is Eti sincerely interested in Jahan, or is she just using him in order to somehow secure her desired 400,000 tomans?  Maybe it could be a bit of both.  And how committed to Eti is Jahan, who always plays his hand pretty close to his vest?  In a climactic scene when she really needs him to rescue her, he is powerless and ineffective.  What should he have done?  What could he have done?  In real life, even those involved in such circumstances often cannot answer questions like that.  

The violent, downbeat ending of the film is perhaps too much to be expected and dramatically disappointing.  We always knew that the loathsome Shapoori would be there at the end to cause trouble and infect the innocent with his cynical debauchery.  Perhaps this kind of denouement attends to and merely reflects the generally fatalistic current of Iranian culture, but it represents an abandonment of the narrative progression that had come before.  In any case the ending does highlight the frustration and sense of powerlessness that many people with dreams feel in today’s world.

What ultimately makes Boutique an effective film, though, is not the external narrative structure, but the subtle and evolving relationships, both healthy and twisted, that are depicted in the film.  This is aided by the acting in Boutique, which is excellent throughout. Mohammad Reza Golzar is suitably sensitive and manly as Jahangir, and Reza Rooygari has a compelling presence as the insidious Shapoori. Of course, the principal relationship is that between Jahan and Eti, and the  development of their friendship, with all its tentativeness is the key to the story.  This works because of the superb performance in the role of Eti on the part of the beautiful Golshifteh Farahani (Bab'Aziz, 2005; Half Moon (Niwemang); 2006; Ali Santouri, 2007).  It is perhaps less due to Ms. Farahani’s technical acting skills and more a consequence of her own natural, vivacious manner and screen presence.  In any case the then twenty-year-old Golshifteh was recognized for her performance by winning the Best Actress award at the Three Continents Festival held in Nantes, France, that year.  More recently in January 2012, Golshifteh was in the news again when the Iranian government banned her from returning to her home country, because she had allowed a nude picture of herself to be published in Madame Le Figaro magazine to protest the restrictions on women in Iranian society.  She reported [1] at the time  that she was

“told by a Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guide official that Iran does not need any actors or artists. You may offer your artistic services somewhere else."

I hope for the sake of all the rest of us, especially for those Iranians who hold a different view, that somewhere soon she will be given the opportunity to grace the screen again with her presence. 

Overall, I recommend Boutique, a film that deserves more attention than it has so far received.

Notes:

1. Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat, "Iranian Actress Banned from Homeland after Naked Magazine Shoot", The Telegraph, 18 January 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9023031/Iranian-actress-banned-from-homeland-after-naked-magazine-shoot.html#.TxcCZb1_hsk.facebook.

"A Separation" - Asghar Farhadi (2011)

A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin, 2011) is an intense Iranian domestic drama by writer-director Asghar Farhadi that has drawn immense critical favor and won multiple awards.  The film opens with a married couple facing directly into the camera and giving testimony concerning their application for a divorce.  At first site, this looks very much like another version of Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday (Chaharshanbe Suri, 2006), which told a searing story of a bickering married couple and their inability to fashion a stable marriage relationship.  But A Separation proves to be quite different.  While both halves of the married couple in Fireworks Wednesday were unforgiving and unsympathetic characters, the married couple in A Separation, Nader and Simin, are reasonable and understandable.  We can empathize with each of them and understand why they act as they do.  What distinguishes them from each other, as the ensuing events will demonstrate, is that Nader is the principled idealist, while Simin is the pragmatist.  Popular cultural expectations about gender roles often lead us to expect the man to be the pragmatist and the woman to be the principled idealist, but it is just the opposite in this case.

There is another significant aspect of A Separation that distinguishes it from many Iranian films, indeed from most films across the international spectrum, concerning the focus of the domestic interaction.  In many Iranian films, the focus is on the difficulties that women face in a conflicted and changing society that has traditionally placed severe restrictions on them.  In this film, however, the primary focalization and the underlying themes that drive the narrative are centered around the husband, Nader.  

The opening scene quickly and clearly reveals the main aspects of Nader and Simin’s situation. Simin has been working diligently for a year-and-a-half to acquire a visa to some overseas country, where she expects that they can have a better life for themselves and their eleven-year-old daughter, Termeh.  And now, finally, they have been granted the visa and have been given forty days in which to respond, that is, emigrate to their long-sought country abroad.  But Nader, who had originally cooperated with Simin’s efforts to emigrate, now refuses to go – he says he cannot abandon his father, whose Alzheimer’s condition requires round-the-clock care.  Nader is quite willing to allow his wife to leave, but he doesn’t want to hand over custody of Termeh to Simin, and the Islamic law of Iran evidently gives the husband  the authority in this situation.  So Simin and Nader have agreed to go through uncontested divorce proceedings in preparation for a further decision in connection with who will wind up with Termeh.  The magistrate listening to their divorce deposition, however, refuses to grant them a divorce, even though both Simin and Nader are in agreement about that issue.  He says their reasons for seeking a divorce are insufficient for dissolving their marriage.

The viewer can understand and even sympathize with the positions of both Simin and Nader. Both of them are reasonable and civilized, but they want different things. Nader even decides to let Termeh go abroad with Simin if she chooses, but the girl decides to stick by her father at home. Simin moves out of the house, in preparation for her move abroad, and from here on, we follow what goes on at home with Nader and his daughter and father. It’s evident that Nader is a caring and thoughtful man and father, but he is clearly under stress.  He has a full-time job to attend to, his wife has just left him, he has to look after his terminally ailing father, and he must look after Termeh and help her with her schoolwork.  This stress and pressure on Nader will only intensify as the narrative progresses.

Nader proceeds to hire a caretaker woman, Razieh, to look after his father while he is away at work during the day.  Razieh comes from a conservative, lower-class background and is hesitant about the moral implications of being alone at home with another man, even if that man is almost insensate with dementia.  But with her husband unable to find work, she desperately needs the money and goes ahead with the job.

Not long after Razieh starts work, Nader comes home early one day and finds Razieh away from the house and his father half-dead on the floor of his bedroom, with his hands tied to the bedposts.  Razieh had tied the old man up to the bed and had gone out to attend to some other chores. In her absence, the father had fallen out of bed, leaving him in a precarious, immobile position on the floor. Nader manages to revive his father, but he is still very disturbed about Razieh’s neglect. He retains his composure, but his stress level has increased markedly. When Razieh returns to the apartment shortly thereafter, Razieh confronts her with what has happened to his father and the fact that some money has been taken from his bureau.  He dismisses Razieh on the spot and orders her out of the house.  Razieh protests her innocence about the missing money and refuses to leave the apartment, so Nader pushes her out the door and locks it.  

The seemingly minor act of pushing Razieh out the door turns out to be a major event and bring woe to everyone.  Nader soon learns that Razieh was pregnant and had a miscarriage.  She charges Nader with assault, because she says she fell down the stairway leading up to his apartment when she was pushed out the door.  Nader expresses his sorrow and sympathy for what happened, but asserts that he is innocent of the assault charge.  Because Razieh was 19-weeks pregnant, Nader learns that he can be charged with murder and be sentenced to prison for up to three years.  A key issue is whether Nader knew that Razieh was pregnant when he pushed her out the door.  If he did, then the law says he is culpable for a murder.  

The rest of the film revolves around unraveling what happened when Nader nudged Razieh out the door.  Did she really fall down the stairs (the viewer doesn’t see it)?  Did the alleged fall cause the miscarriage, or was there some other incident at that time?  Did Nader really know about Razieh’s pregnancy?  We viewers knew, but Nader swears he did not, and we are moved to take Nader at his word.  Little scraps of evidence come out here and there.  All the way along, we are looking to see if Nader will be found guilty of the charge.  We are also judging Nader, ourselves, along with Termeh, according to our own moral compasses.  

A key moment in the story occurs when Termeh confronts Nader with her doubts about whether he knew about Razieh’s pregnancy before the shoving – there are inconsistencies in what Nader testified to the authorities.  With his integrity as a parent on the line, Nader confesses to Termeh that he did know about Razieh’s pregnancy before the act. But he denied knowing to the authorities, because the rigidity of the law doesn’t take into account the fact that at the moment of his nudging her out the door, he was not mindful of her condition. He knew, and yet he didn’t know, he tells Termeh.  According to the letter of the law and according to the strict, conservative moral code followed by Razieh and her husband Hodjiat, Nader is a liar and guilty of a crime.  But Nader tells Termeh that he still believes he is innocent of the crime of murder, but the rigidity of the law compelled him to cover up his foreknowledge of Razieh’s pregnancy.  Termeh is anguished to hear this, but stands loyally behind her father’s when she is interrogated by the authorities.

The pragmatic Simin reenters the situation and tries to come up with a practical solution.  If they are willing to pay a diyya (“blood money”) of 40 million tomans (about US$ 40,000) to Razieh and Hodjiat, Nader can avoid going to jail.  Simin approaches Razieh and Hodjiat and gets them to agree to a payment of 15 million tomans.  If Nader confesses to the crime and pays the blood money, he can avoid going to jail.  But Nader doesn’t go along with this arrangement, because it would entail his admission that he committed murder.  He believes in his own innocence.

The acting in A Separation is very good, particularly that of Peyman Maadi in the role of Nader. Indeed all of the performers, including Leila Hatami (Leila, 1998, Low Heights, 2002), give convincing and subtle performances. On the other hand, the shaky hand-held cinematography in the film is a distraction and an irritation.  Farhadi has chosen to track his players in closeup and medium closeup as they move around the setting.  Such close-in filming requires an extremely steady camera, particularly when the character movement stops and slight movements of what are supposed to be static images are more noticeable.  Unfortunately this kind  of steady image control is not what we get in A Separation. 

As I mentioned above, there are two judgement examinations of Nader’s behaviour going on in parallel in the film: the official legal case conducted by the civil authorities, and our own private assessment. The ingenue Termeh acts as something of a surrogate for our own assessment of Nader: she knows as much as the viewer and also sympathizes with both parents. At the end of the film, the official examination by the civil authorities is resolved, but Farhadi chooses to leave Termeh’s own, personal assessment open.  Termeh is asked at the end of the film to choose between two different ways of looking at the world: that of Simin or that of Nader.  Both of them are more flexible and complex than the strict moral bookkeeping characteristic of conservative societies,  but they have differing outlooks.  I believe I know which one Termeh chooses, do you?