Iran, 2011
Directed by Ashgar Farhadi
With Payman Maadi (Nader), Leila Hatami (Simin), Sarina Farhadi (Termeh), Ali-Ashgar Shahbazi (Nader’s father), Sareh Bayat (Razieh), Shahab Hosseini (Hojjat), Kimia Hosseini (Somayeh), Merila Zare’i (Mrs. Ghahraii), Babak Karimi (the criminal court’s judge)
Of course, there is the issue of what could happen to their daughter. The wife wants the girl to travel with her, the husband does not – that closes the case, as his approval is required. But the biggest issue is Nader’s father: he has the Alzheimer’s disease and his son looks after him in his apartment (his father’s property and the place where he set up his own family). Nader cannot imagine what could happen to the old man if he was to follow his wife abroad. So he would rather let her go her own way. The nasty case of divorce a baffled (that is what his voice suggests) judge is hearing, in fact we are hearing as the camera is put cleverly right at the spot where the judge sits in the court, is on the face of it the rather amazing dispute between a woman yearning for a better life outside the family home, but still with the family, and a man refusing to grant her wish and instead insisting on splitting with her – a callous move she does embrace in her own way (she was the one who filed the papers) but still resents. And the fact the judge refuses to grant the divorce mainly because he thinks her plan to travel abroad is too futile makes her experience even more searing. She vows not to come back to the place she has shared with Nader for fourteen years.
Her absence makes daily life more complicated for Nader. So Simin gets him in touch with a jobless woman who is willing to be a carer for Nader’s father. But this job proves right away to be quite a challenge for Razieh: not only she must spend a lot of time commuting to get there and is forced to have always her little daughter Somayeh with her (it seems there is nobody to watch over the cute little girl), but she is flustered by how taxing and embarrassing it is to look after an Alzheimer male patient. And the fact the condition of Nader’s father worsens only compound her troubles. Overwhelmed and clumsy, she considers giving up and letting her husband, who is also jobless, Hojjat, do the job, but the fellow is always kept from coming, harassed by his creditors. So Razieh keeps showing up at Nader’s door, but often late and worried. Things come eventually to a head the day Nader arrives early with his 11-year old daughter Termeh and finds his father alone, tied to his bed and comatose, with the carer conspicuously missing. Moreover, a few banknotes look missing. So when Razieh arrives, with Somayeh still tagging along, Nader flies off the handle badly, throwing her from his apartment even as she screams and complains she is no thief. She ends up sitting, shocked, in the stairs while Nader tries hard to take care of his father – and breaks down.
In the following hours, things get even worse: Razieh is rushed to the hospital and has a miscarriage. Her hot-tempered husband thinks her confrontation with Nader is the cause of the disaster and sues him. The film moves back to a court, but this time it is in a criminal case that Nader is involved. What follows is a constant switch from the proceedings and their impact on the people involved, especially Nader, Simin, and Termeh. A hotly-disputed bone of contention, more than how Nader physically behaved towards Razieh, is whether he was indeed aware she was pregnant. He claims he was not, backed up by the English tutor of his daughter, Mrs. Ghahraii, who did have a chat with Razieh about the carer’s health but then explains to the judge Nader was too busy to overhead this chat. The testimony irks the plaintiffs, who are by the way struggling to stand together. Hojjat is angry because he has never been told his wife was working for Nader while Razieh is painfully aware her husband’s reckless behavior, rude language, and raw feelings undermine their case. But Hojjat’s boundless anger is arguably also stoked by the obstinate and haughty manners of Nader who refuses to feel guilty and clings to the hope Termeh, who keeps asking awkward questions, still trusts him and loves him, even as he comes across as not very compassionate (but is this view really fair?).
The inquest raises constantly confusion and doubts, claims and counter-claims. What did really happen, what was actually heard and understood, what the genuine chain of events was feel elusive – the characters seem to have only partial memories, quick to make arrangements with truth, fudging a lot, and telling little lies. The audience is caught in this dubious game of finding out who is the liar: can they be that sure they watched and heard the right things earlier, did not they miss a key detail, as much as the characters on the screen seem to flounder over what has not yet fully come in the spotlight? Connecting back the dots as sentiments run dangerously high and deep-seated anger and angst literally seize the bodies and the faces, weaving back the little strands of the deceptively straightforward tale, putting together the bits of the jigsaw puzzle: this is not only the point of the film and the challenge the characters must raise to, but also the experience the audience must go through, forcing them to delve deeper in the minds of the characters and to grapple with deeper issues of personal morality, social status, fight for survival, and dignity.
The battle between Hojjat and Nader is also a clash between a struggling working class and a rising middle class while their refusal to compromise speaks volume about an ingrained masculine pride. The poor effort of Simin to handle the complex and harrowing situation hint both at her intellectual brilliancy and the limits it involves when the point is to accept irrational reactions, strong convictions, the sense of honor and piety. In the case of Razieh, everything gets clearer once a little incident is properly recalled: it was in the first hours of her job, when Somayeh noted Nader’s father is incontinent. What to do? She did not take him to the bathroom, as expected, but instead makes a phone call, asking an unknown person what she can do without breaching any religious rule on the relations between a man and a woman. Probably it is an imam, but the key fact is that this speaker must deal with a remarkably God-fearing, insecure young woman – and her attitude towards swearing, telling the truth, making a statement, being worried or respectful, is clearly shaped by a blind faith, which is the only rock she can cling in the mess her life is, the only wall sheltering her a little from poverty and shame. She may be a symbol of what could be wrong in the Iranian mindset, but the film does not launch a blistering attack on her, it does not make her a caricature, it does not dismiss the whole range of contradictory feelings and ideas running in her head, including remorse, quite the opposite. And in fact it does not do any of these things to anyone: this is a deeply tactful and serious portrait of a few folks caught in a stupid domestic tragedy. It observes them with an impartial and thorough attention and makes their ordeal a gripping, compelling watch.
“Jodaeiye Nader az Simin – A Separation” has no happy ending. An arrangement between the two families falls through while Nader and Simin get a divorce – a real, definitive one. And this time their daughter is on the center stage, forced to take a momentous decision she has always hoped to avoid (choosing one parent over another) as she has constantly dreamed that the ordeal would not wreck her family but instead would give them a new breath of life. Interestingly, Nader’s father has slowly receded back from the foreground of this drama, eventually getting dropped from the frame a bit casually, while Termeh has increasingly got a bigger role and drawn more attention. She has quickly stood as the horrified witness of a fight that was going too far, exposing the uglier side of her father, pointing to the flaws of her mother, tarnishing reputes, and causing pain and damage. She may have guessed that her own vision of the family would not be left unscathed: but worse than that, she becomes the victim of adults’ flaws, failings, and narrow-mindedness.