A Separation | Film review

Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Moadi) have reached an impasse in their marriage. She wants to leave Tehran and make a better life for their preteen daughter in the West. He needs to stay behind and care for his elderly father, who’s entered the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. In the gripping opening minutes of Asghar Farhadi’s great domestic drama, they’ve both come to plead their case to a divorce judge. This is the separation of A Separation, though the title might well refer to any number of divisions—of class, gender and religion—exacerbated by a government with too much control over the lives of its citizens.

Beginning as a gently observational portrait of a broken home, A Separation gradually morphs into something pricklier and more complicated—a kind of thriller on the nature of truth and moral responsibility. With Simin now living with her mother, Nader is forced to hire a married female caregiver (Sareh Bayat) to look after his father during the day. The woman’s arrival triggers a confluence of events—the disappearance of a wad of money, a physical confrontation—and suddenly the viewer is thrust into the role of an impartial third party in a thorny legal dispute. Comparisons to Rashomon are apt, except that here we’re grappling not just with what happened, but with who knew what and when they knew it and how withholding information speaks to a character’s guilt or innocence.

The whole cast is impeccable, though the standouts are Moadi, as the beleaguered patriarch caught in a vise grip of pride and shame, and Sarina Farhadi, as the young daughter whose silent suffering illustrates the toll parental infighting takes on children caught in the middle. A Separation shatters your heart, even as it sends your mind racing backward through it, goosed by the thrill of investigation.