Movie Review: "A Separation"

"A Separation": A-. Nader and Simin have been married for fourteen years, but their marriage is coming to an end. In the opening scene, Simin tells a judge that she wants to leave Iran, and has only forty days before her exit visa expires. Nader replies that he can't leave because he has the responsibility of caring for his aged father, Omar, who is suffering from Alzheimers. (For purposes of this post I'm calling Nader's father "Omar," though he is not given a name in the credits.) Simin would leave the country anyway, were it not for the couple's eleven year old daughter, Termeh. The family lives in the Omar's apartment. The judge won't grant the divorce, but Simin moves out to live with her mother in another part of the city. Nader hires Razieh to look after his father during the day while Nader goes to his bank job and Termeh attends school. Nader explains to Razieh that her main duties are to give Omar his meds and, most importantly, to keep him from harming himself. Razieh brings her little girl Somayeh with her to play in the apartment while Razieh performs her caregiving and housekeeping tasks.

We get a grueling up-close look at what it's like to care for Omar, who is incapable of performing even the simplest tasks. The job is too much for Razieh, but her husband can't take over because his creditors have had him jailed for failing to pay his debts. In fact, for religious reasons Razieh has not even told her husband that she has taken on this job. One day, when Nader returns home early and finds Omar near death and no sign of Razieh, he desperately tries to resuscitate his father. While all this is going on, Razieh returns and Nader erupts. To add fuel to the fire, he accuses Razieh of theft. Razieh admits she left Omar home alone for a very brief time to attend to a personal matter, but vehemently denies stealing Nader's stash of hidden cash. Nader forcibly ejects Razieh from the apartment.

There are a lot of things going on in this movie: the pending divorce, the care of and concern for Omar, the clash between Nader and Razieh, and the plight of Termeh, who is trying to cope with all that is going on before her young eyes. When Razieh's husband gets involved, another layer of confrontation evolves, much of it playing out in another courtroom. Emotions run high, to say the least.

Nader and Razieh each have their secrets, and they also have their faults. Neither is a bad person, as evidenced by their efforts to be good parents to their respective daughters, yet sometimes bad things happen to good people. The movie is a study of how a single decision, viz., the decision of Simin to move out of her family's apartment, can start a domino effect of (probably) unforeseen events. Some of the scenes in the movie, particularly that of an early conversation at the dining room table between Simin and Termeh's tutor, don't seem particularly important when shown, yet have eventual major inpact in the evolution of the story. The same can be said about the scene in which Nader kicks Razieh out of the apartment, and a scene when Omar briefly leaves his apartment to go to a newsstand across the street. If you pay attention to detail, you will be rewarded with a higher level of appreciation of this gripping tale.

The acting is superb, with a special tip of the hat to Sareh Bayat who plays Razieh. And Kimia Hosseini, who plays little Somayeh, is just about the cutest little kid I've ever seen on the screen. "A Separation" has been nominated for two Oscars, Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay. It will take an excellent movie to defeat "A Separation" in either category.