Iran’s Foreign Language Film 2011 entry has already won countless awards, including the Golden Bear in Berlin, and it’s absolutely no surprise. Asghar Farhadi’s story takes its time, a seemingly simple family drama, and then escalates to a Hitchcockian mystery filled with lies, pride, and suspicion.
A husband and wife are separated; the wife wants to leave the country, but the husband has his father, suffering advanced Alzheimer’s, to tend to. They share a 12-year daughter as well. The father hires a pious woman to take care of his father during the day. She shirks her duties one day, an outburst follows. He throws her out of the house - how forcibly and violently is up to you. But it sets into motion a whole series of events. He’s charged with a crime. The woman’s husband is short-tempered and prone to violent outbursts. The daughter is struggling about who to believe. And all the while, the married couple’s separation continues to cause emotional trauma.
I really had no idea where it was going for the first half hour. It’s so simple, just these people’s lives going on. Taking care of the senile old man is too much for this woman, that’s obvious from the start. But then it just starts snowballing, and what becomes instantly fascinating isn’t just the what-actually-happened-here mystery that you find in a good crime drama. It’s how all the parties may or may not be lying. Or mis-remembering. Or omitting things. Whether from pride or anger or a worry of eternal damnation. You never know who’s going to decide to do what when interviewed by the judge. I soon felt this tug in my gut, this surprising suspense that was based not on action but on the emotional choices of the characters. The bombs that drop aren’t a blow or a submission, but a nod, a word, a tear-streaked face. As the judge in the story is trying to discern the ‘what’, it’s the ‘why’ that you’re struggling to discover. A beautifully acted portrayal of a family’s bonds and fissures.
