A Separation
A Separation
8.399%92%
A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.
Oliver Reznik reviewedApril 8, 2025
Outstanding performances, I'll give it that. Very nice naturalistic storytelling through and through.
This is a movie about incessant bickering. Bickering over some quite outlandish scenarios, that have a bit of intrigue due to their specificness and the level of fine detail that this movie will use to explore the scenarios. But the way the characters behave and react to various things makes it all feel like small potatoes. They're their own worst enemies in a lot of spots, and my mind automatically distances my sympathies when folks can't seem to help themselves.
SPOILERS
I mean at first, I was quite sympathetic for the poor Razieh dealing with a difficult employment situation. Didn't find it super interesting, but I was sympathetic. But then the movie obfuscates her side of the story as she aggresses against Nader. At first when I heard she had a miscarriage my heart immediately sunk. But shortly after she's like "I don't care about the miscarriage; I care about being accused a thief!" And then I'm like, "well I guess it wasn't that big a deal". She certainly shoots herself in the foot multiple times due to her religious devotion.
Despite the great performances, the characters aren't actually very interesting.
Nader foists difficult moral agency onto his young daughter to make himself feel less guilty like 4 times. Termeh is obviously traumatized and will carry the burden from this episode for the rest of her life. Her parents suck.
The movie ends with a shot of the two parents visually separated by a pane of broken glass. I wonder if other folks found this moment profound. I didn't.
Yeah, idk how this is universally beloved. Some good stuff here, some not so good stuff. Decent movie overall. I guess this movie does have a couple "big reveal" type moments which can go down well with audiences. I feel like I've gotten a bit sensitive to movies artificially withholding information to create a big reveal. And again, it's not like A Separation is plumbing the depths of the human soul, so there's just so much impact any one scene can really have.
Also, what is going on with the legal system in Iran? 1 year for murder? Going to court is like getting sent to the principal's office and has a similar level of investigative rigor.
I would say I was keying on more things this second time watching A Separation. With life experience and all that. Yet I liked it just about as much as I liked it when I saw it 10+ years ago.