A Separation

Saw A Separation, an Iranian courtroom drama. It starts with the core-drama of the breakup of a husband and wife. The wife goes to live with her mother, leaving her daughter with the husband. Tensions arising from the wife's absence spiral into an argument with the maid which results in her being pushed, falling, and miscarrying her baby. This involves the maid's husband and a whole host of very fraught class issues. Everyone comes off ugly. The husband retreats into pride and crusty dignity while the maid's husband starts stalking the daughter and harassing everyone involved. The women, meanwhile, confer secretly and desperately, trying to save face and make peace. Throughout all of this maelstrom, the daughter of the couple sits, torn between a father whom she loves but believes to be guilty and a mother she believes has abandoned her.

The film is full of jaw-dropping twists. It's very domestic and hyper-realistic, so things never get really crazy, but things are definitely kept interesting. The film could be said to be melodramatic in parts, but I make no such claim (such is my vice. I love me some drama.) Of the husband, wife, daughter, maid, maid's husband, each delivers a dynamite performance. The film is not easy enough to actually let you sympathize with any of them for too long. The maid comes off about the best for me, but in some scenes I hated her cringing reluctance to cause trouble. The maid, incidentally, has her own daughter. She is very young and, although she makes it through most of the film cheerful and cute, even she starts glowering by the end.

The film has shades of Rashomon in it. It's unclear, even to the viewer, even until the end of the film, who did exactly what during that push and fall. Unlike Rashomon, however, this film is less interested in the slippery nature of truth and more interested in the morally compromising alliances of family and pack-mentality. The daughter of the husband and wife is being forced to choose sides, between her mother and her father, between what she believes to be justice and her family. The class issues tie into this as well. The film pointedly makes the father an ugly bourgeois in some scenes. During one courtroom scene, the maid's husband insinuates that he (the husband) does not care about poor people. The husband raises his finger and shouts "show some respect!" This is bad behavior, but the judges eat up his show of dignity and are aghast at the resultant outburst from the maid's husband.

The film is very fraught. It's a sort of Kramer vs Kramer style domestic brawl but with a touch of class issues mized in, full of moral ambiguity and shades of gray. going into this film, I frankly would have preferred something more lighthearted or dry, something with less weight and uncertainty. But that's how reality is, I think, full of both, and I therefore laud this film for not defaulting to easy side-taking and pat "answers" (as though life really were as simple as a mere puzzle.) For all of my intellectual approval, though, I think I need a hug. Tough going.