A Separation (Foreign Movie Review)

                              (Iranian, 2 hrs & 3 min, color, 2011)

There are many who maintain, and I am one of them, that the best way for most people to learn about history is through stories – stories that have authentic historical settings, with either fictional characters or factual ones who have been fictionalized.  They will retain much more about a place and time that way than from reading history books and commentaries about the period under consideration.  A good story teller is worth more to the average person than a scholar.  That is also true, I believe, of current conditions that are making history.  And that is especially true of stories dramatized on the screen.  A motion picture can put us under the skin of people subject to a society or an element of a society – more so than a dozen or more documentaries.    

In that regard, I highly recommend “A Separation,” an Iranian production released in 2011, to anyone who wishes to get some insight into that nation’s current culture and mores.  When we think of that part of the globe, our western minds envision suicide bombers, civil wars, oppressive dictatorships, war lords, militias, tribal tensions and violent revolutions.  More specifically, mention of Iran triggers thoughts and concerns about nuclear development and that government’s adamant determination to keep on defying world opinion in the further enrichment of uranium. Well, none of these kinds of things are portrayed or even referred to in the film.  There is not even a reference to government or figures of state.  No military or political activity is portrayed anywhere in the footage.  We simply visit with two families in Tehran who become interlocked in a very complicated and fractious dilemma.  But the current state of affairs in that nation is made quite palpable during those gripping two hours.  These peoples’ struggle speaks volumes about the soul and mindset of its citizens, the fabric of life as they live it, and the values that are inculcated into the mainstream of thought and behavior. 

The movie opens with a husband and wife seated side by side and facing the camera.  They are contesting in front of an unseen magistrate.  She wants a divorce.  Why?  Because of his cruelty?  No, she claims he is a very decent and loving man.  Because he has failed to provide for her?  No, nothing like that!  He is gainfully employed in a bank.  Because of drug addiction or the like?  No!  She is protesting because he refuses to leave the country with her, after they have allegedly been planning the move for a long time and have already secured a visa that is due to expire in forty days.  Why does he refuse to leave?  Because he has a father with Alzheimer’s and he thinks he has to take care of the old man!  She accuses him of indifference to the welfare of their eleven-year-old girl, preferring the welfare of his father to the care of his wife and child.  What the wife finally has to accept is that no Iranian divorce or separation can be sanctioned by the court without the husband’s approval, nor can the child be taken from the country without it.  The unseen judge finally declares that theirs is a small problem, not one justifying divorce action or the court’s further time.

That on the surface sounds clear enough, and maybe fair enough.  But in the hailstorm of words that are exchanged between the couple, overlapping each other at many points, she blurts out that she cannot leave her daughter “in these circumstances.”  When the judge asks her “what circumstances,” she does not reply.  She appears embarrassed by having said it.  But her evasion of the probing question is understandable enough to any audience in any society in the global village.  She wants to escape the tyranny of the Islamic state in which she feels trapped.  That unspoken, implied longing remains unspoken throughout the movie, but that is what drives everything that transpires in the following two hours.  

The girl elects for no apparent reason (at first) to stay with her father, and the mother, unwilling to emigrate without her daughter, remains in the city  but moves out of the home and in with her parents.  This necessitates the husband hiring a caregiver for his helpless father while he is at work, a function the wife has previously served.  The lower class woman he hires (he an upper middle class citizen) turns out to be immense trouble from day one, and it is she, a devout and well-meaning Muslim, around whom the plight of Middle East women is most vividly demonstrated in the scenario.  I will not relate any more of the plot, except to say that a circuitous chain of cause and effect is set in motion that sweeps two families up into a firestorm of accusation, intimidation, litigation, lies, half-truths, dishonor, and personal injury, both to body and individual dignity. 

Before the drama plays out, we westerners get fresh insight into how religious stricture and the domination of male hubris in a society holds peoples’ consciences captive and pays out enormous forfeitures far beyond the bounds of compassion or even rationality.  What it finally comes down to is the impact of all this clamor and deadly dealing upon the children involved.   

This is the sort of movie in which we are inundated with mixed feelings about the many characters.  All the adults are shifty and irrational one moment, and the next moment they evidence humanity and affection for each other.  There is a virtuous strain in each and every one striving to be seen and heard but doing battle with fear, pride, anger and intimidation.   And yet we identify with them to whatever extent our living conditions bear any likeness at all to theirs. At least one out of four Americans has encountered the crisis of separation and divorce in some manner, and we have all been affected by somebody’s injustice, if not our own, as well as the sometimes blurry line between truth and falsehood.

The film has won wide acclaim, including this past spring an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, in addition to a slew of international awards at film festivals and inclusions on a sizeable number of ten-best lists.  Leila Hatami and Peyman Moaadi, who play the contending parents, won the lead acting awards at the Berlin Film Festival, and Writer/Director Asghar Farhadi received the Directing award, along with other recognitions by various critics’ societies here and abroad.  Whatever impression any of us may have of the nation of Iran, the presence of top grade cinematic artistry inside those borders is now beyond dispute.  It should not be surprising that Farhadi got no government support in the production of the film.  He had to call on private sources for financing.   

The language spoken is Farsi.  But the subtitling, like the production overall, is top grade. 

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

Handmedown (Poetry by Bob Racine)

Illusions and prejudices never die. . .

                in a hurry.

They are not balloons that can be

pricked to instant death

by disappointment and shock.

They age and wilt and wrinkle instead

like old clothes a few sizes too small –

patched, re-sewn, threadbare,

unfit to be worn any longer.

Sentiment saves them from the trash heap

and keeps them tucked snugly away

among souvenirs and crushed flowers

and old doddering heirlooms.

Only with pain and much reluctance

are they finally. . .

   

                given away!

to gladden the hearts of needy others,

who cannot yet afford the price of. . .

               seeing

               or knowing better.

A Better Life (Movie Review)

(1 hr & 37 min, color, 2011)

Any serious film-maker dreams of creating a work of cinema that is simultaneously both contemporary and timeless.  So many even of the most celebrated and quality motion pictures have a habit of dating over the space of a generation or two, losing some of their cutting edge because of shifts in mores or changes in political trends and public taste or the expansion of social awareness.  But if I surmise accurately, “A Better Life” is so wedded to the rudiments of human struggle that it will prove over the coming decades to have great staying power.  There is no foreseeable reason why a half century from now it will not still touch hearts and minds in a profound way.  It concerns the struggles of a single Hispanic father in the early days of the twenty-first century in Los Angeles, living under the cloud of possible deportation.  But it is not essentially about immigration or any issue peculiar to our time; it is a testament to quiet moral courage and parental devotion, whatever the conditions imposed upon them. 

This is not to say that it is or will remain a popular movie.  Box office receipts since its summer release in 2011 are nothing to write home about.   But it is superlative storytelling, and as long as there is an audience for sensitive and well crafted domestic dramas on screen, it will have a personal if not a commercial impact for those who seek it out.

Carlos Galindo, wonderfully portrayed by Demian Bishir (Oscar nominee), is not a saintly man nor a person of any special intelligence.  In fact, it is an act of surprising carelessness on his part that compounds his troubles as an illegal.  Uppermost in his concerns is his fourteen-year-old son Luis (Jose Julian), whose sole custody is his, the mother having deserted her husband and child years before.  Luis is torn between the urgings of his father to stay in school and get an education and the pressure from peers to join a gang and depend upon their “protection.”  After years of working sporadically as a gardener, most recently employed by a friend, Carlos seizes upon the opportunity to go into business for himself.  His employer/friend, having accrued a sizeable nest egg, wants to sell his truck and move back to Mexico, where he hopes to settle.  Carlos buys the truck with money borrowed from his sister (Dolores Heredia), Luis’ aunt.  The big handicap of course is his status as an illegal immigrant, which makes it impossible for him to get a driver’s license or to register the vehicle under his name.  Out of devotion to Luis and spurred on by his wish to locate in a better section of town, where Luis could enroll in a more quality school, he takes the risk.  But on the first day as an employer of other laborers the truck is stolen, and he and Luis must set out to find it without giving away their secret.  Their painful search is the highlight of the compelling drama.  

The plot puts me in memory of “The Bicycle Thief,” an Italian film of the late 1940s in which a peon who has been out of regular work for some while in that postwar time lands a job, one that requires the use of a two-wheeler.  Its theft early in the game likewise propels him and his son (that one a preadolescent) on an equally dangerous quest to retrieve it.  Like them Carlos and Luis run into more trouble than they ever expect.  But “A Better Life” is not derivative.  There is far more difference than similarity between the two stories.  For one thing, the Italian only has people on the street to contend with.  Carlos’ nemesis is a rigid, pervasive legal system with very long arms.  For another, finding and retrieving a large four-wheel road vehicle is much more complicated an undertaking than the reclaiming of a bike.  And the relationship between this gardener and his teenage boy is much more intricate and complex, and the emotional payoff much greater.  The last scene in which father and son speak face to face is tremendous, as both of them peel away the layers of both family history and their own hearts and souls. 

The footage contains glimpses of this man’s world that are seen through his eyes.  At a couple of points we are riding with him along L.A.’s streets and he gazes longingly at ordinary people walking by, children playing, well dressed residents enjoying their day in the comfort of their high brow neighborhoods.  He is so close but so far from them, probably imagining himself as a legitimate citizen safely making his way wherever he goes instead of the outsider who must “keep my head down.”   He scrambles through a posh restaurant in search of the truck thief who is allegedly employed there, embarrassed and conspicuous in front of the guests in dinner clothes.  Next to his son’s school he watches the students swarming out the door, physically a part of their society, yet not a noticeable part.  Whatever our views on immigration, here is a man we cannot help but feel for, seeing as how he is as honest and hardworking as his station in life will permit.  And he has always prized family loyalty.  His sister credits him with rescuing her from social oblivion when first she found herself in the country.

  

Eric Eason and Roger L. Simon are responsible for the original screenplay and its discerning dialogue.  I especially appreciate the way they fleshed out the character of Luis every bit as much as Carlos.  The boy has some bridges of his own to cross and choices of direction to make.  Chris Weitz did the directing, a Hispanic himself.  It is my hope that the film will do much for the burgeoning Latino film industry.  A small portion of the dialogue is in Spanish, but I can assure every non-Spanish speaking person that none of it obscures in any fashion what is being exchanged between the characters.  There is no barrier posed by accent or style of delivery.

I recommend this very highly for anyone of any race or ethnicity above the age of eleven.  All of it feels completely authentic, and it is lovingly framed and mounted.  Get it from Netflix.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net