People like us | 3 March 2012

This week A Separation, Asghar Farhadi’s deceptively simple domestic drama, added the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film to its trophy case. Its success abroad has been attributed largely to its universally recognisable premise; unlike much Iranian cinema, Farhadi’s film feels modern, offering an intimate snapshot of social divisions in present-day Tehran. Most Western audiences will spend the first five minutes, in which we see a husband and wife asking a judge for a divorce, marvelling at just how like us these people seem.

The film’s style feels familiar, too. As in Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (which Farhadi openly admits to imitating), the camera is close-up, inquisitive rather than didactic. Morality, even the truth, seems to be subjective here.

But although its surface impartiality helped the film get past officious censors, underneath is a more complex picture. Simin (above) wants to leave the country because she is afraid of raising their daughter ‘in these circumstances’.