A few years ago I was talking to a friend who had just seen David Gordon Green's "All the Real Girls." My friend isn't much of a film buff, but he knew that he'd seen something special. When I asked what he liked most about it, he didn't say anything about the acting or the direction or nuances of the plot. Instead, he simply said "because that stuff really happened."

Of course, my friend was not speaking literally. Instead, I think he was trying to talk about a feeling that the movie captured that transcends what we generally consider realism. It struck a nerve with him because it resonated in a deeper way than he could have ever expected. It…

Is it fair or even totally accurate to describe Asghar Farhadi's A Separation, the story of a middle-class couple's dissolving marriage and the legal battle they engage in with a poorer family, as "distinctly Iranian"? Take a cursory look at the film's international reception and you'll spot the recurring motif immediately: The Guardian calls it a story of "national alienation in Iran"; The Hollywood Reporter argues that it "succeeds in bringing Iranian society into focus in a way few films have before"; and Variety, in another emphatically positive notice, explains that the film "casts a revealing light on contemporary Iranian society." One wonders why Farhadi didn't simply go ahead and title his film Iran: The Movie. It's true, of course,…

It is easy to see why A Separation was one of the most highly regarded films of last year. It is a complex (but not complicated) story with so many grey areas that it becomes hard to really apportion blame in an ever escalating court battle between a man and his pregnant employee who accuses him of causing her miscarriage. A Separation is such a rich film and it is rare these days to see this kind of story with characters that are never wholly good or bad. It is one of the films strongest attributes that you sympathise with every single character in the film despite the fact they have all lied in some small, or big, way.

The…

Within the first five minutes- which set the story and tone perfectly- I knew I was in for a treat. Not only did it stay consistently compelling throughout, but I'm willing to call this the best film of the decade so far, by a long shot.

As a story of people, their actions and the consequences of those actions, scathing survey of the Iranian government, and the dissolve of a family, A Separation fully succeeds in its rich and dramatic (but never melodramatic) themes and plot strands into a tale so revealing and truthful it hurts. The fact that Asghar Farhadi didn't win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar is a travesty and brings Hollywood's silly self obsession to a new…

Rarely do I watch a film and, immediately afterwards, think "this was deserving of any and all praise it has received." It happens, certainly, but those moments are few and far between. I am glad to say, though, that this film falls directly into one of those moments.

Often, I find a plot using interwoven storylines and multiple viewpoints to be hit or miss. It can be tough to give the appropriate amount of screen time to both opposing forces and, even tougher, to make the viewer care on some level for each of them. In 'A Separation,' it works beautifully and serves the narrative in a near perfect manner. Boiling these storylines down to simplistic terms (i.e., "one family…

Over the past decade Iranian cinema has become an important tool for the countries filmmakers to express the increasing frustration of the people trapped under the current order. Here we have a film that works within a similar framework, this time the core of the story peels away the layers of deceit that we can all become wrapped in by our own moral choices. The full Iranian title was A Separation of Nader and Simin which sounds pretty dull but there is far more to the story than a simple divorce.

At first we take the position of the judge sat facing Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) arguing about the divorce proceedings brought to the court by Simin.…

Within the first five minutes- which set the story and tone perfectly- I knew I was in for a treat. Not only did it stay consistently compelling throughout, but I'm willing to call this the best film of the decade so far, by a long shot.

As a story of people, their actions and the consequences of those actions, scathing survey of the Iranian government, and the dissolve of a family, A Separation fully succeeds in its rich and dramatic (but never melodramatic) themes and plot strands into a tale so revealing and truthful it hurts. The fact that Asghar Farhadi didn't win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar is a travesty and brings Hollywood's silly self obsession to a new…