Year: 2011
Written and directed by: Asghar Farhadi
Starring: Peyman Moadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat, Shabab Hosseini, Sarina Farhadi, Merila Zare'i, Kimia Hosseini, Shirin Yazdanbakhsh.
Running time: 123 min.
I've always been a big advocate of words being more effective than violence, thrills or laughs on screen. Some Hollywood films abuse that fact, by either using the violence and other visual things to get their point across, or by wasting words on needless exposition. But A Separation, an Iranian film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, seamlessly uses words in all of their glory. It is a seemingly simple story about a married couple (Simin and Nader, played by Leila Hatami and Peyman Hatami respectively) who decide to divorce; Simin wants to leave Iran to let her daughter live a better life elsewhere, but Nader wants to stay in Iran and look after his ailing father who has Alzheimer’s. The story, without the use of guns, bombs or killing, captivates from the very beginning, and becomes a thriller where words speak louder than actions. And that is the way it should be.
