CityVida

January 13, 2012, 9:00am CST (“Freedom Comes with Responsibility:” An Interview with “A Separation” Director Asghar Farhadi) The commercial release of Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” could not have come at a more appropriate time. Its story about class, faith, honesty, justice and personal freedom in day-to-day Iran counterbalances the ratched-up political tensions between that country’s governments and ours. It offers us Westerners a peek at a world we still know very little about, breaking down whatever stereotypes and misconceptions we may have about that country.

Middle-class couple Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Moadi) sit in front of a judge, in an office, in hopes to resolve their dispute: she wants to leave Tehran to provide her daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, the director’s daughter) with a better opportunity while he wants to stay and take care of his Alzheimer’s-suffering father. The judge denies Simin’s request for a divorce. Simin moves out to live with her parents while Termeh stays with her father. Nader still needs help with his father and hires Razieh (Sareh Bayat), a devout Muslim, as his housekeeper. But when Nader finds his father tied to a bed, some missing money and no sign of Razieh, an argument with her and a shoving match ensue, ending with a murder accusation and a judicial process where truth is in the eye of the beholder. This brief summary doesn’t even begin to do justice to a complex and ultimately rewarding film.

“A Separation” premiered last year at the Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Golden Bear for Best Film, the Silver Bear for Best Actress to the actress ensemble and the Silver Bear for Best Actor to the actor ensemble. More recently, “A Separation” received the Best Foreign Language Award Film from the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and from another eight film critics’ organizations as well, is nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and is Iran’s representative for the Academy Award’s Best Foreign Language Film category. “A Separation” opens at the Music Box Theatre on January 27.

Farhadi recently visited Chicago to both promote his film and pick up his CFCA Award. The Awards ceremony was held January 7 at the Broadway Playhouse, 175 E. Chestnut St. This interview was conducted through an interpreter:

On the film’s production notes, you attribute the origin of this story to this memory that just wouldn’t let you go. What was that memory? Why was it so vivid?

The first time that I decided to write this story, it was based on a specific strong image that I had in my mind. And this image was about this man who was washing his own father in the bathroom. I started asking who is this man and why is he washing his father and where is his family. Answering this question little by little developed for me the story. And when the movie was done, I was talking to my brother about the story of the film and I realized that this memory I had was actually based on something that he himself had told me. This memory was based on the fact that my brother had taken our grandfather to the baths to wash him and my grandfather had Alzheimer’s at that time, and that’s how the image.

From that simple memory, that image, you have developed this complex, multi-layered portrait of contemporary Iranian society.

My first step is always to find the story. The process is never that there are some themes I want to talk about and based on the themes I build the story. Normally, any story has many themes embedded in it. So, once you find the story, a story that not only has one facet but is multi-faceted, has different layers and complexity, then within you highlight the themes you feel are more important.

Even though the lead protagonists are women, the film also talks about what it means to be a man in Iranian society today.

I have to actually explain several points one by one. When people in Iran saw this movie, both men and women, they didn’t come out of the movie thinking that I described something they weren’t familiar with. It was about their lives, [it] is actually part of the daily lives of these women and men in Iran. And because in the West there is a certain image of the Middle East and Iran, when they watch this movie, they kinda get surprised by the openness of how these things are treated. Usually, in whatever movie or story I am working on, it’s never important to say, this role can be done by women or these kinds of things cannot be done by men. To me, they are all human beings. Women are much more inclined to change and to act on change while men are more comfortable with stability.

I am fascinated by Termeh. In a way she is our surrogate, she is us looking at this world for the first time. How did that character evolve?

Termeh is the most important judge in the film. She is always observing and judging. And we, as spectators, are in the same process of analyzing and judging what we are watching. That’s why we all feel closer to Termeh. And that’s why we get worried about her future. In this movie, Termeh has two choices ahead of her: choose her father or choose her mother. But there is actually a deep and more dramatic issue that she has to decide upon. She doesn’t have to choose just between her mother or her father, she actually has to choose between two different lifestyles. Will she choose the lifestyle of her father or the path of her mother. This specific moment in her life is the most difficult so far. Why am I saying this? For the first time, Termeh gets the opportunity, the freedom to make her own choice. And this freedom comes with a responsibility. We many times mistakenly identify freedom with comfort when in reality freedom brings responsibility. And that’s why you can see the suffering in her.

“A Separation” has enjoyed a fabulous journey that began at the Berlin Film Festival and is now culminating with a Golden Globe nomination, the Chicago Film Critics Awards and a potential Oscar nomination. How do you feel about this journey?

It’s like two faces of the same coin. On the one hand, it’s like you are receiving a gift that you don’t know what it is and when you open it you are surprised. The other side [of the coin] can be very dangerous. Film directors, in general, could get used to this and expect it every time they make a movie. The film director then starts analyzing and starts competing with himself, leading to repeating himself. I think it’s kind of dangerous, like a banana peel.

Alejandro A. Riera writes about culture (Latino and non-Latino alike) in his blog culturebodega.wordpress.com

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