Tuesday, August 5, 2014

A Separation (2011)


IMDb plot summary: A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.
Directed by Asghar Farhadi. Starring Peyman Moaadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat, Shahab Hosseini, and Sarina Farhadi.

(Spoilers about the ending.)

I'm not quite sure what to do with this movie yet. I suspect it'll have to sit with me for a bit before I'm sure what I think. It definitely sneaked up on me. About halfway through, I wasn't terribly into it, but then as the plot just kept going and the stakes kept raising, I found myself really caring about what was going on. And that final shot packs a punch in a way I didn't expect at all. When the credits rolled, I had almost a visceral reaction -- the strongest emotional response I had through the whole movie, maybe.

While I wasn't drawn into it as completely as I was with yesterday's movie, I have a feeling this is going to rise in my Flickchart rankings as I let it sit for a bit. So the initial rating is a bit low, but I expect it not to stay there.

3.5 stars.

Flickchart: #827 out of 2191, below 2001: A Space Odyssey and above I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK.

1 comment:

Brittani Burnham said...

The ending made me angry, because I wanted to know her answer, but this was a very fascinating film. The poster still kind of gets on my nerves though, the husband should be front and center, he was the main star.