117) Beautiful City (2004)

117) Beautiful City (2004) Dir: Asghar Farhadi Date Released: March 15, 2006 Date Seen: April 7, 2012 Rating: 4/5

Very powerful, almost as strong as A Separation, I think, and definitely more potent than Fireworks Wednesday. I was talking to Steve Erickson about this and am kind of stunned that Farhadi's films were released theatrically here in the US but are still unavailable on DVD. Erickson suggested that the the film's US distributors are either grossly incompetent or negligent and he may very well be right. Because hark, Beautiful City did in fact have a New York City release date!

Anyway, one of the reasons I responded as positively as I did to Beautiful City is how Farhadi thematically buttresses his film's complex story of ethical responsibility with, for want of a better way of putting this, noises. The sound of the train near Firoozeh's (Taraneh Alidoosti) home that it threatens to cancel out  the sound of her baby's crying. But, like the sound of A'la (Babak Ansari) buzzing Firoozeh's doorbell, the sound of crying seems interminable. In this way, the baby's crying and the noise of the doorbell both reflect the urgency and persistent nature of Abak's dilemma. 

Which in turn reminds me of something I also found striking about A Separation. All three of the Farhadi films I've seen revolve around ethical loopholes created by the rules that govern Iran's patriarchal society. They are mainly about how the religious and semi-secular dogma that governs the film's protagonists doesn't properly equip the people it's designed to protect with the means of dealing with their lives' more complicated problems. 

And that in turn leads me to one of the other main things I loved about Beautiful City: how fully-realized Firoozeh is as a character. Her life isn't psychologically reduced  to tics but rather elevated by various innocuous actions, like when she insists on paying bus fare for herself and her infant child or when she takes out her own cigarette and lights it after A'la refuses to give her one. Firoozeh isn't just a nominally strong female protagonist: she's the real deal. And that's really rare.

84) Fireworks Wednesday (2006)

84) Fireworks Wednesday (2006) Dir: Asghar Farhadi Date Released (DVD): April 22, 2008 Date Seen: March 3, 2012 Rating: 3.75/5

I see some parallels between this film and A Separation, specifically in terms of how the plots of both films revolve around on the extent of two couples influence on each others' lives as couples. But I found A Separation to be a much more fulfilling melodrama. Would it be too obnoxious to say that it's, uh, a more mature work? Oh, well, I just did. 


Still, for what it is, Fireworks Wednesday is jarring and moving when it counts most and is mostly pretty involving. I was especially shocked by the big slap. It felt genuinely violent. As in, when I watched that scene, I felt like the blow had an emotional impact to it. I instinctively recoiled, is what I'm trying to say.

51) A Separation (2011)

51) A Separation (2011) Dir: Asghar Farhadi Date Released: December 30, 2011 Date Seen: February 4, 2012 Rating: 4.25/5

The first third of this picture is its weakest portion. It's pure set-up but that's ok, since the rest of the film does so much with that set-up. In fact, I'd say that since that's the only almost-weak spot of the picture, A Separation is in pretty great shape (What a relief, right?). Its drama is as gutting as it is because of the cumulative weight of its characters' moral dilemma. This is a film where everyone's actions are being judged by almost everyone else. The judges, the protagonists and their daughters are all judging each other's decisions, sometimes discretely but mostly with just enough visibility that we can't help but see their furtive looks of distrust and unease. The scene where the entire sordid court case is about to be settled and the would-be house-keeper stammers, "I have doubts," is devastating because she's giving voice to all this unease with one meek protest.

That having been said: I can't help but wonder what native Iranian critics think of this film. Its implicit indictment of the Iranian legal system (ie: the court's judgment is only valid insofar as it will immediately affect protagonists; the judge's ethical compass is understood to be compromised) and its semi-loaded initial scenario regarding the religious doctrine that forbids married women from working in other men's homes suggest that Farhadi is reactively creating a worst case scenario based on the worst of Iranian social conventions. It's the system that's implicitly under attack here and that's essentially what fucks up the protagonists. So I wonder what film critics that are more familiar with those social and judicial codes think of A Separation. Because, and I could be totally off-base here, this seems like a film that's pleading for tolerance and understanding from an ideal Western audience.