< Home / Interview / Critic / Bio / My articles in Japanese >

A Separation

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : Simin (Leila Hatami) wants to leave Iran with her husband Nader (Peyman Moadi) and daughter Termeh (played by the director’s daughter Sarina Farhadi). When Nader refuses to leave behind his Alzheimer-suffering father, Simin sues for divorce. Her request having failed, Simin returns to her parents’ home, but Termeh decides to stay with her father. When Nader hires a religious young woman to assist with his father, he hopes his life will return to a normal state. However, when he discovers that the new maid has been lying to him and her own family, he realizes that there is much more on the line than his marriage.

Opens December 30, 2011

Runtime:2 hr. 3 min.

Press Conference Director Asghar Farhadi

(Q) : I read in your very short statement that this film is a detective story without any detectives, and I would add that it’s a very suspenseful film without any usual suspense tricks. And I’m just wondering how did you work on the script, on the dialog, because they are brilliant and very sharp.
 
(Asghar Farhadi) : I start by putting in place very simple details, not big things that indicate suspense. And I build very slowly. It’s like creating a crossword puzzle; sometimes somebody who creates a crossword puzzle tries to come up with these really complicated ways of suggesting the word, but that’s no t really necessary. Sometimes very simple you give clues and they’re simple clues but the pleasure for the person who solves the puzzle is in solving it. I mean finding out these pieces, these words fit into one another.
 
(Q) : Well it seems like one of the things you like to do, as suggested by the previous film, is find a balance between a mystery, because that has a mystery as well, and show the interrelationships. Not of older Iranian communities but of people in the modern world, not somebody so much a traditionalist. How do modern Iranians cope while then trying to solve the mystery? How do you start out with the idea in your head and when do you decide you’ve got that kind of balance between mystery and relationship, dynamic?
 
(Asghar Farhadi) : It’s difficult to say when or how that style develops, but I think that maybe the storylines that I have have within themselves that potential to go in that direction. One of the important things is that I assume that audience is intelligent. And so I don’t want to give too much; I want the audience member to figure out also things for themselves. When I give information about my characters I don’t want to give them directly.

I want my audience to get that information by seeing those characters within certain circumstances, and in the way they respond to the circumstances is the clue as to who they are. I don’t want to openly give that information out. I tried to as much as possible to remain neutral in telling a story of the conflict between various people. I don’t want to take sides between the various characters. Did you get the answer to what you were asking?
 
(Q) : You spoke yesterday about your father being an influence and different experiences in your own life in forming the text of this story. What about your experience with the Iranian government? There’s a lot of application to this story to a much grander situation, so how did that inform your storytelling? He told about personal experiences with his father informing, the Alzheimer’s and whatnot, he didn’t have a separation but he had the Alzheimer’s. Were there any of your personal experiences with the Iranian government?
 
(Asghar Farhadi) : It was about his grandfather, actually, not his father.

(Q) : Or if I might add, the Iranian courts.
 
(Asghar Farhadi) : I haven’t had a personal encounter with a judge or a court system or anything like that. But if you live there you’re bound to witness, to hear about stories such as this, and so you’re just surrounded by these stories. When I was writing this screenplay I would go to the courts and I would actually listen to all the questionings that were happening.

Not just for divorce but also other cases just to familiarize myself with the proceedings. But I didn’t want to make this into a political manifesto by placing it into a courtroom. The most politically effective films are films that are not openly political, in my opinion. Like I much prefer films where you think oh this is saying something about his society, and then later on you think back on the film and you think oh this had political ramifications.
 
(Q) : Actually, you didn’t answer though anything about the Alzheimer’s that he asked about. How do they deal with it in that society?
 
(Asghar Farhadi) : Like everywhere else, it seems to be suddenly spreading. There are many, many cases of Alzheimer’s in Iran. There are now cases that handle patients who have Alzheimer’s, but it’s still something that families have a great deal of difficulty letting go and they’d much prefer to keep the patient living with them. But it’s coming to a point where it’s so difficult that it’s creating a real problem.
 
(Q) : About the court system. I may be wrong, but I have the impression judging by the film that Iranian courts are A, over crowded, and B, they rely more upon one person’s judgment or misjudgment, I mean the judge himself, rather than witnesses, evidence, and facts. Am I wrong?
 
(Asghar Farhadi) : It depends on the case. Some cases they have a jury, but of course you may wonder who chooses the jury, so there is some question about the jury selection. But some cases there is no jury and it’s just one person, the judge, who makes a decision. What you see in the film is actually not the courtroom and you don’t see the judge. It’s the investigator who is gathering all the information, and then that information is going to go before a judge and then the judge will make the decision.

(Q) : I have a question regarding the title of the film. In English it’s “A Separation,” which has a wider meaning. Not only this leaving of a husband and wife but also separation as a divide between the parent and the child, the truth and the lies, and you can go on and go on. The Iranian title; does it have the same connotation?
 
(Asghar Farhadi) : No. It had too much of a sentimental connotation if he used only the words “A Separation” in Persian, and he did not want that sentimentality to be part of the title. After Berlin he thought that for abroad it was better if it was just “A Separation,” but for in Iran he didn’t feel that it was a good title. The same discussion happened in Iran, where people said “You say this is a separation of Nader and Simin, but it seems to be the separation of so many other things.” So even though it’s not in the title I think people get it. The names Nader and Simin have significance, mean something in Persian. Nader means rare, as in not easily found, unique. Simin is something very valuable; it’s very precious, like gold. So separating the precious from the rare.

(Q) : I had a question about the second scene. He takes a camera inside the apartment, and the characters come and go, some speak, some don’t, and every character is introduced to us just by how their body language and how they’re speaking. And I just want to know how much thought he put into that and how he worked that out.
 
(Asghar Farhadi) : Movement is very important, and he has a great deal of difficulty with scenes that don’t have movement, because he feels that just through movement so much can be communicated. He doesn’t remember how he got to that scene initially, but he knew that after a scene with two people that have been static the next scene has to be a very busy scene. He felt that the tension, the chaotic aspect of the relationship could be well expressed through that motion. It looks like people are constantly trying to avoid one another and hiding and avoiding coming face to face with one another. There is even a scene where Simin goes into a closet and hides into the darkness of that closet.
 
(Q) : How was it working with your daughter? Did she get mad at you or is she easy or does she think you’re hard?
 
(Asghar Farhadi) : From one point of view it was very easy, and from another point of view it was very difficult. When I was writing, because I knew she was going to be performing the part, it helped me a lot because I knew what she was capable of doing and I knew how she would be acting. There are two difficulties when we actually started shooting. One was that she didn’t hold me in this position of authority as like I’m the filmmaker and so she’s supposed to listen to me. And she kept saying but why, why, why this, why that? I was very concerned that because I was her father that I would take that and project it onto the relationship of Nader and his daughter and that I would unconsciously favor Nader in this situation and take Nader’s side as opposed to Simin.
 
(Q) : The interesting thing is that the film is a secular one. It shows the life of people like this and I admire how you introduce the theme of religion in this environment. By the end of the film there’s a very important scene where they come home and negotiate a deal and the wife of this man she rejects this, says “No, I will not lie, not commit the deadliest of sins.” For me it was just the most important thing to show the mentality of the regular folks in Iran how they treat this thing. So my question is is it typical for a regular person to be this religious, I mean in terms of making decisions based on whether it’s a sin or not? Is it typical?
 
(Asghar Farhadi): Lying, people lie or don’t, but swearing on the Koran is a huge, I mean even people who are not very religious don’t want to swear, putting your hand on the Koran. Even if the person is in the right and they say “Swear that what you’re saying is true,” and they are saying the truth, they say “I can’t. I can’t swear on the Koran because it’s something that I cannot do.”
 
(Q) : You talk a lot about the puzzle and the structure for your writing. Do you think about character in the same way, and who’s your protagonist if you do?
 
(Asghar Farhadi) : I don’t have a main protagonist. I don’t understand what it means to have a main protagonist. I think that it’s a collective of people, it’s a group of people within a certain set of circumstances. And I don’t separate my characters between the antagonist and protagonist and the good guy and the bad guy. I just don’t see them like that. I don’t start with creating characters. I start by having a plot and then I place my characters in the plot, and because of the circumstances of the plot they take on certain aspects. The same characters could appear in a few months from completely other circumstances and the story would be a completely different one. It’s the story and the circumstances that make the characters.
 
(Q) : Are you excited about Oscar nominations? Are you nervous, worried, thinking about it?
 
(Asghar Farhadi) : I don’t think about it.

 

End.