{"id":16101,"date":"2012-02-28T08:12:23","date_gmt":"2012-02-28T04:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=16101"},"modified":"2012-02-28T08:12:32","modified_gmt":"2012-02-28T04:12:32","slug":"irans-first-oscar-a-film-those-itching-for-war-need-to-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/middle-east-art\/irans-first-oscar-a-film-those-itching-for-war-need-to-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran’s First Oscar: A Film Those Itching for War Need to Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s hard not to view the\u00a0Oscar for Best Foreign Film<\/a>\u00a0awarded to Iran\u2019s entry,\u00a0A Separation<\/a>, as at least in part, a political statement against war with that country. \u00a0But there\u2019s no question that the film is a brilliant one, even close to a masterpiece. \u00a0I just saw it last night and came away disturbed and deeply moved by the profound moral ambiguities it offered both about human relationships and life inside present-day Iran. \u00a0It is also the first Iranian film to win an Oscar, which, considering the amazing quality of Iranian cinema over the decades, is an oversight rectified and long overdue.<\/p>\n

\n

For a suitable cinematic tradition,\u00a0A Separation<\/em>\u00a0is best compared to the Italian social realism masterpieces of the early 1950s like DeSica\u2019s\u00a0The Bicycle Thief<\/em>. \u00a0 These were films which observed working class characters grappling with simple, yet profound moral conundrums. \u00a0It was this co-existence of the high and low together which marked these films as the masterpieces they were and have allowed them to stand the test of time.<\/p>\n

A Separation<\/em>\u00a0lives in the same filmic tradition. \u00a0It deals with a young couple, one of whom is fed up with the dead-end life Iran has to offer and seeks to emigrate. \u00a0The husband, however, is held back by an aging father suffering from Alzheimer\u2019s who he cannot leave behind. \u00a0This leaves the couple at a dead-end. \u00a0The wife wants to leave with her family. \u00a0Her husband will not. \u00a0They have an 11-year old daughter who is the sole obstacle holding the mother back from her plan.<\/p>\n

The couple go to family court where the judge refuses to grant her a divorce, saying her problem is \u201ctoo small\u201d to justify such a serious remedy. \u00a0Out of frustration, the wife moves out of her home, telling her husband she plans to leave anyway. \u00a0When she leaves his home, this starts a concatenation of small events which lead to the momentous ones that follow. \u00a0The husband, without his wife to serve as caregiver for his father, needs to hire someone. \u00a0He employs a poor pious young woman who has a small daugher and is pregnant.<\/p>\n

The new caregiver\u2019s first moral dilemma is whether as a religious woman, she may clean the aged man\u2019s soiled clothing and body. \u00a0The next day, the father, suffering from dementia, escapes from the home, and the woman\u2019s search to find him leads to a crucial, fateful incident.<\/p>\n

After this, the woman, torn by her need to see a doctor about problems with her pregnancy, decides to leave the sleeping father at home tied to his bed (so he will not escape again). \u00a0When the son returns home he finds his father fallen off the bed and disconnected from his oxygen tank and near death. \u00a0When the caregiver returns to work, the younger man fires her and also accuses her of stealing from him.<\/p>\n

The woman\u2013whose husband is an out of work cobbler deep in debt to his creditors\u2013facing the loss of the job, protests against her firing and begs the man to take her back. \u00a0He is so angry at abuse his father suffered, that he turns against her and pushes her out of his apartment. \u00a0She falls and injures herself. \u00a0From there, the plot works its way toward its climactic moments in which the lives of every character are tested in moral fire. \u00a0All are found wanting, though all act out of the best of motives (at times).<\/p>\n

What is truly brilliant about the movie is that every character is basically a decent human being. \u00a0Yet each one behaves in morally objectionable ways at one point or another. \u00a0Each one acts out of love or devotion to his family. \u00a0But such love leads each one to lie or cheat in ways that deeply harms others.<\/p>\n

The film also teaches that no matter how comfortable we each may be within our family, social or class milieu, our lives interact in ways we can never foresee with those with whom we could never conceive a relationship. \u00a0The young couple are comfortable, fairly secular, well-educated middle class people from good families. \u00a0Yet their lives strike up against those of a poor, religious working class family in ways they would never have imagined. \u00a0Tragedy ensues. \u00a0The middle class family causes it inadvertently. \u00a0The working class family ends up enduring the tragedy and tries to make the other family pay for its suffering.<\/p>\n

At the conclusion, the young son is vindicated. \u00a0But even this victory is Pyhrric because it comes at the expense of his own integrity, his failing relationship with his wife, and it damages irreparably his relationship with his scrupulously moral daughter, who watches her father\u2019s moral compromises with increasing incredulity.<\/p>\n

While the adults in this film grapple with moral questions whose answers cause them to be found consistently wanting, it is the children who suffer most. \u00a0The couple\u2019s daughter swings back and forth between father and mother. \u00a0She wants her mother to reunite with her father, yet the former refuses. \u00a0She wants her father to tell the truth about the harm he may\u2019ve caused the poor caregiver, yet he won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The caregiver\u2019s little daughter is equally vulnerable and helpless in the face of her parents plan to extort financial or penal penalties from the employer\u2019s family after the mother\u2019s tragedy. \u00a0At the end of the film, when the crucial moment comes and the middle-class man is vindicated, both children, who had become friends, look at each other with a look that is indescribably baleful and utterly sad. \u00a0No one has won, everyone has lost, but the children have lost most of all.<\/p>\n

After watching the film, I was tempted to see it as a moral allegory for the insanity that currently reigns in relations between Iran and the west. \u00a0Just like the couple in the film and the two separate families, who each act out of good motives, but whose obtuseness leads to tragedy, so Iran and its enemies seem hell-bent on a confrontation that can only lead to tragedy for everyone involved. \u00a0Of course, as with any great piece of art, this film shouldn\u2019t be confined to being a commentary on a single event. \u00a0It is far larger than that.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s worth noting\u00a0this statement from the film\u2019s writer and director<\/a>, Asghar Farhadi at the Oscar ceremony:<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this time, many Iranians all over the world are watching us and I imagine them to be very happy. They are happy not just because of an important award or a film or a filmmaker. But because at a time when talk of war, intimidation and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their country, Iran, is spoken here through her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics. I proudly offer this award to the people of my country, a people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He clearly meant the awards ceremony, if not the film itself, as a direct commentary on the mess we\u2019re in.<\/p>\n

Though I know they won\u2019t, I hope every Israeli and every key U.S. foreign policy official sees this film. \u00a0And then think whether a country that could produce such a beautifully subtle, touching and deeply troubling moral fable as this one should be bombed. \u00a0How will bombs stand up to the moral acuity represented by this film?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: I hope every Israeli and U.S. foreign policy official sees this film: How can bombs stand up to the moral acuity represented by this film?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":468,"featured_media":16102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,53,56,149],"tags":[11749,18306,11752,18311,11747,1226,18302,1996],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/468"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}