Pride and Principle.  Sunday night we watched a wonderful Iranian film, A Separation, winner of the 2012 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.  It's a domestic drama about two families: an upper-middle-class Persian family (Simin, Nader, their daughter Termeh, and Nader's father who has Alzheimer's) and a lower-class family, the wife of which, Razieh, is hired to take care of the father.  Simin has a visa and wants to leave the country for the West with her husband and daughter, but Nader refuses to go because he feels he must care for his father.  As the film opens, Simin is prepared to leave without him; they are before an unseen judge, as she asks for a divorce so that she and her daughter (who hasn't agreed to go) can leave.  The judge will allow Simin to leave, but not with their daughter, so Simin moves out to live with her family.  Nader is, as Simin tells the judge, a "good and decent man," and he struggles with the care of his father and daughter.  Razieh, too, is a good and decent person, but once hired, with problems of her own, she is caught by her overwhelming responsibilities, and everything is rapidly complicated as events (and motives) slide out of control.

One of the pleasures of watching foreign films is the glimpse we get into another culture, and no culture at the moment would seem more foreign than that of Iran.  The portraits of the women are especially fascinating.  Simin's world is secular: she wears a hijab (head scarf) rather than the chador (the umbrella-like garment that covers the whole body).  She teaches English and wants to leave Iran.  The only political moment in the movie is at the very beginning when the judge asks her why she wants to leave, and she replies that she wants her daughter to live in different conditions.  The judge asks her what exactly she means by that, and Simin remains silent.  In one very brief scene, we see her stubbing out a cigarette on the balcony.  In America, that would mean that she isn't allowed to smoke in the house, but here we're surprised that a woman is smoking and, moreover, doing it where she can be seen by others.  Razieh, on the other hand, is extremely devout.  On her first day, the father soils himself.  She hopes that he can wash and change on his own, but he's unable to do so, so she calls a religious hotline to see whether it would be a sin for her to wash him.  (She's told that it's not.) 

There are also a few details that were tantalizingly inexplicable to me.  There are many scenes of women suddenly having to adjust their chadors as men enter.  Once, the moment is beautiful as a woman descends the stairs and the chador sails outward in the breeze.  It seems like a motif in the film, but perhaps for an Iranian, it would simply be an unremarkable commonplace act.  At one point we see Termeh studying for an exam; she's learning the Farsi words for certain concepts.  But since everyone is speaking Farsi, why she is having to learn these words and what language is she translating from?  It's not Arabic, nor French (Iranians use merci, as well as the Farsi mamnoun for thank you).  Are Razieh and her hot-headed husband Hojjat not only from a different economic class, but also from a different, non-Perisan ethnic group?  Is the 'us' vs 'them' mentality that permeates Hojjat's outlook based on more than economic differences?  At the end of the film, when we last see the family (and Termeh is about to tell the judge whether she will live with her mother or her father, a question that remains unanswered as the movie ends) does the black garb that all the family is wearing mean that Nader's father has died?

What is amazing about the film, however, is, despite the cultural differencs, how universal it is, how few details would need to be changed to adapt this film as an American story.  It's about good people, all with their own needs, desires, and values, whose views of what is necessary and right are incompatible.  And inflexible.  They act out of pride and principle.  But as the action unspools, principle begins to apply more to  others than to themselves.  Each begins to allow him- or herself small exceptions--small lies, sometimes of omission (as Razieh's failture to tell Nader that she is pregnant), but often overt.  The falsehoods complicate themselves, and for stretches, the viewer becomes uncertain about where the truth lies--not in the Rashomon sense of the instability of truth, but simply in knowing whom, among these characters that we like, to believe. 

A Separation is a marvelous film, all the more interesting for its insight into a culture that suddenly reveals itself as not all that different from our own.