A Separation: truth, class and moral ambiguity at Film Group

There are films you enjoy, there are films you admire and then there are films that quietly take hold of you. A Separation – chosen by Mark Jolly – is very much the latter: a gripping, demanding drama that sparked one of Film Group’s richest discussions yet.

Made in Iran and released there in 2011, the film became an extraordinary international success. Produced for around $800,000, it reportedly earned more than $24 million within three years and won a remarkable number of awards, including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Its 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes reflects the critical consensus that this is one of the great films of the century so far.

What struck the group most was how immediate and human this film felt.

The opening scene announces the film’s intentions with startling simplicity. We are placed directly opposite a husband and wife as she explains to a judge why she wants a divorce. The camera becomes the judge’s viewpoint — and therefore ours. From the beginning, we are invited to assess, sympathise, condemn and reconsider.

Even before that, there is a subtle visual cue, that Mark highlighted: a photocopier reproducing identification documents and ending on a marriage certificate. Facsimiles, bureaucracy, controlled identities — all before a word has been spoken.

The separation of the title happens because Simin wants to emigrate (to an unspecified country) for the sake of their daughter’s future and has secured visas for the family that will run out in 40 days. Her husband, Nader, refuses to leave Iran because he cares for his elderly father, who suffers from dementia. When the judge refuses the divorce petition, Simin moves back into her mother’s home. At this point, Nader hires Razieh, a deeply religious working-class woman, to care for his father, but a confrontation between them triggers a chain of accusations, lies and legal disputes that entangle both families.

The couple’s conflict immediately feels universal: duty versus opportunity, marriage versus independence, societal control versus freedom. This universality is what makes the film work despite the cultural distance. The familiarity of the family tensions is deeply relatable and makes the specifically Iranian elements even more compelling. We recognised the arguments, the frustration and the emotional manipulation. As Patrick observed, it reflects life, not Hollywood.

Indeed, this film has none of Hollywood’s moral neatness. Nearly every character lies at some point. Nearly every character also has understandable motives. Nobody is wholly good or bad. Nader can be controlling, stubborn and dishonest, yet his devotion to his father is deeply moving and his affection for his daughter unmistakable. Simin appears compassionate and intelligent, but also self-focused and, at times, manipulative.

The film repeatedly asks us to judge these characters — then undermines our certainty. Did Nader know the carer was pregnant? Did he push her deliberately? Is his father truly the reason he refuses to leave Iran, or is it pride and control? The daughter eventually realises her father has lied yet later lies herself to protect him and the family itself.

Some viewers prefer stories with a clear villain. A Separation refuses to provide one.

The ending – with the daughter brought before a judge and forced to choose between her parents, with the parents asked to go outside into the corridor where they wait, separated by a glass screen, though with a door standing open between them – provoked much discussion. Emotionally devastating, but entirely unresolved.

Although the film avoids overt political messaging, its portrait of Iranian society felt extraordinarily revealing, drawing a contrast between Nader’s and Razieh’s circumstances.

The middle-class couple are modern and educated — he works in a bank, she is a teacher — yet their daughter cannot leave the country without her father’s permission.

Razieh occupies a completely different social world. Her husband has been let go from his work at a cobbler’s, is imprisoned by his debtors, depressed and without hope, which makes him desperate, violent (towards himself as well as others) and vengeful. Bill likened Razieh to “a walking pietà”, her tilted head making her seem the embodiment of sadness and sacrifice.

He also highlighted how the film’s realism extends into the economic picture portrayed. We’re seeing the long-term effect of sanctions – with rampant inflation and depreciating currency evidenced in the enormous numbers involved in any transaction – and also the social consequences – middle-class people bargaining down the wages of those below them, while those at the bottom become desperate enough to say repeatedly, “I have nothing to lose.”

The views of the court system are eye-opening: informal, almost casual, with no lawyers present, but legal authority remains absolute. Iranian cultural norms between men and women are exposed – and questioned? – through fascinating and complex relationship dynamics. And the power of religion is palpable – for some. One scene involves Razieh telephoning an Imam to ask whether it is sinful to wash Nader’s father after he soils himself. Her anxiety over religious correctness contrasts sharply with the more secular outlook of the middle-class couple.

Mark identified that the principal characters have distinctly Persian rather than Islamic names, suggesting a culture that absorbed Islam historically without losing its older identity – an ancient civilisation with more than 4,000 years of history, shaped by invaders and by religions but not reduced by either.

This prompted broader reflections on Iran itself: life before and after the revolution, the legacy of British and American involvement in Iranian oil, the country’s highly educated population and the contradictions of a society where women form a major part of university students and engineering graduates despite heavy political and religious restrictions.

The film’s style is fascinating. There is virtually no background music. Nothing cues the audience emotionally. The tension comes entirely from dialogue, performance and observation. The experience is comparable to watching a play.

In fact, the first music appears surprisingly late, playing on a car radio when Nader picks up his daughter, Termeh, from school. By then, the absence of score has trained us to focus on faces, pauses and gestures.

The camera often stays close to people in confined spaces: apartments, stairwells, courtrooms, cars. Arguments overlap naturally. Children drift in and out of adult conflict. Every interaction feels immediate and intimate. And sometimes intensely shocking, as in the scene where Nader and Termeh discover the elderly father tied to his bed. The daughter’s reaction is particularly painful in its realism; the fact that this is being acted by the director’s own daughter (aged 13 but playing an 11-year-old) is a challenging insight.

In this film, even the smallest moments invite interpretation. At a petrol station, Nader stays in the car while Termeh fills the tank and pays the attendant. When she returns without the change, he sends her back for it. She protests that it was meant as a tip, but Nader insists a tip is only deserved if the attendant pumped the petrol. He watches carefully as she goes back, then lets her keep the money when she returns. What’s really happening here? Is he controlling and miserly or something more complex? His expression suggests pride as she asserts herself in a public transaction. Perhaps he is quietly encouraging her to challenge cultural expectations of a female and become more independent. It raises a wider question at the heart of the film: maybe Nader resists leaving Iran not simply out of duty to his father, but because he believes change must come from within, through the next generation. Perhaps that’s reading too much into one scene. Or perhaps that is exactly the kind of layered ambiguity the film invites.

The director, Asghar Farhadi, has faced political pressure in Iran and filming was temporarily banned when he spoke out in support of filmmakers considered controversial by the regime. A Separation was made without governmental financial support, but it never attacks the system directly. Its criticism is implicit, woven into ordinary life rather than delivered through speeches.

That subtlety may be one reason the film became such an unlikely international success. Many of us admitted we might never have chosen to watch it independently. Yet by the end, there was broad agreement that it was a superb drama and an important one.

Perhaps the most interesting point raised all evening was a simple question: why do we tell stories?

Some expressed a preference for stories that provide moral clarity. Others felt that films like A Separation serve a different purpose: not to instruct us what to think, but to help us understand ourselves by confronting us with uncomfortable human complexity.

The film offers no easy answers because life rarely does.

And perhaps that is why it lingers so powerfully.