A Separation

I saw this movie at Coolidge today because of two recommendations for it. Its about an Iranian couple in the middle of a separation and a law suit. I'll leave whoever is curious to find out the details of these two conflicts. Anyway, each interaction at home and in court brings up different philosophies on parenting, politics, and religion, but unlike other Iranian films, its focus is more nuanced. Each side has its moments of truth to them and it was hard for me to not sympathize with anyone in the movie despite their mistakes. The whole time the couple's daughter seems to learn these things along with the audience as she discusses lying with her father, and then immediately understands why he does it. The whole film was very human and very sad, and it was a great movie.

On the more technical aspects of the film, I really loved the camera movement most of all. The first scene was great. It was a conversation between the married couple and a judge. By placing the camera between the judge and the couple, so that it faces the couple directly it seems to illustrate the frustration of the wife more because she's confronting the audience. Scenes where the camera follows a character are also very nice because I can tell that its shot with some sort of makeshift steady cam. the camera always has a tiny shake to it, but it doesn't bother me because its minimal and I don't think seamless would work for this film. The editing isn't very formulaic either which is really nice because seeing things in realtime can be rare at a movie theater. Also the compositions were really nice. There is one scene where the couple are in an elevator and for that 30 sec ride the husband's back is to the camera while he deals with his angry wife. I think this is why the film might be particularly nice for students. I was able to watch it and come up with ways that I could do the same thing.