With About Elly and A Separation, Asghar Farhadi proved himself to be one of the most interesting
and exciting cinematic talents to come out of Iran. With The Past, his
first film made outside of Iran, Farhadi has made another powerfully humane and
non-judgemental drama about people.
The plot of The Past, like
that of any Farhadi film, is difficult to describe since it is best to watch
the film with no prior knowledge, all the better to appreciate how intricately
the story unravels. Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) returns to Paris from Tehran and is
picked up by his wife Marie (Bérénice Bejo). Ahmad has returned in order to
sign divorce papers so that Marie may marry her new boyfriend, Samir (Tahar
Rahim). However, there may be more than one reason for Marie’s insistence that
Ahmad return. Equally, there seems to be something wrong with the three
children living under Marie’s roof – her two daughters Lucie and Léa (Pauline
Burlet and Jeanne Jestin) and Samir’s son Fouad (Elyes Aguis). Ahmad, playing
the peacekeeper, slowly but surely unravels a whole host of dark secrets and
resentments.
Not the best synopsis ever
written – and that is primarily because I don’t think they really matter – but
the joy (if it can be called that) of a Farhadi film has always been in their unravelling,
challenging the presumptions that the viewer may place on the plot and the
characters, only for him or her to realize that they are completely wrong and
things are much more complex than their simplistic, and possibly prejudiced,
generalisations would suggest. As in A Separation, in which the apparent
villain (played by Shahab Hosseini) castigates his accusers – and, hence, the
audience – for finding it so easy to blame him, The Past challenges the
audience to rethink their initial impressions of each character. As a result,
the badly behaved Fouad is revealed to have been deeply disturbed by something
he has witnessed, the seemingly unstable Marie is helplessly trapped with a
horrible dilemma and the tough Samir is suffering from either extreme guilt or
extreme remorse. The Past is a very well constructed and moving drama,
but it is also a call for greater communication and understanding – Ahmad is
often seen telling people to sit down and talk things through. As in A
Separation, there is no overtly guilty party, simply a group of people
trying to do what they think is right.
With The Past, Farhadi in
some ways hones his craft even further. Large parts of the film are set under
one roof and the film’s focus is on the difficulties of one family – albeit one
extended and complicated by divorce. The film begins slowly, with everyday
arguments about being late and bad parking giving an initial clue that
everything is not quite all right in this household. Ahmad and Samir’s first
meeting is subtly played as a comic macho challenge as Ahmad fixes a blocking
pipe, irritating and offending Samir. Ultimately, the entire drama is based on
the repercussions of a stained dress – a seemingly mundane object, which causes
a deeply volatile situation to explode out in several directions.
The performances – as can be
expected now from a Farhadi film – are uniformly excellent. Bejo won the Best
Actress prize at Cannes, doing very well with a role that is, frankly,
underwritten. A Separation has already proven Farhadi’s ability to get
great performances from child actors, but one scene set in the subway in which
Samir has to tell Fouad some difficult truths contains a brilliant performance
from Elyes Aguis, particularly when one considers the difficulty of the scene and
the fact that it is filmed in long takes. Rahim and Mosaffa are also both
fantastic as well. Everyone plays what are clearly intended to be ‘real
people’, with great subtlety and honesty and without patronising or mocking.
Arguably, The Past is simply a film about
people in difficult situations – it does not really have the contemporary
significance or national critique of About Elly or A Separation (although
its presence in these two films may have been exaggerated by a Western media
preferring to see everything from Iran as a comment specifically on Iran). It
is a humane and sympathetic drama, tightly structured and scripted, emotionally
draining and full of great performances. Though ultimatley less successful than
Farhadi’s previous two films – both of which have better developed female
characters – The Past is a great drama about the need for compassion,
trust and understanding.
See also:
This is Not a Film
Like Someone In Love
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